Arrogance, ignorance invite disaster

August 11, 2006

BY ANDREW GREELEY
In a war, as Secretary Rumsfeld says, stuff happens. Things go wrong, sometimes a lot goes wrong, on occasion everything goes wrong. Then you have a fiasco (the title of the best book about Iraq, written by Thomas E. Ricks).

Military history is filled with fiasco stories -- the French army at Agincourt or the Union army at Fredericksburg. A more recent fiasco was Operation Market Garden in the autumn of 1944, a scheme cooked up by British Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. The Germans, driven out of France, were falling back behind the Siegfried line. Montgomery desperately wanted to win the war by himself. The plan was for his British 2nd Army to run around the end of the line and go on to Berlin. Three airborne divisions (two American, one British) would secure bridges over the Rhine at Nijmegen, Enthoven and Arnheim. An armored corps of the 2d Army would drive up the road, cross the Rhine and strike into Germany.

It was an ingenious scheme, at least on paper. It turned into a fiasco (recorded in the book A Bridge Too Far and a film of the same name). The U.S. airborne divisions captured the first two bridges. The British failed to capture the bridge at Arnheim and their armored corps moved too slowly. The English paratroop division was destroyed and the war went on. Why the failure? Market Garden was developed in less than two weeks. The intelligence was inadequate. There were more Germans moving into Holland than Montgomery realized. There were not enough paratroop divisions. The armored corps was not strong enough and moved too slowly. The causes: arrogance and ignorance. The result: fiasco.

This paradigm matches the Iraq war: terrible intelligence, inadequate planning, not enough troops, underestimating the enemy. More arrogance and ignorance. Only the size of the fiasco is much larger, a terrible blow to the U.S. military and American prestige for the next decade. The pessimism among American leaders at the Senate Committee last week was palpable. There might be a civil war and, if there is, there is little America can do but get out of the way. Probably the worst fiasco in American history, worse than Pearl Harbor.

In the years to come people will ask why did they do it? They had been warned about what would happen and they went ahead anyway. The Congress and the media did not protest. Were they out of their minds?

The answer, I suspect, is yes, we all were out of our minds. Osama bin Laden in his wildest dreams could not have imagined that the United States would have responded to the World Trade Center attack with such madness. Ricks, the Washington Post's Pentagon reporter, points out that the columnists and editorial writers at his paper and the New York Times supported the war at the beginning.

Most of these writers, sentinels against government failures, have changed their minds as sanity begins to return, but they have yet to admit their mistakes and take responsibility. Thomas Friedman of the Times, its all-purpose pontifical expert on the Middle East, has finally announced, yes, it is time to call a peace conference among Iraq parties and get out. Where was he three years ago? Why doesn't he admit flat-out that he was wrong and apologize? Why doesn't he say that he was swept along by the 9/11 frenzy and the blatant lies of the administration, and that he ought to have known better? Why doesn't he credit those of us who warned all along that Iraq was worse even than Vietnam? Why doesn't he concede he, too, failed the American people by not standing up to the frenzy sweeping the country? Why doesn't he criticize the media, which propounded the false cliché that America would never be the same again and the misleading shibboleth "war on global terror''?

Arrogance and ignorance were not limited to the administration. Friedman, David Brooks, Robert Kagan and James Hoagland failed in their duty to cry "hold, enough!" We should not permit them to change their minds until they admit full responsibility for the fiasco, which has given bin Laden his biggest victory yet.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/mercurynews/ne...ld/15272800.htm

Rosy assessments on Iraq `not related to reality,' some say
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers

LEILA FADEL, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Iraqi rescue workers comb the rubble looking for the dead in a bomb blast in Baghdad, Iraq in Nov. 2005.
TIKRIT, Iraq - As security conditions continue to deteriorate in Iraq, many Iraqi politicians are challenging the optimistic forecasts of governments in Baghdad and Washington, with some worrying that the rosy views are preventing the creation of effective strategies against the escalating violence.


Their worst fear, one that some American soldiers share, is that top officials don't really understand what's happening. Those concerns seem to be supported by statistics that show Iraq's violence has increased steadily during the past three years.


"The American policy has failed both in terms of politics and security, but the big problem is that they will not confess or admit that," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of parliament. "They are telling the American public that the situation in Iraq will be improved, they want to encourage positive public opinion (in the U.S.), but the Iraqi citizens are seeing something different. They know the real situation."


Othman charges that top American officials spend most of their time in the heavily guarded Green Zone in Baghdad and at large military bases across the country, and don't know what's happening in the neighborhoods and provinces beyond.


Shiite Muslim parliament member Jalaladin al Saghir had a similar view.


"All the American policies have failed because the American analysis of the situation is wrong; it is not related to reality," Saghir said. "The slaughtered Iraqi man on the street conveys the best explanation" for what's happening in Iraq.


Some U.S. soldiers in Iraq reluctantly agree.


"As an intelligence officer ... I have had the chance to move around Baghdad on mounted and dismounted patrols and see the city and violence from the ground," wrote one American military officer in Iraq. "I think that the greatest problem that we deal (besides the insurgents and militia) with is that our leadership has no real comprehension of the ground truth. I wish that I could offer a solution, but I can't. When I have briefed General Officers, I have given them my perspective and assessment of the situation. Many have been surprised at what I have to say, but I suspect that in the end nothing will or has changed."


McClatchy is withholding the officer's name to protect him from possible retaliation by his superiors or political appointees in the Pentagon for communicating with the news media without authorization.


American officials and Iraqi officials appointed by them continue to orchestrate ceremonies, news conferences and speeches that suggest that things are getting better.


In Tikrit last week, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. walked across the marble floor of a palace, smiling and shaking hands. It was a good day for Iraq, he said.


The Iraqi army's 4th Division was taking the lead in securing three provinces, and senior Iraqi and U.S. officials had gathered for a celebration marked by dancing soldiers and passionate speeches.


Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie, walked to the lectern and, his voice rising with emotion, said to a cheering crowd of Iraqi and American officials: "My dear friends, I will tell you something, the only way to end terrorism - there is no other way - is that we stand together."


The commander of the 4th Division, Lt. Gen. Abdul Aziz Abdel-Rahman, told the crowd that Iraq was heading toward safety and democracy.


In the week that followed, at least 110 Iraqis died in a series of bombings and shootings, and at least eight U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed. The Iraqi death toll probably was much higher, since many Iraqis are killed by death squads and their bodies are undiscovered, buried or dumped in rivers.


Another 47 Iraqis were killed and 100 wounded Sunday in what Iraqi officials said was a barrage of rockets and car bombs; U.S. officials disputed those accounts, saying the casualties were due to a gas explosion.


Nationwide statistics during the past three years suggest that American efforts to secure Iraq aren't succeeding. While various military operations have at times improved security in parts of the country, the bloodshed has mounted with each U.S.-declared step of progress, according to figures that the Brookings Institution research center compiled from news and government reports.


When L. Paul Bremer, then the top U.S. representative in Iraq, appointed an Iraqi Governing Council in July 2003, insurgent attacks averaged 16 daily. When Saddam Hussein was captured that December, the average was 19. When Bremer signed the hand-over of sovereignty in June 2004, it was 45 attacks daily. When Iraq held its elections for a transitional government in January 2005, it was 61. When Iraqis voted last December for a permanent government, it was 75. When U.S. forces killed terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi in June, it was up to 90.


Attacks have increased in lethality as well as number: There was one multiple-fatality bombing in July 2003. Last month, there were at least 51.


And while the number of U.S. troops killed by hostile fire has declined this year, the number of Iraqis killed has soared.


In January, the month after Iraq's widely heralded national elections for a permanent government, at least 710 civilians were killed, according to a report by the United Nations that cited Iraqi Ministry of Health figures. (The report made it clear that the actual number for January was much higher.) Five months later, 3,149 Iraqis were killed in June.


Casey acknowledged in an interview with ABC News last week that things were "very difficult right now." But the remainder of his response made no reference to the trend line of expanding violence.


"Now, what's gone on over the last two years?" he said. "There's been great progress over the last two years, and you've been here enough where you've seen the situation ebb and flow just like it is now. We're ebbing right now. And we're going to come out of it just like we have in the other places."




Top U.S. military officials often point to the Iraqi security forces as the way forward. In June 2004, there was just one Iraqi army battalion. Today, there are 10 divisions.


But recent interviews with American soldiers in and around Baghdad suggest that some Iraqi security forces are contributing to the problem.


Last month, gunmen marauded through a Sunni Muslim neighborhood in western Baghdad, dragging people from their homes and cars and shooting them. Iraqi police said that more than 40 were killed.


To get into the neighborhood, the gunmen had to drive through Iraqi police and army checkpoints, said American 1st Lt. Brian Johnson of the 4th Infantry Division, who leads a platoon on the western edge of Baghdad.


"Those gunmen drove up in five or six trucks full of (Shiite) Mahdi militiamen with AK-47 bandoleers across their chests and they drove through IP (Iraqi police) and IA (Iraqi army) checkpoints," said Johnson, 24, who's from Houston. "The IAs and the IPs are in the Mahdi militia's pocket ... an IP will come off the checkpoint and a Mahdi militia guy will put on his uniform, man the checkpoint and start pulling people from their cars."

Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East project director at the nonprofit International Crisis Group, which has released a series of reports about Iraq, said there'd been too much emphasis on scoring political points in the United States.


"One of the key problems all along of the U.S. approach to nation-building in Iraq has been that it was ... not (guided) by the situation on the ground. This is how certain benchmarks were set, and then celebrated when achieved, without any regard for developments taking place that undermined these very successes," Hiltermann said. "This was always more about generating an American success story at home than about doing the right thing in Iraq."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1400105_pf.html

Pace: Bigger U.S. Force May Stabilize Iraq

By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
Monday, August 14, 2006; 3:54 AM



MOSUL, Iraq -- Iraq could be stabilized faster if the United States increased the size of its force, but the costs would outweigh the benefits, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday.

Gen. Peter Pace said in an interview at the conclusion of a two-day visit _ his first since surging sectarian violence triggered talk of all-out civil war _ that his meetings with U.S. commanders and their troops left him convinced that the Pentagon is correct to focus its effort mainly on training Iraqi security forces.

He said the current American force of about 133,000 troops is the right size for that training mission and for the more deadly work of containing the insurgency and helping reduce sect-on-sect killings.

"More U.S. and coalition forces could get the job done quicker, but that would mean dependency much longer for the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi government," he said, speaking in a recreation room for U.S. troops as a searing summer sun set on a day that took him from Baghdad to Fallujah to Mosul.

During a question-and-answer session with troops in Baghdad on Saturday, Pace said U.S. officials had hoped as recently as July that they could reduce the U.S. force by two brigades, or about 7,000 troops, this fall. But with the surge in sectarian killings, the force was instead increased by two brigades.

Pace returned to Washington early Monday.

Pace said his encounters with U.S. troops at each stop in Iraq reinforced his belief that they are proud of what they are doing and satisfied with what they have accomplished. But he also said he had detected among them "some frustration at the Iraqis for not yet grasping the opportunity that's in front of them."

He was alluding to the failure of rival Shiite and Sunni sects to reconcile their differences, stop the sectarian violence that has gripped Baghdad in recent months and establish an effective government.

The troops feel, "We're doing our part. When is the (Iraqi) governance part going to kick in? And that's a fair question."

Pace preached patience.

"It's too early to pass judgment on a brand new government," he said, referring to Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki.

In Fallujah, once a key stronghold of the insurgency and still troubled by almost daily murders of policemen, a few Marines posed questions to Pace that suggested a creeping doubt about what their sacrifices have gained.

How much more time, one Marine asked, should the Iraqi government be given to achieve the political unity necessary to stabilize the country?

"I guess they have as long as it takes _ which is not forever," Pace replied.

Pace argued that setting a deadline for the United States to withdraw its support would risk pushing the Iraqis into political decisions that are unviable. On the other hand, he said, "You do not want to leave it open ended."

Another Marine wanted to know if U.S. troops would stay in Iraq in the event of an all-out civil war. Pace repeated what he told a Senate committee last week: a civil war is possible, but not expected. He did not say what the United States would do if it actually happened.

Another asked what the United States would do if the Iraqi government did not support extending the U.N. resolution that authorizes the presence of American and other foreign troops in Iraq. Pace said the Iraqis already have said they favor extending the U.S. mandate, which expires in December.

One Marine wound up his question about the pace of U.S. troop deployments to Iraq by asking, "Is the war coming to an end?"

Pace didn't answer directly. He said Pentagon officials and military leaders are trying to keep enough troops in Iraq to achieve the mission of training Iraqi troops to take over the security mission, while avoiding having so many that it creates an Iraqi dependency.

© 2006 The Associated Press

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14347775

US forces tread a fine line in divided Iraq
Financial Times

Updated: 10:12 p.m. ET Aug 14, 2006
A joint patrol of the 101st Airborne Division and the Iraqi army is prowling the streets of Adhamiya after midnight, enforcing Baghdad's curfew, when a tip is relayed to them that a number of the radical Shia Mahdi Army militia, some in police uniforms, have staged a kidnapping at one of the city's main hospitals.

The Mahdi Army is believed to be responsible for much of the sectarian killing in the capital in the past six months, so this could be a death squad in action. Or it could be a police unit, or both.

Captain Will Arnold, commander of the patrol, is at first reluctant to react to the kind of report that has in the past sent him criss-crossing Baghdad. "People are always [calling] about something they don't understand," he sighs. With paranoia over militia infiltration of the police at a high, some Sunni are convinced that anyone in uniform is Mahdi Army.

But soon more details emerge – the hostages are six Sunni patients, taken by a gang of men from the ministry of health's guard force. This is a common enough occurrence, according to Baghdad's Sunni. The minister of health, Ali Shemmari, is a member of the Sadrist political movement with which the Mahdi Army is affiliated. He is reported to have staffed his guard with former militiamen.

Sunni from the nearby district of Adhamiya shun this place, even though they have no medical facilities in their own neighbourhood. The only time they come is to check the morgue for their missing. Among the alleged hostages is one of the ministry's own top officials, a member of a Sunni political party who disappeared in June.

The patrol heads to the minister's office, where the alleged kidnap force was last spotted. Capt Arnold's men push inside, but virtually all the doors are locked and no one can be found to produce a key.

The hostages – if there are hostages – could be anywhere inside, or in surrounding buildings. To tear apart the building would almost certainly cause a political storm. Capt Arnold decides on a solution – five guards whose description matches the kidnappers will be arrested by the Iraqi army unit.

The next day the political storm erupts anyway. The minister of health delivers press statements calling the arrests a "provocation" and demanding an end to the US military occupation.

At the Iraqi army battalion headquarters that evening, planning for a key raid is interrupted about every 15 minutes by a call from the ministry of defence, demanding the release of the arrested guards. The staff colonel at the ministry tells the Iraqi battalion commander that the prime minister himself has ordered their release.

"Does the prime minister want to release kidnappers?" the US military adviser in the room asks flatly.

The detainees were still being held on Monday evening.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...ainful_lessons/
J. CALEB DONALDSON AND MARTHA MINOW
Relearning Vietnam's painful lessons
By J. Caleb Donaldson and Martha Minow |
August 14, 2006

CURRENT EVENTS make the Vietnam era more relevant than ever. We are engaged in a war without plan or prospects for disengagement. The conflict seems part of a global danger, but we also seem interlopers -- and attractive targets -- in a civil war. Fighting among civilian populations raises the specter of atrocities, and we inevitably hear echoes of the My Lai massacre in the news of Marines killing civilians in Haditha, and the abuses of detainees in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

A criminal trial started last week against a CIA contractor for allegedly abusing a detainee in Afghanistan, just as the Los Angeles Times reports that declassified documents reveal more than 300 verified war crimes committed by US troops during the Vietnam War. Court martial and civilian criminal proceedings have begun against those allegedly involved in a rape and mass murder in Mahmoudiya.

Some of the incidents in Iraq eerily resemble those in Vietnam: mass rapes, the killing of civilian families, even the abuse of animals. The alleged ``bad apple" behind the March 12 Mahmoudiya rape and murder reportedly set a puppy on fire and threw it off a rooftop, and soldiers in Vietnam were seen ``senselessly stabbing a pig." Whether ``mere" crimes or those more closely related to the tactical goals of armed conflict, each set of atrocities manifestly violated the law of war.

Abuses by our soldiers expose inadequate training, supervision, and clarity from the top. In the Vietnam War, and now, we suffered from failed leadership and overtaxed and inadequately trained soldiers, though now we also have private contractors operating outside clear chains of command and legal liability.

Vague orders and uncertainty provide soldiers with an excuse for their behavior and officers a way to avoid responsibility, but that's the way the military has to work, in the jungle near An Khe or in Mosul. Orders need to allow enough flexibility for those on the ground to accomplish objectives. But flexibility should not become a black hole for responsibility when the unspeakable happens.

Soldiers in such conditions are under unyielding pressure to follow orders and conform to their group. They face ostracism, court martial, or physical danger if they threaten the cohesion of a fighting unit. They risk reprisals if they blow a whistle -- though today their digital cameras may serve as silent witnesses.

The pressures from uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and boredom are excruciating. And young people in their late teens and early 20s have few reserves to manage the tension. Extensive studies conducted by social psychologists show that people tend to obey authority even when directed to inflict harm, people tend to conform to peer pressure, and people adapt to roles and may, as a result, not recognize brutality when in the middle of committing it. The cruelty of Abu Ghraib guards chillingly resembles Philip Zimbardo's prison simulation experiments from the 1970s.

Putting aside what it would take to exit Iraq, to stop atrocities, we need to provide better training, and accountability for each soldier. Even a soldier who could rationally calculate chances of detection and punishment cannot be counted on to prevent atrocities. Of more than 300 substantiated war crimes in Vietnam, only 14 soldiers received any sentence. One man convicted of indecent acts on a 13-year-old girl served only seven months in prison. Of course, few soldiers can stop to weigh risks of punishment or see the big picture while on special operations, or on duty to get information from detainees.

The best protection against atrocities is leadership at the top, setting the highest standards, vowing not to strain but to uphold the law, and honoring legal standards in the details of each operation. The White House and secretary of defense show no leadership of this kind. Worse, they demand ever more secrecy in the name of national security. Secret prisons, secret orders, guidelines for interrogation hidden from public review diverge from our fundamental principles -- and also make more abuses entirely foreseeable. Private contractors whose numbers are unknown to the secretary of defense and Congress fall outside the lines of military authority and the reach of international law. Congress tries to forbid cruel and inhumane treatment by our troops, but the president veils his aversion to exercise his veto in a signing statement claiming his own authority to interpret the law.

National security requires special rules, but secrecy too often leaves unpunished the individuals who commit atrocities, prevents superiors from being held responsible, shields them from incentive to change their policies, and conveniently allows the citizenry to remain in the dark about the real costs of war.

As we learn anew the costs of our Vietnam tragedy, we see how secrecy and time thicken the fog of war. Potential witnesses and suspects issue contradictory statements, and grow old or die. Accountability grows more remote. Perhaps, though, for our current struggle, it is not yet too late.

J. Caleb Donaldson is a student and Martha Minow a professor at Harvard Law School. Minow is the author of ``Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence."

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://washtimes.com/upi/20060812-021048-7645r.htm

Analysis: U.S. Army faces FCS shambles
By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Aug. 14, 2006 at 7:31AM
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's cyber-dream for the U.S. Army has become a cyber nightmare.
Rumsfeld took office determined to transform the U.S. armed forces into a high-tech, computerized, lean, mean fighting machine that would be invincible.
Instead, the U.S. Army today remains becalmed in Iraq, stuck in the middle of a low intensity guerrilla war it has been unable to tame. And that war is now morphing into a no-holds-barred civil war. Meanwhile, U.S. military preparedness, retired generals and respected military analysts warn, is now lower than it was in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War -- when Rumsfeld was U.S. defense secretary for the first time.
Rumsfeld wanted the U.S. Army to switch to a state-of-the-art, integrated computer system that could shunt intelligence into the battlefield in real time and allow senior commanders hundreds or thousands of miles away to keep a tight grip on combat operations as they were happening.
Instead, the vaunted Future Combat Systems program is now a shambles.
Unprecedented billions of dollars have been poured into FCS and it has been given top call on Army resources even while U.S. combat troops in Iraq went short of low-tech body armor and steel protection for their combat vehicles.
However, a recent Congressional Budget Office report warns that the FCS program could eat up half the force's annual procurement budget.
The CBO says that the FCS program is on track to eventually eat up between 40 and 50 percent of the Army's procurement accounts, leaving scarce dollars to buy other needed gear, CongressDaily reported Aug. 3.
"Dedicating such a large proportion of the service's procurement funding to the FCS program would leave little money for purchasing other weapons systems (such as helicopters) or needed support equipment (such as generators and ammunition)," the CBO said in the report.
The CBO also projected that the FCS price tag, which already has jumped by billions of dollars in the last few years due to a major program restructuring, could grow by another 60 percent, largely because the program entered the development stage prematurely, CongressDaily said.
"The FCS program may continue to experience cost growths at historical rates," CBO said. "If it does, the average annual funding needed for the program, CBO estimates, may climb from the $8 billion to $10 billion projected most recently by the Army to between $13 billion and $16 billion."
The CBO report is not an isolated warning. Several recent Government Accountability Office studies have also questioned the Army's ability to develop and buy FCS, a system of manned and unmanned vehicles tied together by an extensive high-tech network.
Earlier this summer, the Pentagon's own Cost Analysis Improvement Group estimated the total cost to develop, procure and operate FCS has soared from $175 billion to more than $300 billion since 2003. The Army rejected those estimates as wrong, stating that the total cost will be roughly $230 billion.
On July 21, CongressDaily reported that the FCS program's budget shortfalls could exceed $20 billion annually. Faced with one of its toughest funding challenges in years, top U.S. Army officers are reviewing several options and negotiating tactics, including the possibility of submitting a budget proposal for fiscal 2008 and beyond that exceeds the guidance issued by senior defense officials, CongressDaily said.
The Army is reluctant to cut spending on FCS, something it believes would essentially mortgage the Army's future to pay for its current needs, the newspaper said.
Communications equipment critical to the Army's high tech Future Combat System are lagging and over budget, according to the GAO.
The three systems -- the Joint Tactical Radio System, Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, and the System of Systems Common Operating Environment -- are critical to the $120 billion Future Combat System program being a viable replacement to the current generation of tanks and armored vehicles.
But if the FCS fails, the Army's entire combat strategy will be at risk. At Rumsfeld's prodding, the Army has been developing a new generation of tanks that is supposed to be faster and more maneuverable, but will have far less army than many battle tanks of the past quarter century. That idea has already been thrown into doubt by the devastating effectiveness of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs in Iraq. Over the past year-and-a-half, they have been the biggest killer of U.S. soldiers in the war there.
But if the FCS fails, the new generation tanks will be at a devastating disadvantage on conventional battlefields too. The FCS was supposed to give U.S. land combat formations an overwhelming advantage in action. However, each of the three communications systems that the FCS relies upon now has significant problems.
The Joint Tactical Radio System's first iteration is supposed to be able to transmit at least 6 miles, but has a range of only 1.8 miles. Moreover, it does not meet security requirements, CongressDaily reported last year.
The Pentagon directed the cancellation of Boeing's nearly $500 million contract to develop and build the radios in April 2005; if left unchecked the cost was expected to rise to nearly $900 million.
Second, The Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, a mobile internet and cellular communications network being developed to support a large, dispersed battlefield, was supposed to begin production in March 2006. However, according to GAO, needed technologies for that equipment to function will not be available until 2009.
Third, the System of Systems Common Operating Environment -- the operating software to integrate the Future Combat System communications network -- is also showing signs of being behind schedule, according to GAO.
Rumsfeld seems to be the only figure in the Pentagon who still remains optimistic about the FCS program's prospects. Recent experiences in Iraq have taught senior U.S. Army planners not to trust in optimism.