Guard’s First Four-Star General - Jim Garamone, AFPS

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has recommended the Air National Guard’s director for a promotion that would make him the first four-star general in National Guard history. Pending nomination by President Bush and confirmation by the Senate, Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig R. McKinley would become the chief of the National Guard Bureau. McKinley would succeed Army Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum. Gates has recommended that the president nominate Blum to be deputy commander of US Northern Command.

Guard's Status Rising With Leader's Rank - Josh White, Washington Post

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday made the first nomination for a four-star general to lead the National Guard, a move that should give the reserve force a significant boost in influence inside the Pentagon during an era when the Guard has played a critical role in the nation's wars abroad. Gates said he has recommended Lt. Gen. Craig R. McKinley, the director of the Air National Guard, to take over as chief of the National Guard Bureau and to receive a fourth star. The position has traditionally been filled by a three-star general, but legislation passed earlier this year required elevating the job to a full general's billet.

We Need the Freedom Legion - Max Boot, Contentions

Are we Americans too chauvinistic to learn a thing or two from the French? I hope not, because in 1831 France had a great idea. It’s called the Foreign Legion, and, as Molly Moore reports in the Washington Post, it is still going strong. Today the Legion has 7,655 members, making it about the size of two US army brigades. Its personnel come from 136 countries. The ability to recruit so widely is a direct result of the Internet. “Once an almost exclusively European force,” Moore writes, “the Legion now counts Asians and Latin Americans among its fastest-growing cadres of soldiers. Although French law forbids the Legion to actively recruit beyond French borders, the Internet has rendered the law almost meaningless.” Why is this an example to learn from? Because, as I’ve argued in the past, we should be setting up our own Foreign Legion, which I’ve suggested should be called the Freedom Legion. Given the recruiting difficulties suffered in recent years by the army this would seem like a no-brainer. Why not hire gung-ho recruits from around the world? If the French can do it, we certainly could, and our task would be easier because a lot more potential recruits speak English than speak French.

Secrets to Terror-Fighters - Noah Shachtman, Danger Room

The Marines are charging two senior non-commissioned officers for taking part in what the San Diego Union Tribune calls "a theft ring that involved the stealing of secret files on potential terrorists." But no one is accusing Gunnery Sgt. Eric Froboese and Master Sgt. Reinaldo Pagan of giving away classified information to Al Qaeda. Instead, the Marine reservists are being hammered for passing data to one of the country's most celebrated counter-terror groups. Back in 1996 -- five years before most local law enforcement agencies had the foggiest idea who Osama Bin Laden was -- Los Angeles Sherriff's Department Sgt. John Sullivan and Deputy Larry Richards started the Los Angeles County Terrorism Early Warning group, or TEW. The idea was for federal agencies, military groups, first responders, and local cops to swap ideas about what terror threats might be coming next, and how best to respond. Radicals had their own loose networks to dream up schemes and share thoughts; here was a chance for government to fight that, with a network of their own. Every month, dozens and dozens of specialists from across southern California would get together to discuss how hospitals could cope with mass-casualty events -- or how gangs like MS-13 might be the region's real terrorists.

Strategic View at NAVSEA is Embarrassing - Galrahn, Information Dissemination

Admiral Morgan once told me every budget is a strategy. We are still waiting to see evidence of that, ask a dozen sailors the strategy of any given program, and you will not find consistent answers. The guidance in the Navy towards resources doesn't exist, so slogans like the one Admiral Morgan used have little value until they are representative of something visible. It is probably a good assumption Admiral Morgan hasn't read this email posted by some NAVSEA SES, reproduced over at CDR Salamanders, because had he seen it, he might have a few words regarding the abuse of the word and concept of strategy. Around the world, the Navy is executing the six core capabilities of the Maritime Strategy - forward presence, deterrence, sea control, power projection, maritime security and humanitarian assistance / disaster response. This strategy is not about navies, but about maritime domain awareness. It is about partnership, it is about cooperation, it is about countries pooling their resources, sharing information. This is exactly what NAVSEA did this past week in attending the Quadrilateral Shipbuilding Forum (QSBF) in Ottawa, Canada. The purpose of QSBF is to facilitate the exchange of information between the member nations, including Canada, Australia and the UK, that are focused on reducing the cost of naval shipbuilding.

Problems and Solutions - Richard, Defence of the Realm

For every solution, there is a problem – an aphorism which applies as much to the famed mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles as anything else. Predictably, therefore, as the use of MRAPs becomes more common in Iraq and Afghanistan, the limitations of the vehicles are becoming more apparent, leading to a rash of articles bringing these to the fore.

Big Army - Carl, Because We're Here Boy...

This is a "Big Army" story. For those of you with military experience it will be a story often told and heard. For me it is a new thing and as a civilian I am still frustrated by it. For those of you like me, the story is typical of the "Big Army". We have M-4 rifles and we like to keep them clean. It is hard to do in a dusty environment. If you cover the muzzle and the open magazine well (regs don't allow us to keep an empty magazine in the magazine well), the rifle is mostly sealed against the dust and it stays clean much longer. You can cover the muzzle with plastic wrap and put a sock in the magazine well and that does the job but it looks bad and the plastic wrap comes off easy. Commercial vendors in the States sell plastic fitted muzzle caps and magazine well covers that do the job even better and look good. The items are cheap too. I tried to buy some today. I placed the order and found out they couldn't ship it to us over here. They said the Army won't allow anything that goes on the gun to be shipped via an APO, Army Post Office.

Why the Military Loses the Information War - Andrew Klavan, City Journal opinion

I kept thinking back to all those antimilitary movies I’d seen and to left-wing journals like the New York Times, which consistently highlight military abuses and failures while obscuring and downplaying military heroism and advances. The servicemen I was training with were clearly smart, expert, and committed to excellence in the defense of their country. They also seemed a lot more mentally stable than most of the screenwriters, journalists, and academics I know, though that’s not saying much. Yet Hollywood and our left-wing media, as well as our antimilitary professoriate, can be quite convincing when, say, they portray an isolated injustice like Abu Ghraib as evidence of systemic atrocity, or depict veterans as more likely to commit crimes than the rest of us, which statistically they’re not. Conversely, as spectacular as our armed forces are at the business of ousting real-life tyrants, they fall a little short when it comes to works of the imagination.

Habits that Are Good for You... - Kip, Abu Muqawama

A recent article in the NY Times details the efforts of Dr. Val Kurtis to get people to wash their hands in poor, sub-Saharan African countries. Her method: study the work of industry giants to see how they created habits in Western consumers. Kip believes there are lessons learned for our advisors conducting Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. At the macro-level, as we identify trends that undermine the force, e.g., poor vehicle maintenance, failure to clean weapons, failure to account for ammunition, etc., focus campaigns on creating habits associated with parts of a soldier's daily life, e.g., "finish your daily prayer, clean your weapon."

A Battle Over 'the Next War' - Barnes and Spiegel, Los Angeles Times

Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. is not a fighter pilot, wing commander or war planner. But he is waging what many officers consider a crucial battle: ensuring that the U.S. military is ready for a major war. Dunlap, like many officers across the military, believes the armed forces must prepare for a large-scale war against technologically sophisticated, well-equipped adversaries, rather than long-term ground conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan. First, however, they face an adversary much closer to home -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. For more than 30 years, the Pentagon establishment considered it an essential duty to prepare for a war of national survival. But under Gates, that focus has fallen from favor. In public speeches and private meetings, Gates has chastised many commanders as ignoring wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while they plan for speculative future conflicts.

Military Advisers Say They're Treated as Misfits - Nancy Youssef, McClatchy

Standing next to a screen illuminating a long list of tips, Maj. Anthony Nichols looked out at the classroom of neophyte military trainers and began a lecture about the ways that fellow soldiers will look down at them while they serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other soldiers will call them "undesirables," sent in because they had no other place on the battlefield, the instructor said. Some units will kick military advisers out of security briefings. One recommendation: to "patch swap," carry alternative military insignia for their uniforms so they can pretend to be members of other units. It will help them get supplies and equipment more easily. Or at least more respect. "I came armed with a stack of patches... Who am I going to be today?" Nichols said about his time in Iraq. Nichols' depiction is in stark contradiction with Pentagon rhetoric. Top Pentagon officials say that developing a new corps of military advisers is a priority as part of the new emphasis on counterinsurgency. But the military, which continues to use the Army Special Forces to train foreign troops for combat in Iraq and elsewhere, hasn't fully embraced the program to train trainers in counterinsurgency.

Nominees Vow to Restore Trust - Pauline Jelinek, Washington Times

The two men nominated to replace the ousted Air Force leadership said Tuesday they will work to restore trust and confidence in the beleaguered service, under fire for poor handling of its nuclear duties and other missteps. "I believe the most urgent tasks for the new leaders are to steady this great institution, restore its inner confidence ... and rebuild its external credibility," Michael Donley, the nominee for secretary of the Air Force, told a Senate confirmation hearing. He said that he has met with the service's senior leaders in recent weeks and that they are "ready to put the difficulties of the past few months behind them... to learn the appropriate lessons from these experiences and to move forward."

A Promise to Restore Trust in Air Force - Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times

Two defense officials nominated to take control of the Air Force promised Tuesday to work to restore trust after the reputation of the service was battered by accusations that it failed to properly oversee the nation's nuclear weapons and was insufficiently committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Michael B. Donley, who previously served as a Pentagon administrator, and Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, head of Transportation Command, were nominated to replace Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff T. Michael Moseley, who were fired last month for problems with the service's stewardship of the nuclear arsenal. At a Senate confirmation hearing, Donley, the acting secretary, outlined steps he hopes will improve oversight of nuclear weapons as well as rebuild the credibility of the Air Force.

Donley Pledges to Restore Air Force’s Reputation, Credibility - G. Gilmore, AFPS

The acting secretary of the Air Force told Capitol Hill legislators during a confirmation hearing here today that he’ll work to restore the Air Force’s reputation for excellence. Michael B. Donley told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he’ll work to re-establish national confidence in the Air Forcein the wake of missteps in the handling of nuclear materials that led to the resignations of the service’s top military and civilian leaders. The most urgent tasks for the new Air Force leadership are “to steady this great institution, restore its inner confidence and your confidence in the leadership team and rebuild our external credibility,” Donley said. Donley became acting Air Force secretary after the June 6 resignations of Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley, spurred by a report on the erroneous shipment of four non-nuclear missile trigger components instead of helicopter batteries to Taiwan in August 2006. A year after the mistaken delivery, an Air Force B-52 bomber crew inadvertently flew across the United States carrying six armed nuclear cruise missiles.

Auditors Pressured To Favor Contractors - Dana Hedgpeth, Washington Post

Auditors at a Pentagon oversight agency were pressured by supervisors to skew their reports on major defense contractors to make them look more favorable instead of exposing wrongdoing and charges of overbilling, according to an 80-page report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office. The Defense Contract Audit Agency, which oversees contractors for the Defense Department, "improperly influenced the audit scope, conclusions and opinions" of reviews of contractor performance, the GAO said, creating a "serious independence issue."

Defense Leaders Promise Improved Contracting Oversight - Donna Miles, AFPS

The US military depends heavily on the support contractors provide in Iraq and Afghanistan and is stepping up efforts to ensure dollars dedicated to their activities are spent appropriately, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told Congress today. England joined Army Gen. Benjamin S. Griffin, commander of US Army Materiel Command; acting Defense Department Inspector General Gordon S. Heddell; and Shay Assad, DoD’s director for defense procurement and acquisition policy, during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on contractor accountability. The Defense Department takes its contract accountability and oversight responsibilities “very seriously,” England told the lawmakers. He noted that multiple department agencies have conducted “literally thousands of aggressive reviews, audits and oversight.” In doing so, “they have indeed uncovered incidences of fraud and abuse,” he said. The Defense Department takes meaningful corrective actions and makes structural organizational changes where appropriate, England said. Meanwhile, it holds people accountable for their actions. Heddell, who became acting DoD inspector general last week, noted that the department is completing or conducting audit oversight efforts that cover about $158.9 billion related to Defense Department efforts in Iraq alone.

I’m Comfortable. How About You? - New York Times editorial

After the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, fired the Air Force’s top civilian and top general last month, reform and accountability have become the service’s new bywords. Congress was rightly skeptical this week as the replacement nominees pledged to repair the reputation of the Air Force - tattered by misplaced nuclear weapons, costly contract miscues and more. One revealing symptom of the ongoing leadership drift was revealed by The Washington Post last week. The paper reported that at least four ranking generals have been deeply involved in designing airborne “comfort capsules.” These two-room luxury pods, with all the amenities of sports arena skyboxes, would be inserted into the fuselage of military aircraft to carry top brass and their VIP guests. The most offensive part of this project is that the Air Force has been pressing Congress for the last three years for permission to tap $16 million in counterterrorism funds to pay for this indulgence.

They Fight but Can't Vote - Robert Novak, Washington Post opinion

Rep. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, introduced a resolution on July 8 demanding that the Defense Department better enable US military personnel overseas to vote in the November elections. That act was followed by silence. Democrats normally leap at any opportunity to find fault with the Bush Pentagon. But not a single Democrat joined Blunt as a co-sponsor of the resolution, and an all-Republican proposal cannot pass in the Democratic-controlled House. Analysis by the federal Election Assistance Commission, rejecting inflated Defense Department voting claims, estimated overseas and absentee military voting rates for the 2006 midterm elections at a disgracefully low 5.5 percent. The quality of voting statistics is so poor that there is no way to tell how many of the slightly more than 330,000 votes were sent in by absentee military voters and their dependents and how many were from civilian Americans living abroad.

Combined Arms - Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club

Two stories of ground to ground and air to ground from Iraq and Afghanistan, 2006 convey some of the flavor of events which were not publicized at the time... Maybe 60 years from now, when the ideological debates have cooled, and no one remembers or much cares who was a Democrat or a Republican in 2006, some future Steven Spielberg will go and interview an aging man running a server farm or robot repair center somewhere in Idaho and ask him about events long, long ago in a place far, far away. Then it will be safe to produce and distribute Band of Brothers, The Sequel.

The Importance of a Strategic Message - Galrahn, Information Dissemination

Yesterday we were intentionally critical of the process the US Navy has used to date in creating a conversation with the country. The Navy must do better. While we are critical of the way the Navy attempted to connect to the American people, we firmly believe that having the conversation is very important. Originally we were going to make the case why, but in reading today we came across this absolutely brilliant article in Joint Forces Quarterly that makes the case better than we ever could.

Silent Posting - Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post

Word got around, and more and more readers closely followed the postings of 25-year-old Lt. Matthew Gallagher, with the site drawing tens of thousands of page views. By the time Kaboom went kaput last month -- Lt. G was ordered to take down his blog -- it had a following that would be the envy of many a small-town paper. The blog's downfall was a May 28 posting that, in violation of military blogging rules, Gallagher failed to have vetted by a supervisor. (That the posting depicted an officer in the unit unflatteringly might have played a role. Gallagher declined a request to comment.)

Army Blogging = Horror Story Waiting to Happen? - David Axe, Danger Room

Two weeks ago Army Secretary Pete Geren told an audience of soldiers and defense contractors that the Army was falling behind jihadists when it came to using the Internet to share ideas. One solution he proposed, "Find a blog to be a part of." But one long-time Army IT professional told Danger Room that Geren "missed the boat." "Secretary Geren correctly states the problem, but incorrectly states the answer," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity since he is not authorized to talk to the press.

Army Gains Valuable Insight From Network - Jennifer Cragg, AFPS

An integration network called L2I, now in its second year of operation, is giving officials at the Center for Army Lessons Learned valuable insight from their forward-deployed theater observers. L2I connects military and civilian analysts at across the Army and the other services. The analysts -- embedded in units conducting operations in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Philippines and at stateside units -- gather, analyze and disseminate lessons learned. “Since I’ve been the director, we’ve given seven Combat Action Badges and a Purple Heart to our theater observers,” Army Col. Steven Mains, director of the Center for Army Lessons Learned, told online journalists and bloggers in a teleconference yesterday. The theater observers, or analysts, go on patrols with soldiers and try to look at the broad issues they face -- not necessarily what a single company is facing, Mains explained. They share those issues to get the ball rolling in determining lessons that can be learned. “We’ve put together a network of people that are supported by processes and technology,” the colonel said. “And those people are out at … every unit, both deployed and not deployed, as well as all of the Army centers and schools.”

Wounded Warriors, Empty Promises - New York Times editorial

The bad news about the Army’s treatment of wounded soldiers keeps coming. The generals keep apologizing and insisting that things are getting better, but they are not. The latest low moment for Army brass came on Tuesday in Washington, where a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing to examine the sorry state of the Army Medical Action Plan. That’s the plan to prevent the kind of systematic neglect and mistreatment exposed by The Washington Post last year at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Resistance To Change Building on Capital Hill - Galrahn, Information Dissemination

The resistance movement against the cancellation of the DDG-1000 on Capital Hill is gathering itself for the fight ahead. Lets be clear, this is a lobby driven movement, there is nothing strategic about it from a maritime strategy perspective, rather from an industrial strategy perspective. That isn't a bad thing, the industry is critical to the success of the future Navy, but lets not confuse what is happening as anything other than Defense Industry giving some key politicians some directions.

Going Native - Kip, Abu Muqawama

Advisors are in the business of developing a foreign force. This is done in order to further US interests in the region. Advisors are not commanders. Successful advising is a factor of influence and the raw capabilities of the force with which the advisor is assigned. Because the advisor does not command the security forces with which he works, his success is based on his ability to build rapport with his counterpart, demonstrate his credibility as an advisor worth being listened to, and provide value in terms of access to resources otherwise unavailable to his counterpart. Without rapport, the enterprise fails, and the advisor cannot demonstrate the overlap in US and foreign force interest required for success. Oftentimes, a strict adherence to US military standards of appearance is detrimental to the development of rapport--something long ago recognized by US Special Forces. In Afghanistan, for instance, a lack of facial hair is generally associated with youth, inexperience, Communism, and homosexuality, yet conventional advisors are prohibited from growing beards. Advisors in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been oft-chastised by the advisor commands for uniform modifications meant to build rapport such as wearing of the Afghan or Iraqi flag opposite their US flag or wearing other elements of local dress. These advisors are criticized as having "gone native."

Asymmetric Warfare - Sam Liles, The Selil Blog

There is an almost injudicious love of science by the military academic community. Within the deep reaches of the Pentagon and the service schools and academies there is an intellectual reach and lust for the trapping of academia. I think it is quite wonderful. Do not think that I am simply talking about using the terms and lexicon of academia. No, I personally believe that the military has a desire to extend the flexibility thinking strategies of academia into their environ where flexibility and mental calculation is much more than academic. It is simply survival. The question is will the military keep with the rigor, or slip into pseudo scientific morass where the intellectually challenged and failing epistemologist sink into oblivion? As I read the literature exiting as articles from the different journals and think tanks ran by the military I have been struck by an epiphany. Like a blinding flash of on target artillery I realized there is no formal language or research agenda for counterinsurgency.

Small Wars Past and Present - Will Hartley, Insurgency Research Group

A useful research resource worth being aware of is the lists of small wars past and present maintained by the USMC Small Wars Center of Excellence.

$1.2 Billion to Bolster War Surveillance - Thom Shanker, New York Times

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked Congress for the authority to shift more than $1 billion in Pentagon spending to rapidly increase the ability to provide surveillance to battlefield troops, officials said Friday. The request to reprogram $1.2 billion is the most significant step since Mr. Gates ordered the creation of a task force in May to press all of the armed services to urgently expand and improve intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the war zones. If approved, the money would pay for more than 50 new airplanes that would be designed to watch and listen over the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, providing the ability to bring full-motion video and electronic eavesdropping to the troops.

Which Future Should We Prepare For? - Westhawk, Westhawk

How should the US defense and intelligence organizations prepare for the future? This is obviously an immense question that receives the daily attention of many thousands of experienced minds. Step one might be to forecast what future the US should anticipate. Needless to say, that is a nearly impossible task, as Mr. Bruce Berkowitz, a long-time US intelligence and defense analyst, reminds us in this essay he wrote for FPRI.

The Cricketer's Handbook - Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent

After nearly seven years of costly strategic ignorance in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a coming handbook written mostly by a former top aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus seeks to instruct senior civilian policy-makers about the complexities of counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers takes the lessons learned by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and elevates them to the highest levels of national strategy. Counterinsurgency is defined in the text as "the politico-military techniques developed to neutralize... armed rebellion against constituted authority." The handbook is due to be published in November or December. A copy of its most recent draft was obtained by The Washington Independent. The handbook seeks to provide a framework for considering whether Washington should intervene in foreign countries' counterinsurgency operations, raising difficult questions about whether such nations deserve US support; under what conditions that support should occur, and whether success is possible at acceptable cost. No systematic approach to strategic-level questions in counterinsurgency currently exists for senior US government officials.

The Humble Car Bomb Changed the World - Robert Baer, The Times

It was a sunny afternoon on Beirut’s glamorous seafront in April 1983 and the world was about to change for ever. Old men stood fishing on the rocks opposite the American embassy. Women in high heels and sunglasses strolled along the boardwalk undeterred by the civil war and the honking traffic. Just before 1pm a green Mercedes carefully drove past the embassy, scouting the entrance, and 300 yards later flashed its lights at a waiting GMC flat-bed truck. The young man driving the Texas-built truck then slowly drove up to the embassy, accelerated the wrong way through the exit ramp, hit the entrance steps, bounced up into the lobby and exploded his bomb. It was a stunning assault using the deadliest weapon so far of the 21st century: the car bomb. It was also the first suicide car-bomb attack on a western target. What happened in that summer of 1983 in Beirut has come back to haunt us in Iraq and Afghanistan. In their decades of civil war, the Lebanese, an inventive people, refined the weapon and became the best car-bombers in the world. The bombs that go off every day in Baghdad, the very concept of the suicide driver, were developed on the streets of Beirut.

Schwartz Faces More Questions - Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times

The Bush administration's nominee to become the next head of the Air Force is facing trouble in the Senate and will undergo an unusual second round of closed-door questioning today. Air Force Gen. Norton A. Schwartz is being called before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a second classified session focused on testimony he gave after the initial invasion of Iraq, said military and congressional staff members. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before the committee in another secret session Tuesday evening, attempting to press the case for Schwartz.

Will Extra Cash Improve Readiness? - Winslow Wheeler, United Press International

Since early 2001, the U.S. Air Force has received more than $200 billion above and beyond what was then planned for it in the medium-term future. This $200 billion "plus-up" does not include any of the approximate $80 billion that the Air Force has received to support its operations in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Has this extra money been put to good use? Is today's Air Force any larger? Is its equipment inventory more modern? Is it more ready to fight?

Scolding Donald Rumsfeld - Tom Ricks, Washington Post

How does an Army chief of staff chew out his boss, the defense secretary? Gen. Eric K. Shinseki shows how it's done in this letter written to Donald H. Rumsfeld just before Shinseki stepped down in June 2003. During the run-up to the war, the general told Congress that more troops would be needed to secure Iraq, which earned him a famously public rebuke by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. Shinseki was said to still be angry about the dust-up when he retired. The general's letter may be more history than news at this point, but its criticism of the way Rumsfeld's office worked does shed some additional light on the development of the mess in Iraq. And Shinseki's comments are particularly interesting because he has maintained an almost total silence in the five years since his retirement. This may be the most we ever learn about his perspective.

British Computer Hacker Loses Appeal - Frances Gibb, The Times

Gary McKinnon stands accused of becoming the most accomplished computer hacker in history by crashing the United States army network, but claims only to have been pursuing a fascination with aliens. The 42-year-old unemployed systems analyst, who broke into US military computers from his bedroom in Wood Green, North London, faces at least ten years in a US jail. He has always claimed that he was seeking information on UFOs and aliens. He lost his final appeal against extradition yesterday after the law lords were told that he rejected a plea bargain in which he was offered a shorter prison sentence of three or four years in return for pleading guilty. The law lords dismissed Mr McKinnon’s claim that threats made against him by US prosecutors amounted to an abuse of process and refused to quash extradition procedings against him. Mr McKinnon admits accessing 97 US military and NASA computers. US prosecutors also allege that he shut down and rendered inoperable 300 computers at a US navy weapons station at a critical time, immediately after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Aircraft Carriers Are Crucial - Mackenzie Eaglen, Washington Post opinion

On May 22, a serious fire broke out on the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier George Washington as it sailed to relieve the forward-deployed Kitty Hawk in the western Pacific Ocean. It might take all summer to repair the ship, so the planned decommissioning of the Kitty Hawk is on hold. Instead, it's now one of 40 ships from the United States, Chile, Canada, South Korea, Australia and Japan taking part in this year's Rim of the Pacific exercise. In an age of guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency operations, many US officials appear content to overlook the importance of conventional weapons such as the aircraft carrier. That's a serious mistake. For any US president, the aircraft carrier embodies the ultimate crisis management tool. Continuously deployed throughout the globe, carrier-strike groups give our military unparalleled freedom of action to respond to a range of combat and non-combat missions.

Deserters Don't Rate Refugee Status - Rondi Adamson, CSM opinion

American military deserter Robin Long may well have reasons to think he should not serve in Iraq. That said, I was relieved to hear he had been deported from Canada – where he had lived since June 2005 – to the United States on July 15. The Boomer generation got its wish for a volunteer army after the draft of the Vietnam War. And that is a good thing, for myriad reasons. A volunteer military is more effective and professional, and it certainly makes the matter of deserters an open-and-shut case. Quaint notions of integrity, duty, and honor aside, cases such as Mr. Long's boil down to a simple contract matter, not one's opinion of a particular war. A volunteer army renders moot the idea that Canadians should provide a haven to those who wish to break their contract with the US military. One could be forgiven for concluding otherwise. Since 2004, US deserters have been trickling into Canada – today there are about 200 – to praise from aging Vietnam draft dodgers, the chattering classes, Canada's literati, and the overlap of the three. These sympathizers refer to the deserters as "resisters." A stroll through upscale Toronto neighborhoods isn't complete without seeing "War Resisters Welcome Here" stickers in the windows of homes far beyond the financial reach of most of the deserters. Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) has not been so welcoming.

Interagency Military Cooperation - Daniel Korski, United Press International

As the United States struggles to come to grips with these new challenges, it is saddled with a system of government inadequate to the task. As a new report by a nonpartisan commission states, the "US national security system cannot adequately protect America, its interests and its citizens." Led by one of the architects of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms, James R. Locher III, the Project on National Security Reform has prepared 100 case studies of interagency operations since 1947 to show that - whoever wins the presidential election in November - considerable reform will be required in the US government.

Multinational Students Study Civil Security at Marshall Center - AFPS

The George C. Marshall European Center, a German-American defense and security studies institute here, graduated the first class of its new course on trans-Atlantic civil security yesterday. The course takes an all-hazards approach to civil security as it looks at how nations can prevent, prepare for and manage pandemic disease, natural disasters and industrial accidents as well as terrorist attacks, Marshall Center officials said. Forty-two military and civilian emergency management officials from 25 countries completed the new three-week course. "For years, many nations lacked a formal framework for the concept of civil security," Peter Verga, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, said at the graduation ceremony. "The increased threat of terrorism and regularly occurring natural disasters in the US and around the world have given a renewed sense of urgency to this topic."

Scientist’s Suicide Linked to Inquiry - Shane and Lichtblau, New York Times

After four years pursuing one former Army scientist on a costly false trail, FBI agents investigating the deadly anthrax letters of 2001 finally zeroed in last year on a different suspect: another Army scientist from the same biodefense research center at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. Over the last 18 months, even as the government battled a lawsuit filed by the first scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, investigators built a case against the second one, Bruce E. Ivins, a highly respected microbiologist who had worked for many years to design a better anthrax vaccine. Last weekend, after learning that federal prosecutors were preparing to indict him on murder charges, Dr. Ivins, a 62-year-old father of two, took an overdose of Tylenol with codeine. He died in a Frederick hospital on Tuesday, leaving behind a grieving family and uncertainty about whether the anthrax mystery had finally been solved.

Anthrax Suspect was 'Homicidal' - Seper and LoBianco, Washington Times

An Army microbiologist who committed suicide this week after being identified as a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks had been committed to a mental hospital last month after a psychiatrist described him as homicidal and sociopathic, court records show. Bruce E. Ivins, 62, of Frederick, Md., who had been developing vaccines against anthrax and had worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick for the past 35 years, was committed to Sheppard Pratt Hospital in the Baltimore area on July 10 after making "threats of homicidal intent," according to a peace order signed July 24 in Frederick County District Court.

Justice Department Won't Comment - Richard Schmitt, Los Angeles Times

The Justice Department said Friday it had made "substantial progress" in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, but officials declined to comment on a report in The Times that the department was about to bring the first criminal charges for the attacks against a Maryland man who died this week. The Times reported Friday that a top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 attacks had died in Maryland from an apparent suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him. Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who had long worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick in Maryland, had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation. His name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case.

Anthrax: Still No Answers - New York Post editorial

Nearly seven years after post-9/11 an thrax attacks terrorized the nation, killing five and sickening 17 - including three at The Post - Americans still have no clue what happened. It's not clear the FBI does, either - notwithstanding reports yesterday of plans to indict a scientist in the case who turned up dead this week. It's a thoroughly unacceptable situation. And it needs to be rectified - now. Indeed, the stunning suicide of Bruce Ivins, a top biodefense researcher - who reportedly faced a looming indictment in connection with the attacks - raises more questions than answers.

Chairman Calls Shorter Deployments Step in Right Direction - AFPS

The Army officially returns to 12-month deployments, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it’s a huge step in the right direction for the armed forces and their families. “I think it was a timely decision, a needed decision,” Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said in an interview with the Pentagon Channel, “and it’ll have a very positive impact on our mission as well as our overall force and their families.” In announcing the change yesterday, President Bush noted that July was the third straight month of reduced violence in Iraq. As part of the success policy, he said, starting today, soldiers deploying to Iraq will serve 12-month tours rather than 15. “It’s a significant step, because 15-month deployments took an extraordinary toll,” Mullen said. “So to bring that back to 12 months for every active duty Army unit, I think, is a huge step in the right direction.”

Senate Confirms Air Force Generals for Key Positions - AFPS

The Senate confirmed two Air Force generals nominated by President Bush for key positions. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, commander of US Transportation Command, will be Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Duncan J. McNabb, Air Force vice chief of staff, will succeed Schwartz as TransCom commander. Schwartz will succeed Gen. T. Michael Moseley as the Air Force’s top officer. Moseley stepped down in June in the wake of a report critical of the Air Force’s handling of its nuclear weapons program.

Military's Social Science Grants Raise Alarm - Maria Glod, Washington Post

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is calling on "eggheads" to help the military unravel questions about the recruitment of terrorists, the resurgence of the Taliban and messages delivered in militant Muslim religious schools. Many eggheads are wary. The Pentagon's $50 million Minerva Research Initiative, named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and warriors, will fund social science research deemed crucial to national security. Initial proposals were due July 25, and the first grants are expected to be awarded by year's end. But the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which includes professors from American and George Mason universities, said dependence on Pentagon funding could make universities an "instrument rather than a critic of war-making."

The Painful Images of War - Clark Hoyt, New York Times opinion

Two hundred twenty-one American soldiers and Marines have been killed in Iraq this year, but until eight days ago, The Times had not published a photo of one of their bodies. The picture The Times did publish on July 26, of a room full of death after a suicide bombing in June, with a marine in the foreground, his face covered and his uniform riddled with tiny shrapnel holes, accompanied a front-page article about how few such images there are. But before war photographs pass into history, they are news and records of events that are still raw for everyone involved - soldiers, families and journalists. The experiences of The Times in recent years with searing pictures of injury and, in one case, imminent death, suggest how emotional, complicated and unpredictable the issues can be.

Anthrax Dryer a Key To Probe - Washington Post

Bruce E. Ivins, the government's leading suspect in the 2001 anthrax killings, borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores, according to sources briefed on the case. Ivins's possession of the drying device, known as a lyopholizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to US senators and news organizations. The device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked as a scientist, employees at the base said.

Center Merges Counterintelligence, Human Intelligence Functions - AFPS

A new center here will combine Defense counterintelligence and human intelligence efforts at the national level, Defense Intelligence Agency officials said here yesterday. The Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center will take over some of the duties of DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity, but also much more, said Mike Pick, chief of the Counterintelligence Human Intelligence Enterprise Management Office at the agency. The center assumes the responsibilities of the Counterintelligence Field Activity. Army Maj. Gen. Theodore Nicholas is the center’s director, reporting directly to the DIA director. This integration reflects the importance that DoD places on both human intelligence and counterintelligence, agency officials said. Human intelligence and counterintelligence are interrelated and complementary disciplines, Pick said. But the new center, which opened Aug. 4, will work to ensure the separate character of both missions is protected.

FBI Reveals Evidence Against Army Scientist - Cindy Saine, VOA

The Justice Department has shed some light on the evidence it has against the prime suspect in the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, a US Army scientist who killed himself last week. At a news conference Wednesday, US officials said the scientist, Bruce Ivins, had custody of a large flask of highly purified anthrax spores that were found to be identical to the poison that killed five people and left 17 injured. The US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey Taylor, told a roomful of reporters gathered in Washington that the evidence in dozens of newly unsealed court documents all points to one conclusion. "Based upon the totality of the evidence we had gathered against him, we are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks," said Jeffrey Taylor.

Documents List Essential Clues - Joby Warrick, Washington Post

The key clues that led the FBI to Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins ranged from the infinitesimally small - tiny bits of genetic coding on a single anthrax spore - to items as ordinary as a time stamp on a building security pass. The evidence trail also included small imperfections on a printed envelope and specks of fiber on cellophane tape. It documented Ivins's odd working hours during early fall of 2001 and his late-night visits to his Frederick lab around the time the deadly anthrax letters were mailed. Each piece of evidence was circumstantial on its face. Yet together they made what Justice Department officials called a compelling case, pointing to a solitary suspect who took his own life last week as indictments were being prepared against him.

Documents Tie Scientist to Anthrax Attack - Shane and Lichtblau, New York Times

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday outlined a pattern of bizarre and deceptive conduct by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist who killed himself last week, presenting a sweeping but circumstantial case that he was solely responsible for mailing the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001. After nearly seven years of a troubled investigation, officials of the FBI. and the Justice Department declared that the case had been solved. Jeffrey A. Taylor, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the authorities believed “that based on the evidence we had collected, we could prove his guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.” Some survivors of the attacks and members of Congress said they were persuaded by the evidence against Dr. Ivins, laid out in hundreds of pages of applications for search warrants unsealed for the first time. But some independent scientists, friends and colleagues of Dr. Ivins remained skeptical, noting that officials admitted that more than 100 people had access to the supply of anthrax that matched the powder in the letters.

The Case Against Bruce Ivins - Washington Post editorial

The circumstantial evidence against Bruce E. Ivins appears overwhelming. Yesterday, the government identified the microbiologist, who took his own life last week, as the government's lone suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and seriously sickened 17 others. In previously sealed affidavits and in public statements, law enforcement officials paint Mr. Ivins as a deeply disturbed man with bizarre habits, including a proclivity for false identities and inexplicably long drives to nowhere. The government suggests that he had a motive for the crime: The anthrax vaccine program he was working on was going badly, and an anthrax attack could re-energize efforts to plow ahead, according to US Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor. It says he had opportunity: Mr. Ivins apparently spent many late nights and weekend hours alone at his Fort Detrick Army lab just before the deadly anthrax letters were mailed in 2001; he had not kept such hours before and did not do so again, according to affidavits.

World's Economy Needs Strong Navy - Donald Winter, Washington Times opinion

America is a nation at war, and our Navy and Marine Corps are focused on achieving victory in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever terrorist enemies may be found. Given this focus, we must examine the full range of implications of today's war. Our nation's maritime strategy reaffirms the use of seapower to influence actions and activities at sea and ashore, and adds to the core applications of naval warfare. Where tensions are high or where there is a need to demonstrate a commitment to security, we will aggregate forces to limit conflict or deter major war. Our maritime forces will also be positioned and tailored to support humanitarian operations, counterpiracy efforts, and the training of partner nations. These new core capabilities move us to adopt persistent global presence as a key tenet of our strategy. The increasing desire for presence is one of the driving factors in decisions on fleet size and fleet composition. I remain concerned that the value of presence is underappreciated. The world is a far more connected and interdependent globe today than it was in years past. Nations have moved away from the idea that they must have economic self-sufficiency and have largely recognized the value of trade.

Anthrax Case Raises Security Doubt - Hernandez and Rucker, Washington Post

Revelations about anthrax scientist Bruce E. Ivins's mental instability have exposed what congressional leaders and security experts call startling gaps in how the federal government safeguards its most dangerous biological materials, even as the number of bioscience laboratories has grown rapidly since the 2001 terror attacks. An estimated 14,000 scientists and technicians at about 400 institutions have clearances to access viruses and bacteria such as the Bacillus anthracis used in the anthrax attacks, but security procedures vary by facility, and oversight of the labs is spread across multiple government agencies.

FBI Will Analyze Ivins' Computers - Ben Conery, Washington Times

A federal judge on Thursday signed search warrants allowing FBI agents to analyze two computers that Army microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins used July 24, just days before he killed himself. According to an affidavit seeking the warrants, Mr. Ivins said during a group therapy session on July 9 that he knew federal investigators were closing in on him in their probe into the 2001 anthrax attacks. "He said he was not going to face the death penalty, but instead planned to kill co-workers and other individuals who had wronged him," the affidavit stated. "He said he had a bullet-proof vest, and a list of co-workers, and added that he was going to obtain a Glock firearm from his son within the next day, because he knew federal agents are watching him and he could not obtain a weapon on his own."

Helper to Suspect in Anthrax Case - Swarns and Lipton, New York Times

In December 2002, federal investigators scoured an icy pond on a snow-covered mountain near Frederick, Md., hunting for clues that would lead to the anthrax killer. As they worked, the Army microbiologist now believed to be responsible for the five deaths stood calmly in their midst, chatting, smiling and watching. Bruce E. Ivins, the scientist, mingled with the investigators in a military tent as a Red Cross volunteer, serving coffee, doughnuts and chocolate bars to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of the search team. Law enforcement officials hustled him away after they realized he was an anthrax researcher who could compromise the investigation, according to Red Cross volunteers who were there. Dr. Ivins seemed embarrassed by it all, prompting his friends to tease him about the incident.

Anthrax Suspect Away On Key Day - Johnson and Warrick, Washington Post

Anthrax attack suspect Bruce E. Ivins took several hours of administrative leave from his Fort Detrick, Md., laboratory on a critical day in September 2001 when the first batch of deadly letters was dropped in a New Jersey mailbox, government sources briefed on the case said yesterday. The gap recorded on his time sheet offered investigators a key clue into how he could have pulled off an elaborate crime that involved carrying letters packed with lethal powder to a distant location for mailing, the sources said.

Pentagon Force Protection Agency Braces for Tourists - AFPS

The Pentagon is the most obvious symbol of the world’s most powerful military. The building is the home of the National Military Command Center. And soon it will be a tourist destination. While there are already tours of the building, the Pentagon will become a major destination for visitors to Washington after the dedication of the Pentagon September 11th Memorial next month. Officials expect between 45,000 and 60,000 people to visit the site Sept. 11, with up to 2 million people visiting the site in a year. The Pentagon Force Protection Agency must ensure the important work in the building continues undisturbed, but they also must ensure the American people’s ability to visit the site. “The Pentagon reservation is a unique place, and the fact that we’re going to have a tourist attraction here has been a challenge for us,” said Steven E. Calvery, the director of the agency. “The Pentagon reservation is not like the (National) Mall in Washington, where it’s designed for visitors. We’re just not designed that way.” The memorial will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It commemorates the 184 people who were killed when terrorists flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the building.

More Intel, Surveillance, Recon Assets Set for Central Command - AFPS

Congressional defense committees have approved a request to reprogram $1.2 billion so the Defense Department can beef up intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in US Central Command, DoD officials said. The reprogramming comes from fiscal 2008 funds and will buy 21 manned ISR aircraft and improve unmanned aerial vehicle capabilities in the theater, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said yesterday. “It will assist our efforts to grow the UAV capability in platforms such as Shadow, Predator, Reaper, Raven and Hunter,” Whitman said. “It will allow us to buy additional Scan Eagle detachments.” The reprogramming comes from recommendations of a task force set up at the direction of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to ensure the department was doing everything it could to deploy additional ISR capabilities to forces in combat. As operations in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to evolve, battlefield commanders have said the need for pervasive ISR has never been higher. About 80 percent of the US military’s ISR assets already are deployed to the US Central Command area of operations, most in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Make Diplomacy, Not War - Nicholas Kristof, New York Times opinion

Iraq and Afghanistan are the messes getting attention today, but they are only symptoms of a much broader cancer in American foreign policy. In short, the United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems. Incredibly, the most eloquent spokesman for more balance between “hard power” and “soft power” is Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Mr. Gates, who is superb in repairing the catastrophe left behind by Donald Rumsfeld, has given a series of astonishing speeches in which he calls for more resources for the State Department and aid agencies. “One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win,” Mr. Gates said. He noted that the entire American diplomatic corps - about 6,500 people - is less than the staffing of a single aircraft carrier group, yet Congress isn’t interested in paying for a larger Foreign Service.

The Pentagon's New Strategy - William Hartung, Boston Globe opinion

At first glance, the new national defense strategy released by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently looks like a new start, with much talk of working with allies and - heaven forbid - even other US government agencies. Gates comes across as the "anti-Rumsfeld," replacing his predecessor's bluster with quiet diplomacy, and an overreliance on military force with a more pragmatic, balanced approach to security. The new strategy document reflects these differences. This is not the first time that Gates has embraced the themes set out in the new strategy document. In a speech this year at Kansas State University, he called for substantial increases in spending for the State Department, pointing out that there are fewer professional diplomats in the Foreign Service than there are personnel on an average aircraft carrier task force (of which the United States has 12). But lest his audience think he had truly gone wobbly, Gates also stressed that he did not want these new funds to come at the expense of growing Pentagon budgets. The defense secretary seems to want to have it both ways.

Stop the Slide,' Says New Air Force Chief - Josh White, Washington Post

Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, who began his tenure as the 19th Air Force chief of staff yesterday, has taken a frank view of the service's need to address recent failures concerning the security of the US nuclear arsenal and acquisitions practices, telling senior leaders in briefings that they need to "stop the slide." In two PowerPoint documents used in recent briefings, Schwartz emphasized the need for the Air Force to recapture "top-to-bottom excellence in the nuclear mission," restore "credibility on Capitol Hill one member (and staff) at a time," and instill "a compliance culture in key disciplines" such as nuclear, aircraft and missile maintenance and acquisition. Drafts of the internal documents were obtained by The Washington Post and were verified by the Air Force yesterday. Schwartz has set his sights on restoring the service's credibility after a series of security and corruption problems that have marred its reputation in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

New Air Force Leaders Pledge to ‘Reinvigorate’ Service - AFPS

Newly sworn-in Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz today pledged to “reinvigorate” his service’s acquisition woes and mishandling of nuclear weapons. Schwartz, who was sworn in as chief of staff earlier today, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference that the service is fundamentally sound. “It doesn't mean we're perfect,” he said. “And we certainly have work to do, things to fix, fences to mend.” But the Air Force being able to ship 2,000 Georgian soldiers from Baghdad home to Tbilisi this past weekend demonstrated that “we know how to operate, and we continue to support the joint team in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Precision and reliability are the Air Force standard regardless of job or specialty, Schwartz said. “We will return the vigor and the rigor to all the processes and missions … for which we have been entrusted,” he added. The general said the service will “work with a vengeance” to fix areas that are substandard. “And the United States Air Force will remain the finest air force on the planet,” he said. Schwartz shared the dais with Acting Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley. The secretary, who is in his second stint as acting secretary, said he and the general have several issues to address including the nuclear enterprise; care for wounded warriors; the service’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance posture; the acquisition process; and modernization and recapitalization. Still, the Air Force’s main priority, is “our continued support for the global war on terror,” he said.

Photography as a Weapon - Errol Morris, New York Times opinion

As almost everyone knows by now, various major daily newspaper published, on July 10, a photograph of four Iranian missiles streaking heavenward; then Little Green Footballs (significantly, a blog and not a daily newspaper) provided evidence that the photograph had been faked. Later, many of those same papers published a Whitman’s sampler of retractions and apologies. For me it raised a series of questions about images. Do they provide illustration of a text or an idea of evidence of some underlying reality or both? And if they are evidence, don’t we have to know that the evidence is reliable, that it can be trusted?

Civil Affairs Sailors Work to Improve Humanitarian Effort Outcomes - AFPS

The Navy’s budding civil affairs force will help sustain US military humanitarian efforts in developing countries, the force’s commander told online journalists and bloggers in an Aug. 8 teleconference. Many past humanitarian missions were completed with little thought to how the country would maintain the project, Navy Capt. Robert S. McKenna, commander of the Maritime Civil Affairs Group, explained. For example, he said, a school would be built without attention to who would attend the school, who would teach, or where the budget for maintenance and teaching materials would come from. “So now,” McKenna said, “instead of doing this in an ad hoc nature, we’re building a force that understands civil affairs and understands effects-based operations.” McKenna explained that the Maritime Civil Affairs Group, which was established in July 2006, spent the past two years creating a training program to develop civil affairs teams. Since the Navy never had a civil affairs force, he said, officials solicited the assistance of the Army to craft the six-month course.

Critical Pick: Secretary of State - John Hughes, Christian Science Monitor opinion

As the party conventions draw near, there has been a flurry of media speculation about the McCain and Obama choices for vice president. Yet an arguably more important choice is the next secretary of State. For the most part, the vice presidency is a kind of understudy-in-waiting job, charged with a few ceremonial chores. To be sure, Dick Cheney has wielded considerable influence and power behind the scenes as VP. But it is doubtful whether either Senator McCain's or Senator Obama's No. 2 would exert the same kind of authority. Mr. McCain is a confident practitioner of politics and foreign policy. Mr. Obama is a superstar who keeps his advisers under tight control. Neither man will seek a VP likely to upstage him. The world the new president will confront is a restless one. India and China are ascendant. Russia, as we have seen recently in Georgia, seeks renewed territorial influence. Islamic lands simmer. Iran threatens. That's why the secretary of State - the individual who has the president's ear on foreign policy, and who implements it - is so important to the next administration.

US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

Offensive On Counterintelligence - Walter Pincus, Washington Post

The Defense Intelligence Agency's newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is going to have an office authorized for the first time to carry out "strategic offensive counterintelligence operations," according to Mike Pick, who will direct the program. Such covert offensive operations are carried out at home and abroad against people known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers or connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities - but not against U.S. citizens, said Toby Sullivan, director of counterintelligence for James R. Clapper Jr., the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Army's Deficit of Majors - Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post

The Army's growth plans and the demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are contributing to a shortfall of thousands of majors, critical mid-level officers whose ranks are not expected to be replenished for five years, according to Army data and a recent officers survey. Majors plan and direct day-to-day military operations for Army battalions, the units primarily responsible for waging the counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Throughout the Army, majors fill key roles as senior staff members, putting together war plans, managing personnel and coordinating logistics. The gap in majors represents about half of the Army's current shortage of more than 4,000 officers, and officials say there are no easy solutions to the deficit. "We need more officers, and we are pulling every lever we can," said Col. Paul Aswell, chief of the Army's personnel division for officers.

FBI Elaborates on Anthrax Case - Johnson and Joby Warrick, Washington Post

FBI officials attempted to bolster their case against researcher Bruce E. Ivins yesterday by presenting experts who said that a lone scientist working for three to seven days with readily available equipment could have produced the lethal spores used in the 2001 anthrax mailings. Investigators reverse-engineered the deadly material sent to Senate offices and media organizations and concluded that a single person could have manufactured and dried it, said James P. Burans, director of the National Bioforensics Analysis Center. Yet bureau officials and scientific experts acknowledged that they have not resolved all the intricacies of the bacterial powder that killed five people, sickened 17 and set off a national panic after it showed up in the US mail at various locations along the East Coast after the Sept. 11 attacks.

FBI Presents Anthrax Details - Lichtblau and Ware, New York Times

Federal Bureau of Investigation officials on Monday laid out their most detailed scientific case to date against Bruce E. Ivins, the military scientist accused of being the anthrax killer, but they acknowledged that the many mysteries of the case meant an air of uncertainty would always surround it. “I don’t think we’re ever going to put the suspicions to bed,” said Vahid Majidi, head of the FBI’s weapons of mass destruction division. “There’s always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll.” At a two-hour briefing for reporters, Dr. Majidi was joined by seven other leading scientists from inside and outside the bureau. They discussed in intricate detail the halting scientific path that led them from two main samples of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, to four genetic mutations unique to the samples, to 100 scientists in the United States who had access to that particular strain, and ultimately to Dr. Ivins.

Navy to Seek Third Stealth Destroyer - Associated Press

The Navy has reversed course and decided to push for construction of a third stealth destroyer, Sen. Susan Collins said Monday. It had said last month that it would scrap the Zumwalt destroyer program after the first two were built. The DDG-1000 warship has massive firepower but is costly. The Navy said then that it will build more of the current-generation DDG-51, or Arleigh Burke, destroyers.

Irregular Warfare Capabilities Remain Priority for DoD - AFPS

Diminishing the threat from violent extremism is the US military’s top priority, but not its only priority, a top Defense Department policy official said Aug. 15. The 2008 National Defense Strategy outlines a balanced set of policy objectives for the military, but does place a clear emphasis on keeping up the fight against extremism, Dr. Thomas Mahnken, deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning, said during a call with military bloggers. The strategy document, released publicly by the Department of Defense on July 31, outlines how DoD supports the president’s National Security Strategy and informs the National Military Strategy and other subordinate strategy documents. It builds on lessons learned and insights from previous operations and strategic reviews. This is the first update since March 2005. “Secretary Gates has said on any number of occasions that [the war against extremism] is the war that we are fighting now, and that whatever else we plan for and whatever else we do, we need to succeed in the war that we're fighting now,” Mahnken said.

COUNTERINSURGENCY

Military Review has posted its latest special edition - Counterinsuregency Reader II. In October 2006, the US Army Combined Arms Center published a volume of selected articles in conjunction with the release and distribution of the Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency. Subsequently, numerous articles have been written exploring other dimensions of counterinsurgency not treated, or not well understood, when the first volume was published. These articles reflect both the vastly expanded range of knowledge and experience that US land forces have obtained as well as the painful cost of such lessons with regard to fighting and defeating insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Many outline the first-hand lessons learned in the current operational environment. As the Intellectual Center of the Army, the Combined Arms Center recognizes the importance of sharing these first-hand documents. The Counterinsurgency Center (COIN Center) and editors of Military Review have designed this second collection to complement the recently released FM 3-0, Operations and the soon to be released Counterinsurgency Handbook (produced by the COIN Center); FM 3-24.2, Counterinsurgency Tactics; FM 3-07, Stability Operations; and FM 3-28, Civil Support. While doctrinal field manuals lay out principles and supporting theory for dealing with the asymmetric aspects of warfare inherent in insurgency conflicts, these articles are intended to provide specific lessons and observations drawn from operations in the field.

E-mail RUMINT - No one at SWJ (all three of us) subscribes to Harper's - but we did get this short tip from someone who is "HTT-smart" - you might find Steve Featherstone's thoughtful article "[i]Human Quicksand" of interest. It is on the US Army, Culture and Human Terrain Teams, with emphasis on Afghanistan. The article can be found in September's issue of Harper's Magazine.[/i]

Another e-mail alert - COIN Revisited: Lessons of the Classical Literature on Counterinsurgency and Its Applicability to the Afghan Hybrid Insurgency by Harald Havall and published by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. This report addresses the origin of counterinsurgency via studying some of the ‘classical literature’ (the literature on the insurgencies and the ‘revolutionary wars’ of the mid-20th century) and provides analysis of current conflict in Afghanistan in light of these findings. Also check out NUPI's Current Publications page for additional papers, articles and books concerning Small Wars items of interest.

SWC member Tom Odom provides a link to In Contact! Case Studies from the Long War, Volume I. In Contact!, produced by the US Army's Combat Studies Institute, is a companion to CSI’s campaign histories of Operation Iraqi Freedom - On Point (2004), On Point II (2008), and a history of Operation Enduring Freedom (to be released).

On the US Army, counterinsurgency and adapting to war in the 21st century - Barnaby Phillips, Al Jazeera's Europe correspondent, files his third report on a recent US visit in a series AJ calls "American Challenge". The article, not very deep or thought-provoking for regular SWJ readers, covers training at the National Training Center, education at Ft. Leavenworth, lowering standards to meet Army manpower requirements, new technology to meet modern challenges and the cost of all of the above.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Speaking of manpower, DoD released its latest numbers on National Guard (In Federal Status) and Reserve Activated yesterday. The tally - the Air Force and Navy announced an increase, while the Army and Marine Corps announced a decrease. The Coast Guard number remained unchanged. The net collective result is 710 fewer reservists activated than last week. A cumulative roster of all National Guard and Reserve personnel who are currently activated can be found here.

Turning to the Navy - CSIS recently released a report entitled Abandon Ships: The Costly Illusion of Unaffordable Transformation. Galrahn at Information Dissemination wasn't much impressed.

I don't want to spend much time on this, but I do not find the new CSIS report compelling, and do not believe Dr. Cordesman had much involvement with it. It is a mess... Why do I have a problem with this report? Because it fails to produce even a single original idea, and essentially stole every thought written down from one of those four men.

But that isn't the only reason. There are factual errors too, for example, what year was the USS Cole attacked? Check the report, "Draft" is appropriate. In the end the report spends 20 pages complaining about the problems with shipbuilding, actually emphasizes the new CVN program (the only evolutionary program) as the centerpiece of the problem, then calls for people to be fired but is too chicken "expletive deleted" to name names, instead implying Winter and Roughead should be fired. Well that is just really damn stupid, the two guys trying to fix shipbuilding problems by canceling or truncating over budget shipbuilding plans that are, even according to the report, unrealistic... should take the fall? What a load of crap.

I'm left underwhelmed...

More at CDR Salamnder.

EVENTS OF INTEREST

WE ARE SOLDIERS STILL

Jules Crittenden at Forward Movement:

“We Are Soldiers Still,” the follow-on to Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway’s Ia Drang epic, is now out. Joe told me a couple of months ago I get a nod in credits for calling attention to Sgt. John Eade’s remarkable story of fighting and surviving when the rest of his platoon had been killed around him...

MORE BOOKS

Baghdad at Sunrise - Peter Mansoor

This compelling book presents an unparalleled record of what happened after US forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003.

The Strongest Tribe - Bing West

From a universally respected combat journalist, a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around–and the choice now facing America.

Tell Me How This Ends - Linda Robinson

After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war.

The Heritage Foundation just released a study on military demographics entitled Who Serves in the US Military? The Demographics of Enlisted Troops and Officers. The study, authored by Shanea Watkins, Ph.D. and James Sherk, expands on previous studies by using an improved methodology to study the demographic characteristics of newly commissioned officers and personnel who enlisted in 2006 and 2007. Here are some of the findings:

- US military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officers who do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

- Members of the all-volunteer military are sig­nificantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods.

- American soldiers are more educated than their peers.

- Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service.

- Similar to previous Heritage Foundation reports on the regional representation of troops, we find that the strong Southern military tradi­tion continues with the 2006 and 2007 enlisted recruits. The South accounts for more than 40 percent of new enlistees—a proportional over­representation.

- The Northeast is underrepresented in the enlisted population, while the Midwest and West are roughly proportionally represented.

Study conclusion: The men and women who serve in America’s all-volunteer military do not come disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds. Instead, the opposite is true. Both active-duty enlisted troops and officers come disproportionately from high-income neighborhoods - a trend that has increased since 9/11.

America’s troops are highly educated. Enlisted recruits have above-average intelligence and are far more likely than their civilian peers to have a high school degree. Nearly all of the officer corps has at least a four-year college education - far greater than the rate in the civilian population. The racial composition of the military is similar to that of the civilian population, although whites and blacks are slightly overrepresented among enlisted recruits.

IRREGULAR WARFARE

Carlo Munoz of Inside Defense (subscription required) reports a Department of Defense draft guidance on Irregular Warfare is under “senior-level review” with the final version scheduled for a late September release. Issues cited in the article include:

… US Special Operations Command, with support from US Joint Forces Command, is also in the midst of prepping a new capabilities-based assessment of its irregular warfare strategy…

The new DOD irregular warfare directive comprises the fields of counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency and stability operations under a single banner. But critics argue stability operations should not be included and would best be handled separately…

Rather than developing specific capability requirements, such as language proficiency or cultural awareness, for each of the IW discipline subsets, Pentagon decision-makers opted to consolidate those subset requirements into an overarching IW directive…

On the other hand… some elements of certain warfighting capabilities - related either to stability operations, COIN or counterterrorism -- might not fit under the IW banner. To that end, the official added it is not DOD's intent to shoehorn those capability requirements into the pending guidance…

For additional background on IW see the Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept. The stated purpose of the IW JOC is to describe how future joint force commanders will accomplish strategic objectives through the conduct of protracted IW on a global or regional scale. It identifies capabilities and capacities required to successfully prosecute IW. Many of the ideas advocated in this JOC are drawn from best practices of current conflicts and history.

EVENTS OF INTEREST

Is the US Army Ready for Conventional War? - Gian Gentile, Christian Science Monitor opinion

Images of Georgian infantry moving under fire and Russian tanks on the attack show that the days of like armies fighting one another on battlefields are far from over.

What does this mean for the US Army? As it considers its role after Iraq, should it be restructured for war and conflict along the lines of counterinsurgency and nation-building, or toward conventional fighting as represented by the Georgian war?

Armies trained to fight conventional warfare can quickly and effectively shift to counterinsurgency and nation-building. Contrary to popular belief, the US Army proved this in Iraq.

Its lightning advance up to Baghdad in the spring of 2003 happened because it was a conventionally minded army, trained for fighting large battles.

If the Army had focused the majority of its time and resources prior to the Iraq war on counterinsurgency and nation-building, the march to Baghdad would have been much more costly in American lives and treasure.

Critics argue that because the Army did not prepare for counterinsurgency prior to the Iraq war, it fumbled for the first four years of the war until rescued by the surge in February 2007.

Not true, according to "On Point II," a Army history of the Iraq war by Donald Wright and Timothy Reece. In fact, according to this book, the US Army very quickly transitioned from the conventional fighting mode. By the end of 2003, the Army – which spent much of the 1980s and 1990s training to fight large battles – moved into the successful conduct of "full-spectrum" counterinsurgency and nation-building operations.

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Victory in Anbar - Wall Street Journal editorial

Two years ago, on September 11, 2006, the Washington Post stirred an election-year uproar with this chilling dispatch:

"The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the US military can do to improve the political and social situation there..."

But there was something we could do: Pursue a different counterinsurgency strategy and commit more troops. And on Monday, US forces formally handed control of a now largely peaceful Anbar to the Iraqi military. "We are in the last 10 yards of this terrible fight. The goal is very near," said Major-General John Kelly, commander of US forces in Anbar, in a ceremony with US, Iraqi and tribal officials. Very few in the American media even noticed this remarkable victory.

Yes, the stunning progress in Anbar owes a great deal to the Awakening Councils of Sunni tribesmen who broke with al Qaeda terrorists and allied with US forces. But those Sunni leaders would never have had the confidence to risk their lives in that way without knowing the US wasn't going to cut and run. The US committed some 4,000 additional troops to Anbar as part of the 2007 "surge," along with thousands more Iraqi troops.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

US Hands Over Anbar, Iraq's Once-deadliest Region - Tom Peter, Christian Science Monitor

The US military handed over control of Anbar Province Monday, marking a significant milestone in the Iraq war.

Anbar was the deadliest Iraqi province for US troops, with nearly 1 in every 3 Americans killed there. It was once the symbol of Sunni resistance, the base of operations for Al Qaeda, and home to two major US military offensives and the most intense urban combat of the war.

But in the past two years, Anbar has emerged as the symbol of a turnaround as Sunni sheikhs formed "Awakening Councils," ousted Al Qaeda, and created community police forces.

Anbar is the 11th of Iraq's 18 provinces to return to Iraqi control, but it is the first predominately Sunni province handed over.

While most praise the transition, some Iraqis are concerned that corrupt police and Al Qaeda remain a threat. "Now the major challenge is how to build on the victories and maintain the situation," says Sheikh Ali al-Hatem, one of the founders of the Awakening movement in Anbar. However, he is critical of the hand-over, saying that Iraqi and American politicians made a rushed decision. "The threat of Al Qaeda has not ended in Anbar," he says.

More at the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times and The Times.

US Military Will Transfer Control of Sunni Citizen Patrols to Iraqi Government - Erica Goode, New York Times

Come Oct. 1, the Iraqi government will take over responsibility for paying and directing the Sunni-dominated citizen patrols known as Awakening Councils that operate in and around Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials said Monday.

The transfer will involve 54,000 Awakening members who are now paid by the American military to guard neighborhoods or, in some cases, simply to refrain from attacking American and Iraqi forces.

Once the transfer takes place, the Iraqi government will have “full administrative control” of the Awakening cadres, said an American military official who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.

It was not clear whether the Iraqi government, which is dominated by Shiites, had given the Americans or the Awakening forces assurances about how long, or even whether, it would keep the patrols intact. Some senior Iraqi officials have expressed reservations about paying armed Sunni militias, which draw from the ranks of former insurgents.

Awakening members have complained in turn that the Iraqi government has been far too slow in making good on promises to bring them into the Iraqi security ranks.

More at The New York Times

The General's Dilemma - Steve Coll, The New Yorker

Early in 2007, when David Petraeus became Commanding General of United States and international forces in Iraq, he had in mind a strategy to manage the political pressures he would face because of the unpopularity of the war, then four years old, and of its author, George W. Bush. He pledged to be responsive to “both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue”—to his Commander-in-Chief in the White House, of course, but also to antiwar Democrats on Capitol Hill. Petraeus earned a doctoral degree at Princeton University in 1987; the title of his dissertation was “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam.” In thinking about how to cope with political divisions in the United States over Iraq, he was influenced, he told me recently, by Samuel Huntington’s 1957 book “The Soldier and the State,” which argues that civilian control over the military can best be achieved when uniformed officers regard themselves as impartial professionals. Petraeus is registered to vote as a Republican in New Hampshire—he once described himself to a friend as a northeastern Republican, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller—but he said that around 2002, after he became a two-star general, he stopped voting. As he departed for Baghdad, to oversee a “surge” deployment of additional American troops to Iraq, he sought, as he recalled it, “to try to avoid being pulled in one direction or another, to be in a sense used by one side or the other.” He added, “That’s very hard to do, because you become at some point sort of the face of the surge. So be it. You just have to deal with that.”

More at The New Yorker.

US CENTRAL COMMAND

Give Me More Aussies, Pleads General - Patrick Walters, The Australian

David Petraeus would like more Australians to work alongside him as he assumes overall command of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars next month.

General Petraeus said he had already asked Canberra to lend him several Australians. "I have already requested it. I need to be careful here," he said with a broad smile.

Talking to The Australian from his map-lined office in Baghdad, the four-star general said he wanted to thank Australian troops for their contribution to Iraq.

"We are privileged to have them with us," he said. "They have initiative. They have a great work ethic and they have a wonderful sense of humour.

"They don't hesitate to offer a view, even when not solicited.

He also said the ADF "got it" when it came to understanding the nature of counterinsurgency warfare.

More at The Australian.

BOOK REVIEW

With the Best Intentions - Adam Hochscild, New York Times

Freedom’s Battle is really two books that don’t quite fit together. The longer and better one is a lively narrative history of a string of European efforts to stop various massacres in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. In several short chapters before and after this story is a shorter and weaker book, in which Gary J. Bass argues for humanitarian military interventions as a tool of international justice today. The historical episodes, he claims, are “rare lights along an otherwise dark road” that show us how these might work. For me that road remains dark, for reasons I will come back to, but much of the history Bass unearths is fascinating and well told.

BOOKS

Baghdad at Sunrise - Peter Mansoor

This compelling book presents an unparalleled record of what happened after US forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003.

The Strongest Tribe - Bing West

From a universally respected combat journalist, a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around–and the choice now facing America.

Tell Me How This Ends - Linda Robinson

After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war.

We Are Soldiers Still - Joe Galloway

In their stunning follow-up to the classic bestseller We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway return to Vietnam and reflect on how the war changed them, their men, their enemies, and both countries - often with surprising results.

BOOK DISCUSSIONS / SIGNINGS

Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq by Linda Robinson. 10 September 2008, 4:30 PM - Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at SAIS, Washington, D.C. Details.

The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq by Bing West. 11 September 2008, 12:00 - 2:00 PM - Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters. Details.

EVENTS OF INTEREST