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Home Front: Politix

The Shinseki Myth

2008-12-15

The announcement that retired Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki will be President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of veterans affairs has energized one of the most enduring myths of the Bush presidency. Among the media coverage in recent days: Gen. Shinseki "clashed with the Bush administration on its Iraq war strategy" (Associated Press). In "questioning the Pentagon's Iraq war strategy" (The Post), Shinseki "warn[ed] that far more troops would be needed than the Pentagon had committed" (New York Times). For his candor, he was "vilified" (Boston Globe) by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Shinseki has a chance during his confirmation hearings to set the record straight: None of those statements is correct. The source of the Shinseki narrative was testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war. Shinseki and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan had this exchange: Levin: "General Shinseki, could you give us some idea as to the magnitude of the Army's force requirement for an occupation of Iraq following a successful completion of the war?" Shinseki: "In specific numbers, I would have to rely on combatant commanders' exact requirements. But I think --" Levin: "How about a range?" Shinseki: "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required." From this impromptu exchange, a legend has grown: Shinseki was a stalwart opponent of the "Rumsfeld" war plan. He voiced those concerns and, after being "snubbed" by Pentagon officials (Los Angeles Times), was forced from office (CBS radio affiliate WTOP-Washington). Here are some facts: First, Shinseki, as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, supported the war plan. The head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, and his planning staff presented their approach to the Joint Chiefs and their staffs during the development of the plan. There was ample opportunity for the chiefs to express concerns and propose alternatives. There is no record of Shinseki having objected. Shinseki also met with the commander in chief himself to discuss the plan. On at least one occasion at the White House, President Bush asked each member of the Joint Chiefs, including Shinseki, whether he believed the Iraq war plan was adequate to the objectives. Each said it was. Further, Shinseki was not forced from office. He retired on time in June 2003, with the full honors due a retiring chief of staff of the U.S. Army. Much has been made of the fact that the secretary of defense did not attend Shinseki's retirement. The retiree determines who is included in the ceremony. The secretary, when included, is there by invitation. For whatever reason, and with an explanation neither required nor sought, Shinseki did not ask the secretary to speak or to attend. But these elements are incidental to the central assertion -- that Shinseki was right about basic U.S. force levels needed in post-conflict Iraq. Even allowing that Shinseki was under pressure to respond to a U.S. senator after trying to avoid answering, his estimate turned out to be far from the number of forces actually employed. "Several hundred thousands of soldiers" suggests Shinseki believed 300,000 troops would be needed for post-conflict Iraq. As it happens, and Shinseki would have known this, as many as 400,000 troops were in the pipeline for use during major conflict operations. But nowhere near that number was used. After major conflict operations ended, the number that remained in country settled around 150,000 to 160,000 (about half of Shinseki's guesstimate). Ultimately, commanders brought troop levels down to about 135,000 on the belief that a relatively lighter U.S. footprint would minimize the perception of occupation. As the insurgency grew, and as Iraqi security forces grew in strength and capability, there was continual assessment and adjustment of the number of U.S. forces. In fact, at least twice before the January 2007 surge, force levels rose as high or nearly as high as the surge level of 165,000. At no time, even as a surge was being considered, did anyone recommend doubling U.S. forces to the "several hundred thousand" troops Shinseki said might be needed. That's fine; conflict is all about adjusting to conditions on the ground, and his comments were made without knowing those conditions. But the fact remains that the 2007 surge level of 165,000 was much closer to the range suggested by Franks, Gen. John Abizaid (then head of U.S. Central Command) and Gen. George Casey (the current Army chief of staff), 135,000 to 160,000, than to the 300,000 figure Shinseki provided Levin. Shinseki has remained silent about the clash that never was. Some interpret that as honorable; he does not want to comment on relations with his prior boss. To many others, though, his silence has been deafening. He has benefited immeasurably from it, even as Rumsfeld has been grossly maligned. Rumsfeld, too, has been quiet -- except for the times he defended Shinseki for having been put in a tough spot and forced to answer a question off the cuff during a congressional hearing. Eric Shinseki served his country with distinction and is on the cusp of having another opportunity to do so. He also has a chance to right an egregious wrong. During his confirmation hearings, he can acknowledge that he did indeed support the Iraq war plan; that he had many opportunities to express himself; and that he has no desire to play the role he has been assigned: hero in a legend that has little basis in fact. Lawrence Di Rita was special assistant to the secretary of defense from 2001 to 2006.

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Iraq

Bremer sez UK was weak-kneed over Sadr

2006-01-10

The British Government and Armed Forces were "weak kneed" and displayed "cold feet" over plans to arrest a radical Islamic cleric in Iraq, the former US administrator in Iraq claimed yesterday. Paul Bremer also turned his fire on organisations with a reputation for hawkishness, including the CIA, the US Marine Corps and the US chiefs of staff, who were berated for their timidity in refusing to arrest Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shia leader. His accusations came in a long-awaited memoir of his 13-month role as governor in Iraq from 2003-4, in which Mr Bremer also denies responsibility for widely derided decisions taken during the critical months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In My Year in Iraq, Mr Bremer suggests that the detention of Sadr on charges of murder in August 2003 were critical to the stability of Iraq. Mr Bremer's advisers together with the fledgling Iraqi judiciary backed the arrest. But the plan then ran into heavy military and political opposition. After accusing the CIA of offering President George W Bush a "near-hysterical" account of the risks posed by Sadr's seizure, Mr Bremer writes: "Now it was the turn of the British to get cold feet on the operation. "David Richmond [Britain's special representative in Iraq] told me the Basra riots had 'unsettled nerves' in London. They doubted we should allow the arrest to go forward." Mr Bremer said he responded furiously. "Now everyone has their ass covered in the operation except me - the US military, the CIA, the British military and now Her Majesty's Government." He e-mailed his wife to say that the British had "gone weak in the knees". According to Mr Bremer's military advisers in Baghdad, the US marines were furiously lobbying Washington to stop the arrest. American commanders believed Sadr's detention would provoke widespread unrest among the majority Shia population. Heavy fighting eventually erupted between American forces and Sadr's militia in 2003 in Baghdad and 2004 in Najaf. He was never arrested and ran in last month's Iraqi elections. Both Mr Bush and Tony Blair generally emerge with credit from the Bremer book, with both portrayed as knowledgeable and calm. But Mr Bremer accuses the Pentagon of "institutional inertia" and the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld of failing to grasp the significance of the insurgency or the need to crush it. Instead, he says, America's military leadership were desperate as early as 2003 to bring as many troops home as possible. During a round of interviews to publicise the book, Mr Bremer repeated his assertion that he had warned American political leaders that the occupying forces were badly under strength. The Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said yesterday: "Military commanders reaffirmed their belief that the level they had there was the proper level. The secretary relied on the judgment of the military commanders." Mr Bremer also rejected responsibility for the much criticised decision to disband Saddam's armed forces. "It wasn't me," he said, adding that the army had already disintegrated.

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Iraq

More Iraqi battalions taking the lead

2005-12-01

A growing number of Iraqi troop battalions -- nearly four dozen as of this week -- are playing lead roles in the fight against the insurgency, and American commanders have turned over more than two dozen U.S.-established bases to government control, officials said yesterday. Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S. command that is responsible for the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, said approximately 130 Iraqi army and special police battalions are fighting the insurgency, of which about 45 are rated as "in the lead," with varying degrees of reliance on U.S. support. The exact numbers are classified as secret, but the 45 figure is about five higher than the number given on Nov. 7 at a briefing by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who previously led the training mission. It is about 10 higher than the figure Gen. Petraeus offered at a Pentagon briefing on Oct. 5. An Iraqi battalion usually numbers between 700 and 800 soldiers. As another measure of progress, Col. Wellman said about 33 Iraqi security battalions are now in charge of their own "battle space," including parts of Baghdad. That figure was at 24 in late October. Col. Wellman said it stood at three in March. Also, American forces have pulled out of 30 "forward operating bases" inside Iraq, of which 16 have been transferred to Iraqi security forces. The most recent and widely publicized was a large base near Tikrit, which U.S. forces had used as a division headquarters since shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. At a Nov. 22 ceremony marking the Tikrit base transfer to Iraqi control, insurgents delivered a reminder of their resilience by firing a mortar nearby; the round failed to explode, and U.S. officials declared the turnover to be an important step in replacing U.S. forces with Iraqis. The Bush administration has been citing the Iraqi efforts as evidence that the Iraqis not only want more responsibility on the security front but are capable of handling it with less assistance from U.S. troops. The steps toward lessening the U.S. military role in Iraq come amid mounting political pressure on the Bush administration to reduce the American presence in the face of rising casualties and an unrelenting insurgency. There are now about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They have trained and equipped about 212,000 Iraqi security forces, including infantry, commandos, special police battalions and a variety of military support units. The figure is supposed to reach 230,000 by mid-December and top out at 325,000 by July 2007. Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the transfer of authority at formerly U.S.-controlled bases is an important part of the long-range plan for stabilizing the country. "As you continue to either close or turn over these bases, it's just self-evident that there would be some reduced need for the American presence in those areas," Mr. Di Rita said. The spokesman said no decisions on future troop levels were likely until after the Dec. 15 election of a new Iraqi government. He suggested, however, that signs point to reductions during the course of 2006, so long as the political process remains on track. Pentagon officials acknowledge that there are significant gaps in the Iraqis' ability to defend their own country, and they are unwilling to commit to any specific drawdown of U.S. forces next year, beyond the announced plan to pull back 28,000 troops who were added this fall for extra security during the elections. The remaining shortcomings range from the institutional (a lack of administrative and leadership support from the ministries of Defense and Interior) to the personal (a sometimes faintheartedness among Iraqi troops.) Some in Congress have expressed worry at what they see as sluggish progress in training Iraqi security forces, even as U.S. commanders insist that measures of progress have been widely misunderstood. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is continually assessing the security situation, Mr. Di Rita said. "He's presented a variety of alternative approaches that could occur after the election, but again it's all based on waiting to see how it goes and waiting and watching as we continue to hand over responsibility to the Iraqis," Mr. Di Rita said.

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Iraq

Six US troops killed in Iraq Monday

2005-11-01

Damn. BAGHDAD - Six American soldiers were killed in separate attacks on Monday. Four soldiers from the Army’s Task Force Baghdad soldiers died on Monday when their patrol struck a roadside bomb in Youssifiyah, (20 kilometers) 12 miles south of Baghdad in an area known as the “triangle of death.” Two other soldiers from the 29th Brigade Combat Team were also killed in a bombing on Monday near Balad, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad. Those deaths raised the death toll for October to more than 90, the highest monthly total since January when 107 American service members died. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said there is no readily apparent explanation for why the number of US casualties was higher in October than in previous months. But he said the insurgents’ roadside bombs - which the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs - are getting more sophisticated. “We see an adversary that continues to develop some sophistication on very deadly and increasingly precise stand-off type weapons - IEDs, in particular. They’re obviously quite capable of killing large numbers of noncombatants indiscriminately, and we’re seeing a lot of that, too,” Di Rita told reporters. The insurgents continually search for new and more effective ways to use IEDs, he said, while US forces look for new ways to counter the IED threat. “We’re getting more intelligence that’s allowing us to stop more of these things, find more of them. So we’re learning from them (the insurgents) and the enemy is learning from us, and it’s going to be that way for as long as there is an insurgency,” Di Rita said.

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Iraq

Car Bomb Kills 20 in Basra, Police Say

2005-10-31

A car bomb exploded Monday night in a commercial district of Iraq's second-largest city of Basra, killing at least 20 people and wounding about 40, a police official said. The car bomb in the southern city of Basra exploded about 8:30 p.m., police Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi. The restaurants had been packed in the evening with people breaking their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Dazed survivors, their clothing stained with blood, stumbled in the darkness or wept in despair, and witnesses said body parts were strewn on the street of Iraq's second-largest city. Also Monday, six American soldiers were killed in separate attacks. A Marine died in action Sunday, making October the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since January. Earlier Monday, U.S. jets struck insurgent targets near the Syrian border and at least six people were killed. Four soldiers from the Army's Task Force Baghdad soldiers died when their patrol struck a roadside bomb in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad in an area known as the "triangle of death." Two other soldiers from the 29th Brigade Combat Team were also killed in a bombing Monday near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. The U.S. military also said a Marine was killed Sunday near Amiriyah, 25 miles west of Baghdad. Those deaths raised the death toll for October to more than 90, the highest monthly total since January when 107 American service members died. The latest deaths brought to 2,025 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said there is no readily apparent explanation for why the number of U.S. casualties was higher in October than in previous months. But he said the insurgents' roadside bombs — which the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs — are getting more sophisticated. "We see an adversary that continues to develop some sophistication on very deadly and increasingly precise stand-off type weapons — IEDs, in particular. They're obviously quite capable of killing large numbers of noncombatants indiscriminately, and we're seeing a lot of that, too," Di Rita told reporters. The insurgents continually search for new and more effective ways to use IEDs, he said, while U.S. forces look for new ways to counter the IED threat. "We're getting more intelligence that's allowing us to stop more of these things, find more of them. So we're learning from them (the insurgents) and the enemy is learning from us, and it's going to be that way for as long as there is an insurgency," Di Rita said. Before dawn Monday, Marines backed by jets attacked insurgent positions near the Syrian border, destroying two safe houses believed use by al-Qaida figures, a U.S. statement said. The statement made no mention of casualties, but Associated Press Television News video from the scene showed residents wailing over the bodies of about six people, including at least three children. At the local hospital, Dr. Ahmed al-Ani claimed 40 Iraqis, including 12 children, were killed in the attack. But the claim could not be independently verified. APTN footage from the scene showed Iraqi men digging through the rubble of several destroyed concrete buildings with a pitchfork or their hands. In the building of a nearby home, women cried over the bodies of about half a dozen blanket-covered bodies lined up on a floor. Some of the blankets were opened for the camera showing a man and three children. "At least 20 innocent people were killed by the U.S. warplanes. Why are the Americans killing families? Where are the insurgents?" one middle-aged man told APTN. "We don't see democracy. We just see destruction." He didn't give his name. Elsewhere, two separate mortar attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq killed three Iraqi people and wounded 11 on Monday. In other strikes in the capital, two car bombs and five drive-by shootings killed five Iraqis and wounded 10, police said. The body of an Iraqi civilian who had been kidnapped and killed in captivity also was found dumped on a city street. Iraq's government has had two important victories in October: a national referendum that adopted a new constitution and the start of the mass murder trial of Saddam Hussein. But the insurgents also have been killing coalition forces and Iraqi civilians with roadside and suicide car bombs that seem more powerful and sophisticated than before, based on technology that British officials say apparently originated in neighboring Iran. The constitution also was adopted despite strong opposition from minority Sunni Arabs, many of whom think the document unfairly favors majority Shiites and Kurds. On Friday and Saturday, U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted several raids in Baghdad, detaining 98 suspected insurgents and finding large weapons caches, the U.S. command said Monday. One cache, found hidden in a building in a second-story crawl space beneath a bathtub, included 13 AK-47 assault rifles, three machine guns, 20 AK-47 barrels, a pistol, U.S. currency and an ammunition stockpile, the military said.

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Home Front: Politix

2nd officer sez Atta was named before 9/11

2005-08-23

An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks. The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement on Monday that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. "My story is consistent," said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command. "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000." His comments came on the same day that the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters that the Defense Department had been unable to validate the assertions made by an Army intelligence veteran, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and now backed up by Captain Phillpott, about the early identification of Mr. Atta. Colonel Shaffer went public with his assertions last week, saying that analysts in the intelligence project were overruled by military lawyers when they tried to share the program's findings with the F.B.I. in 2000 in hopes of tracking down terrorist suspects tied to Al Qaeda. Mr. Di Rita said in an interview that while the department continued to investigate the assertions, there was no evidence so far that the intelligence unit came up with such specific information about Mr. Atta and any of the other hijackers. He said that while Colonel Shaffer and Captain Phillpott were respected military officers whose accounts were taken seriously, "thus far we've not been able to uncover what these people said they saw - memory is a complicated thing." The statement from Captain Phillpott , a 1983 Naval Academy graduate who has served in the Navy for 22 years, was provided to The New York Times and Fox News through the office of Representative Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a longtime proponent of so-called data-mining programs like Able Danger. Asked if the Defense Department had questioned Captain Phillpott in its two-week-old investigation of Able Danger, another Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Paul Swiergosz, said he did not know. Representative Weldon also arranged an interview on Monday with a former employee of a defense contractor who said he had helped create a chart in 2000 for the intelligence program that included Mr. Atta's photograph and name. The former contractor, James D. Smith, said that Mr. Atta's name and photograph were obtained through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. Mr. Smith said that he had retained a copy of the chart until last year and that it had been posted on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He said it had become stuck to the wall and was impossible to remove when he switched jobs. In its final report last year, the Sept. 11 commission said that American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks. The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission acknowledged on Aug. 12 that their staff had met with a Navy officer last July, 10 days before releasing the panel's final report, who asserted that a highly classified intelligence operation, Able Danger, had identified "Mohamed Atta to be a member of an Al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn." But the statement, which did not identify the officer, said the staff determined that "the officer's account was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation" and that the intelligence operation "did not turn out to be historically significant." With his comments on Monday, Captain Phillpott acknowledged that he was the officer who had briefed the commission last year. "I will not discuss the issues outside of my chain of command and the Department of Defense," he said. "But my story is consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000. I have nothing else to say."

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Iraq-Jordan

US could cut Iraq troops by 20,000-30,000: NY Times

2005-08-07

This is bad according to the NYT, of course, since it's bad for us to be there, bad to leave, bad to stay, natter natter natter ... NEW YORK - The top US Middle East commander has outlined a plan that would reduce US forces in Iraq by some 20,000 to 30,000 by next spring, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions. Citing three unnamed of course senior military officers and Defense Department officials, The Times said that the assessment by Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the military’s Central Command, was contained in a classified briefing given to senior Pentagon officials last month. The plan was in line with Gen. George Casey’s remarks in a briefing late last month with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Washington hoped to reduce US forces in Iraq sharply within the next year. “I do believe that if the political process continues to go positively, if the developments with the (Iraqi) security forces continue to go as it is going, I do believe we will still be able to make fairly substantial reductions after these elections -- in the spring and summer of next year,” Casey, the US commander in Iraq, told Rumsfeld on July 27. However, Abizaid added the caveat in his assessment that it was possible that the Pentagon might have to keep the current levels of some 138,000 US soldiers in Iraq through 2006 if security and political trends do not favor a withdrawal, The Times said. President George W. Bush has consistently refused to set a date for withdrawal from Iraq, reiterating on Wednesday that the timetable, “depends on our ability to train the Iraqis, to get the Iraqis ready to fight.” The number of troops is expect to increase temporarily in December to about 160,000 troops, achieved through overlapping the normal rotation of incoming forces and those who have finished their tours, to provide security for elections to a new National Assembly, scheduled for Dec. 15, The Times said. “General Abizaid has consistently understood that if conditions on the ground warrant it, a smaller coalition footprint could bolster self-government in Iraq,” said Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman.

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Home Front: WoT

No More WoT: It's a "struggle" now - Washington Plays Word Games

2005-07-27

Via Drudge, and the NYT, so it has to be true. The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, according to senior administration and military officials. I thought "jihad" meant "struggle". Stop confusing me. In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the country's top military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice. Administration officials say the earlier phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." And, for the most part, they are. He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremism, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use." Sorry, General, but you're a fool. Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." The solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military," he concluded. Administration and Pentagon officials say the revamped campaign has grown out of meetings of President George W. Bush's senior national security advisers that began in January, and it reflects the evolution in Bush's own thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Rumsfeld spoke in the new terms on Friday when he addressed an audience in Annapolis, Maryland, for the retirement ceremony of Admiral Vern Clark as chief of naval operations. Rumsfeld described America's efforts as it "wages the global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization." But what Rummy said is not fundamentally different from what W has said repeatedly in his own speeches during the last four years. Methinks NYT is trying to blow this out of proportion and claim "victory" for those media shills who have tried to change the WoT verbage, ala BBC, CBC, NYT itself, etc. The shifting language is one of the most public changes in the administration's strategy to battle Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it tracks closely with Bush's recent speeches emphasizing freedom, democracy and the worldwide clash of ideas. "It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven Hadley, the national security adviser, said in a telephone interview. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative." It's always been about more than the military portion of the WoT. Doesn't make it any less of a war, NYT. The language shift also comes at a time when Bush, with a new appointment for one of his most trusted aides, Karen Hughes, is trying to bolster the State Department's efforts at public diplomacy. Lawrence Di Rita, Rumsfeld's spokesman, said the change in language "is not a shift in thinking, but a continuation of the immediate post-9/11 approach." "The president then said we were going to use all the means of national power and influence to defeat this enemy," Di Rita said. "We must continue to be more expansive than what the public is understandably focused on now: the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq." By stressing to the public that the effort is not only military, the administration may also be trying to reassure those in uniform who have begun complaining that only members of the armed forces are being asked to sacrifice for the effort. Translation: Grunts are pissed about the MSM continually conducting "polls" and reporting the WoT from the most pessimistic standpoint they can. New opinion polls show that the American public is increasingly pessimistic about the mission in Iraq, with many doubting its link to the counterterrorism mission. See? Thus, a new emphasis on reminding the public of the broader, long-term threat to the United States may allow the administration to put into broader perspective the daily mayhem in Iraq and the American casualties. The administration could use some honest help from the MSM when it comes to reorting that "broader perspective" instead of harping on the "daily mayhem", but that's too much to ask for. Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in an interview that if America's efforts were limited to "protecting the homeland and attacking and disrupting terrorist networks, you're on a treadmill that is likely to get faster and faster with time." The key to "ultimately winning the war," he said, "is addressing the ideological part of the war that deals with how the terrorists recruit and indoctrinate new terrorists." No shit Sherlock, however this is apparently news to the NYT writers.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syria ending cooperation with the US

2005-05-24

Syria has halted military and intelligence cooperation with the United States, its ambassador to Washington said in an interview, in a sign of growing strains between the two nations over the insurgency in Iraq. The ambassador, Imad Moustapha, said in the interview on Friday at the Syrian Embassy here that his country had, in the last 10 days, "severed all links" with the United States military and Central Intelligence Agency because of what he called unjust American allegations. The Bush administration has complained bitterly that Syria is not doing enough to halt the flow of men and money to the insurgency in Iraq. "We thought, why should we continue to cooperate?" he said. Bush administration officials said Syria's stance has prompted intense debate at high levels in the administration about new steps that might be taken against the Syrian government. The officials said the options included possible military, diplomatic or economic action. But senior Pentagon and military officials cautioned Monday that if any military action was eventually ordered, it was likely to be limited to insurgent movements along the border. "There's a lot of discussion about what to do about Syria and what a problem it is," said the administration official, who works for a government agency that has been involved in the debate. Relations between Syria and the United States have been souring for months, and some Bush administration officials said Syria's level of cooperation had been dwindling even before the latest move. Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon spokesman, said there have been occasional low-level military-to-military communications along the border. He said the Defense Department had received no official notification of a change in that status, nor that the status of American military attachés in Damascus had been altered. The American officials declined to provide an on-the-record response to Mr. Moustapha's statements on halting intelligence cooperation, citing the delicacy of the issue. American intelligence officials have said Syria has provided important assistance in the campaign against Al Qaeda since the Sept. 11 attacks. In recent months, senior Pentagon officials and military officers say, cooperation between the two nations has included low-level communications across the border between captains and field-grade officers of the American-led alliance and their Syrian counterparts. One senior military officer said those communications had been helpful in mitigating a number of "cross-border firings" of artillery that have occurred between Syrian forces and the American-led military in Iraq. Any further scaling back of cooperation there or between Syria and the C.I.A. could have a tangible impact, officials said. American military officers in Baghdad and intelligence analysts in Washington say militant cells inside Iraq draw on "unlimited money" from an underground financial network run by former Baath Party leaders and relatives of Mr. Hussein, many of whom they say found safe haven to live and operate in Syria. Those officials say Damascus has done very little in its banking system to stop the financing, nor has it seized former Iraqi Baathists identified by the United States as organizing and financing the insurgency. In presenting Syria's case, Mr. Moustapha said his government had done all it could to respond to American complaints, including taking steps to build barriers and add to border patrols. He declined to comment on any role Syria might have played in the capture of Mr. Hussein's half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, No. 36 on the American list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. But the ambassador said Syria had jailed some 1,200 foreign fighters who sought to enter Iraq from Syria, and had returned scores of others to their home countries. On the day of the interview with Mr. Moustapha, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Syria was "allowing its territory to be used to organize terrorist attacks against innocent Iraqis." A senior American military officer acknowledged that "the Syrian government has in some cases been helpful" in building border berms and otherwise taking action against people involved in providing support to the insurgency. But the officer added: "Our sense is that they protest a bit too much and that they are capable of doing more. We expect them to do more." The United States ambassador to Damascus, Margaret Scobey, has been in Washington for several months, having been recalled for consultations after the assassination in Lebanon on Feb. 14 of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister.

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Home Front: WoT

The Qur'an Question

2005-05-23

An Attempt at Damage Control by Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff NewsweekMay 30 issue - What really happened at Guantanamo? Last week, amid the heat of the controversy over NEWSWEEK's retracted story, new details about the issue of alleged mistreatment of the Qur'an emerged. "Maybe we better go back and have another look..." The International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross announced that it had provided the Pentagon with confidential reports about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Qur'ans at Gitmo in 2002 and 2003. Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman, said the Red Cross had provided "several" instances that it believed were "credible." The ICRC report included three specific allegations of offensive treatment of the Qur'an by guards. Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita would not comment on these allegations except to say that the Gitmo commanders routinely followed up ICRC reports, including these, and could not substantiate them. He then gave what is from the Defense Department point of view more context and important new information. So the ICRC got its info from the prisoners, who're not the most honest fellows in the world, passed it on to the military, who did what I'd guess were routine investigations. He said, she said, and nothing came of it. That leaves us, and Newsweak, with the choice of believing the Bad Guyz or the military. It is clear that in 2002, military investigators became frustrated by the unresponsiveness of some high-profile terror suspects, including one who had close contact with the 9/11 hijackers. At the time, fears of another attack from Al Qaeda were running high, and the Pentagon was determined to make the terror suspects talk. The interrogators asked for, and received, Pentagon permission to use tactics like isolation and sleep deprivation. Less clear, however, is what happened to more run-of-the-mill detainees among the 800 or so housed at Guantanamo at the time. Less clear, however, is what the concern with them is at this point. Sounds to me like they're saying "We don't know, but we suspect the worst..." According to Di Rita, when the first prisons were built for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo in early 2002, prison guards were instructed to respect the detainees' religious rituals. The prisoners were given Qur'ans, which they hung from the walls of their cells in cotton surgical masks provided by the prison. That's pretty much standard procedure. Had I been in charge and had I had the remotest chance of getting away with it, there wouldn't have been a Koran within 90 miles of the place. Log entries by the guards indicate that in about a dozen cases, the detainees themselves somehow damaged their Qur'ans. In one case a prisoner allegedly ripped up a Qur'an; in another a prisoner tore the cover off his Qur'an. In three cases, detainees tried to stuff pages from their Qur'ans down their toilets, according to the Defense Department's account of what is in the guards' reports. Publish their names. Since they defiled the holy book, obviously they must be killed. (NEWSWEEK was not permitted to see the log items.) Thereby implying they don't really exist. The log entries do not indicate why the detainees might have done this, said Di Rita, and prison commanders concluded that certain hard-core prisoners would try to agitate the other detainees by alleging disrespect for Muslim articles of faith. No reason the log items should indicate the why of it all. They're maintained as a record of what happened, not why or how somebody felt about it. In light of the controversy, one of these incidents bears special notice. Last week, NEWSWEEK interviewed Command Sgt. John VanNatta, who served as the prison's warden from October 2002 to the fall of 2003. VanNatta recounted that in 2002, the inmates suddenly started yelling that the guards had thrown a Qur'an on or near an Asian-style squat toilet. The guards found an inmate who admitted that he had dropped his Qur'an near his toilet. According to VanNatta, the inmate then was taken cell to cell to explain this to other detainees to quell the unrest. The detainees were just about as willing to believe him as Qazi and Fazl and Sami are to believe Newsweak's retraction of the story. We believe what we want to believe, and we often discard evidence against anything we want to believe. That's just human nature, before the taqiyya's added in... But the incident could partly account for the multiple allegations among detainees, including one by a released British detainee in a lawsuit that claims that guards flushed Qur'ans down toilets. Holmes! How do you do it? In fewer than a dozen log entries from the 31,000 documents reviewed so far, said Di Rita, there is a mention of detainees' complaining that guards or interrogators mishandled their Qur'ans. In one case, a female guard allegedly knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the detainee's bed. Oh, horrors! Onto his bed? Where he wets every night? In another alleged case, said Di Rita, detainees became upset after two MPs, looking for contraband, felt the pouch containing a prisoner's Qur'an. "Yeah! They felt up my Koran! It wuz disgustin'!" While questioning a detainee, an interrogator allegedly put a Qur'an on top of a TV set, took it off when the detainee complained, then put it back on. "'Don't put it on the teevee set?' Y'mean, like this?" "He did it again, Mahmoud!" "These infidels are a merciless lot, Ahmed!" In another alleged instance, guards somehow sprayed water on a detainee's Qur'an. "Yeah! We wuz just havin' a little riot, an' the firehose got my holy book all soggy!" This handful of alleged cases came out of thousands of daily interactions between guards and prisoners, said Di Rita. None has been substantiated yet, he said. I'd start with the case of the Koran on the teevee. See if it's still warm. Of course, I'm surprised it didn't erupt in flames when Desperate Housewives came on. In December 2002, a guard inadvertently knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the floor of a detainee's cell, Di Rita said. A number of detainees protested. "He did it on purpose! We know he did! We seen him!" That January, partly in response to the incident and partly to provide precise guidelines for new guards and interrogators, the Guantanamo commanders issued precise rules to respect the "cultural dignity of the Koran thereby reducing the friction over the searching of the Korans." Only chaplains or Muslim interpreters were allowed to inspect detainees' Qur'ans. "Two hands will be used at all times when handling Korans in a manner signaling respect and reverence," the rules state. "Ensure that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas..." Like I say, no closer than 90 miles. That'll address the problem. Di Rita said that the Pentagon may look further into the reports found in the logs. The Pentagon is not ruling out the possibility of finding credible reports of Qur'an desecration. But so far, said Di Rita, it has not found any.

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Iraq-Jordan

Reuters ’Reporters’ ’Abused’ by U.S. Troops In Iraq

2004-05-18

Scare quotes are fun! Link via Drudge. U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday. "Your Allah wears combat boots!" The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Basically jumping on the bandwagon / Reparations ’R UsTM. An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said Tuesday. Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture. Tell me what, exactly, doesn’t ’humiliate’ Arabs? I’m sick and fuckin’ tired of this limp dick whining. Don’t these guys wipe with their left hand, or is that an Afghan ’tradition’? All three said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. They said they did not want to give details publicly earlier because of the degrading nature of the abuse. And we all know that Arabs never lie... The soldiers told them they would be taken to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them and forced them to remain in stress positions for long periods. Right out of the Abu Ghraib playbook? Seems a tad, ummm, unconvincing to me. The U.S. military, in a report issued before the Abu Ghraib abuse became public, said there was no evidence the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, said in a letter received by Reuters Monday but dated March 5 that he was confident the investigation had been "thorough and objective" and its findings were sound. The Pentagon has yet to respond to a request by Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger to review the military’s findings about the incident in light of the scandal over the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It’s called ’flooding the zone’. Asked for comment Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said only: "There are a number of lines of inquiry under way with respect to prison operations in Iraq. If during the course of any inquiry, the commander believes it is appropriate to review a specific aspect of detention, he has the authority to do so." The abuse is alleged to have happened at Forward Operating Base Volturno, near Falluja, the Reuters staff said. They were detained on January 2 while covering the aftermath of the shooting down of a U.S. helicopter near Falluja and held for three days, first at Volturno and then at Forward Operating Base St Mere. No bias in that paragraph, natch. I wonder if these ’reporters’ happened to arrive at said helicopter shootdown ’conveniently early’, shall we say? The three -- Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja-based freelance television journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani -- were released without charge on Jan. 5. "When I saw the Abu Ghraib photographs, I wept," Ureibi said Tuesday. "I saw they had suffered like we had." Ureibi, who understands English better than the other two detainees, said soldiers told him they wanted to have sex with him, and he was afraid he would be raped. Cue the ’Deliverance’ soundtrack. Did he squeal like a pig? NBC, whose stringer Ali Muhammed Hussein Ali al-Badrani was detained along with the Reuters staff, said he reported that a hood was placed over his head for hours, and that he was forced to perform physically debilitating exercises, prevented from sleeping and struck and kicked several times. "Despite repeated requests, we have yet to receive the results of the army investigation," NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley said. Schlesinger sent a letter to Sanchez on January 9 demanding an investigation into the treatment of the three Iraqis. The U.S. army said it was investigating and requested further information. Reuters provided transcripts of initial interviews with the three following their release, and offered to make them available for interview by investigators. Yeah, that’s gonna happen... A summary of the investigation by the 82nd Airborne Division, dated January 28 and provided to Reuters, said "no specific incidents of abuse were found." It said soldiers responsible for the detainees were interviewed under oath and "none admit or report knowledge of physical abuse or torture. The detainees were purposefully and carefully put under stress, to include sleep deprivation, in order to facilitate interrogation; they were not tortured." The version received Monday used the phrase "sleep management" instead. The U.S. military never interviewed the three for its investigation. On February 3 Schlesinger wrote to Lawrence Di Rita, special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying the investigation was "woefully inadequate" and should be reopened. On what grounds, I wonder, was it ’woefully inadequate’, in that it didn’t result in a court martial or two? "The military’s conclusion of its investigation without even interviewing the alleged victims, along with other inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the report, speaks volumes about the seriousness with which the U.S. government is taking this issue," he wrote. The U.S. military faced European Democratic international outrage this month after photographs surfaced showing U.S. soldiers humiliating and abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad. An investigation by Major General Antonio Taguba found that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees" in Abu Ghraib. Seven U.S. soldiers have been charged over the Abu Ghraib abuse and the first court martial is set for Wednesday. U.S. officials say the abuse was carried out by a small number of soldiers and that all allegations of abuse are promptly and thoroughly investigated. As bad as it was, I’m still not sure if shoe in mouth and such constitutes torture. Abuse, yes, but torture? As noted elsewhere on Rantburg, if this type of treatment is what’s required to extract information from jihadists and (likely) Fifth-column Reuters ’reporters’ and helps us to avoid a) attacks against our troops and b) civilians from being blown up by car bombs, then I have a serious problem with our stated policy of no longer using these tactics. What are we supposed to use now, harsh language? Nope. Can't do that. Telling them you want to be butt buddies is demeaning. They'd be humiliated, and then seethe for years, and then where would we be? Best just to go with the local customs and cut their heads off.

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Home Front: WoT

Woody’ fishing expedition Interview of Rummy - 23 Oct, 2003

2004-04-20

EFL - I haven’t been through the how transcript, but it was released on Friday by the DOD. (Interview with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. Also participating was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Lawrence Di Rita and the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Lt. Gen. John Craddock) Rumsfeld: I’ve told you before that my memory tends to go toward concepts, principles and approaches as opposed to details, so if there are factual differences at anything I say, alert us and we’ll check them. And they’ve got a timeline that Tom Franks had. Q: Ah that’s great. Rumsfeld: No. And---yes, we’ll make it available to the President or people you’re going to interview so they’ll know what. And you’ve seen Franks, Renuart, Luck, Myers, Pace and Giambastiani. Q: Your predecessor, yes sir. Rumsfeld: Let me just open with a couple of comments. I do not remember much about Iraq being discussed at all with the President or me or the NSC prior to when the President asked me to – asked me what I thought of the Iraq contingency plan. That I believe was November 21st of ‘01. Q: That’s great to pin that date down. That makes sense. Rumsfeld: It feels right to me because I believe I talked to Tom Franks on the -- he thinks on the 27th. Di Rita: Yes sir, that’s right, when you went down to Tampa, you had a press conference that day and I think you spent an hour with General Franks. Rumsfeld: And I would not have waited long from the President asking me to do it when he asked me what I thought of the war plan -- the contingency plan -- and I told him that I didn’t think it was current, that I didn’t think it represented Tom Franks’ thinking. That I knew it didn’t represent mine and that it was basically Desert Storm II Plus and that I thought we could – that I was in the process of reviewing all of the contingency plans in the department and had been since earlier in ‘01. And he asked if I could do it on a basis that wasn’t, you know, terribly noticeable, and I said sure, because I’m doing all of them. I was uncomfortable with many of them sufficiently enough that after I reviewed two, I stopped everything and had a whole Saturday blocked out. Q: Either August 1st or August 8th. Rumsfeld: To go through all the assumptions in all of the key plans. Did I mention this? Q: This is – Rumsfeld: And I wanted to hear if the ones I saw had assumptions that I knew were stale, then I better see them all, and I did. Q: And this – you told this to the President on this November 21st when he took you aside after an NSC meeting? Rumsfeld: What he did was at the end of an NSC meeting he said, I need to see you. We walked out and went in a little cubby hole office right off the NSC Situation Room, closed the door and he said, how do you feel about the plan – the war plan for Iraq? I said what I said. And I then answered him with what I had done and where we were, and I said that there isn’t a combatant commander who doesn’t know how I feel and that I’m getting them refreshed. Q: So you could do this under the radar so to speak. Rumsfeld: Yeah. Which I was doing with the others. Q: Did he say anything else in terms of urgency? Rumsfeld: No. There wasn’t any urgency, and the only thing he asked me was not to talk about it with other people, and I said, well it would be helpful for me to be able to know who I can talk to when he had brought other people into his thinking. And I said it’s particularly important that I talk to George Tenet on things like this. And he said, fine, and at a later date he did tell me that I could talk to Tenet. Q: But not at that point? Rumsfeld: No, because he had not talked to Tenet. He had not talked to anybody that I know of -- he left me with that impression. The discussions on Iraq preceding that, and subsequent to that, had been basically on Operation Northern Watch and Southern Watch and I think I mentioned to you that we had a plan for a downed aircraft called Desert Badger. And that I was uncomfortable with the fact that our planes were being shot at and we weren’t able to do much about it under the constraints that existed. I was also uncomfortable with Desert Badger, and I thought the President ought to have additional options, so I told him that I was going to see if we could pre-package some additional options, and we ended up pre-packaging a Desert Badger Plus and a Desert Badger Plus Plus. So that he knew about it, and that in the event a plane went down, I could call him and recommend one of those three. Q: This had all been done before 9/11 even or before --? Rumsfeld: Desert Badger existed prior to 9/11. Q: And the Plus Plus? Rumsfeld: And the Plus Plus we fashioned afterwards. It would have been. Now what do you have? Q: Well I’ve gone through this in lots of detail with people and I’m looking for the story of him and you -- the President and you -- dealing on this, and clearly General Franks brought up a number of iterations of this December 4th, December 12th -- I think it’s in the list -- and then there was the briefing in Crawford that he gave the President on December 28th. You were at your place and you were on video that day I understand? Rumsfeld: I don’t think so. Di Rita: We do have a video of you on SVTC [Secure Video Teleconference] that day from your place. Rumsfeld [to staff]: Oh, do you? Okay. [to Woodward] There was a time that I suggested that Tom go down alone. Q: That was it. Rumsfeld: And I wanted him to spend some time with the President because I felt it was important that the President develop a confidence level that I had in Tom. And I thought it would be an easier thing to do if I weren’t there. So I purposely stayed away from one of the meetings in Crawford and I asked Tom to go physically rather than by SVTC. I said I thought it would be a good idea. ....

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