I confess that I have been fantasizing. I realize that most people have moved on from Iraq to Afghanistan. But given the enormous toll paid both by Iraqis and Americans in terms of lives and money and overall social and cultural destruction I have been trying to imagine what it would look like if the United States actually undertook a fact based investigation into the decisions by the Bush Administration to invade Iraq in 2003.

By that I don’t mean the past investigations by special commissions or congressional committees into what the intelligence community knew or didn’t know, or what pressure they were under to cherry pick information. Rather I mean an investigation into what former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other cabinet officials knew and did, day by day, leading up to the invasion.

Fortunately, I don’t really have to imagine. Instead I can just look across the Atlantic to Great Britain. There they have been conducting an inquiry, officially launched 30 June 2009. The terms of reference of the Iraq Inquiry,  also known as the Chilcot Inquiry, after its chairman Sir John Chilcot, state:

It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. We will therefore be considering the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned.

Consider some of what has been revealed just during the past few weeks. (more…)

This is my last post for 2009 I thought I would write about Afghanistan but on second thought I will, no doubt, be doing that quite a lot during 2010. Thanks to the Obama Administration’s surge strategy Afghanistan will, from a blogging viewpoint, be the gift that keeps on giving.

So, as we contemplate whether 2010 will be better or worse let’s take a moment to consider 2009. In the spirit of Dave Barry’s classic annual year in review column let’s acknowledge, albeit with some poetic license commentary by moi, a few of the significant events that made, however briefly, the headlines.

Although it started on Dec. 28 2008 the month of January saw massive Israeli air strikes and a ground force invasion of the Gaza Strip. Heavy fighting took place in Gaza City between the Israeli forces and Hamas. At least 1300 Palestinians were killed. On Jan. 17 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, declaring that Israel has achieved the goals it set when launching the military operation. On Jan. 21 Israel completes its troop withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Also that month President Barack Obama signed executive orders closing the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year; closing the CIA’s secret prisons; requiring a review of military trials for terror suspects; and requiring all interrogations to follow the non-coercive methods specified in the Army Field Manual.

Of course, nobody knew back then that the camp would end up in Illinois. One can only hope that the inmates are not too acclimated to the Caribbean climate to adjust to a midwest winter.

On Jan 27 Hama declared that it previously was just kidding and broke the ceasefire by attacking an Israeli frontier patrol. Israel immediately responded that it lacks a sense of humor and renewed its air strikes on the Gaza Strip border with Egypt.

On Feb. 3 Iran launched its first domestically built satellite into orbit. Iran stated that the satellite is meant for research and telecommunications purposes, but Western states express concern that the technology could be used in the development of ballistic missiles. The U.S. intelligence community, estimating that Iran will show the same swift progress with its missiles that it did with its nuclear program, predicted the next flight will be in 2040.

On Feb. 6, renewing their classic rivalry, a British and a French nuclear submarine collided in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Political leaders from both countries sighed in relief that it was merely submarines and not their respective football fans that collided. (more…)

One will not be able to celebrate Veterans Day this week without considering the tragic killing of 13 and wounding over 30 at the Army base at Fort Hood, Texas last Friday. The shootings by U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan rightfully strike people as particularly horrific. There is something about soldiers who are about to be deployed to war zones being shot at by one of their own that is particularly obscene; especially when that man is a psychiatrist, a medical professional who operates under the code of do no harm.

Yet whatever the ensuing investigation uncovers about the motivations of Maj. Hasan we must also face up to the fact that the American military has a significant mental health issue.

When I last wrote about this  in September I noted that the psychic casualties are staggering. The situation has not gotten better.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that military leaders acknowledge rampant psychiatric problems in their midst. According to the Army, the suicide rate among soldiers in Iraq is five times that seen in the Persian Gulf War and 11% higher than during Vietnam. The Army reported 133 suicides in 2008, the most ever. In January of this year, the 24 suicides reported by the Army outnumbered U.S. combat-related deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Marine Corps also reported an increase in suicides in 2008, to 41. The Army and Marine Corps have provided most of the troops in the two wars.

Ironically, Hasan had been chosen to be part of an ambitious plan to treat U.S. troops in Afghanistan who need psychological counseling where counselors are often not available. As a result, the Pentagon is flying record numbers of therapists and other mental health workers into combat areas.

(more…)

Mental health may not be the first thing you think of when pundits and bloviators blather on about high foreign policy and international security issues, but it’s there.

If policymakers think they have it tough with their late nights at the White House and Congress try being at the point of spear. If all soldiers and marines had to worry about were lack of sleep and newspaper columnists or think tank experts voicing criticisms they would be rolling on the floor laughing.

You probably know where I’m going with this but let me get specific. After six years of being ground down in Iraq U.S. forces in Afghanistan, currently over sixty thousand of them, are in the thick of it, getting wounded and killed far too freely.

Thus far, 2009 is turning out to be the most tragic for Americans in the Afghan War, with 176 dead, far more than the 155 casualties in all of 2008. A very high number indeed, considering the United States has suffered a total of 806 military deaths since the 2001 invasion.

The only other coalition members with triple-digit casualties since the war began are the United Kingdom, which has 207 deaths, and Canada, which has 127. The impact in those countries is even higher since, as they have far less forces there their casualties are proportionally far higher.

Yet the psychic casualties are also staggering.

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this past Saturday the Army, with 128 suicides last year, already has 79 so far this year. The Navy had 41 last year and 28 this year. The Marines have 34, seven shy of last year, and the Air Force has recorded half its 40 suicides of 2008.

And 2008 itself was a record year for military suicides. That year 140 soldiers on active duty took their own lives, continuing a trend in which the number of suicides has increased more than 60 percent since 2003, surpassing the rate for the general U.S. population.

The government says around 5,000 veterans a year commit suicide. To counter that, a VA suicide hot line launched in 2007, (800) 273-TALK, fielded close to 100,000 calls in just its first eight months. (more…)

Last week saw two events that emphasize the fact that we are moving on from the world of George Bush to that of Barack Obama.

Per the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement June 30 marked the withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi cities. While the eventual outcome there is uncertain Iraq’s future is now primarily in Iraqi hands.

Two days later in Afghanistan thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys, mounting an operation, Operation Khanjar, which represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. This is a clear and hold operation, meaning not just fighting the Taliban but living and staying with local Afghans in various villages and towns.

The operation involves about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. (more…)

President Obama’s much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world is just a few days away. We now know the location (Egypt) and the venue (Cairo University). We know that the president will also visit Saudi Arabia, another hugely important Muslim state. We know the context of his travels to the region: Obama enjoys relatively favorable ratings among Muslims, especially when contrasted with those of President George Bush, but many are reserving judgment, waiting to see if Obama will actually change U.S. foreign policy, or merely talk about doing so. The test case is the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But the president will also want to talk about Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, he will hope that North Korea’s behavior doesn’t grow even more erratic at a time when his attention will be focused elsewhere.

The Peace Process: As I noted in January, no one ever said it was going to be easy to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Last week reminds us that 1) that the essential issues are well understood, 2) the two parties are at an impasse, and 3) the United States is caught in the middle. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed the U.S. government’s opposition to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “A stop to settlements,” she said emphatically, “not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” The next day, the Israeli government responded with equal clarity. Israeli Cabinet Minister Benny Begin said “natural growth” of existing West Bank settlements would continue. “The Israeli Jewish towns and villages should develop according to the natural development rate and this must not be stopped,” he said. And just in case anyone questioned the official Palestinian position, Rafiq Husseini spelled it out: “No peace can be reached with one settler remaining in Palestine.” The expansion of the settlements is the key stumbling bloc to a resumption of serious negotiations. What is President Obama prepared to do to stop them? What can he do?

Iraq: The war still isn’t over, there are still nearly 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground there, and they won’t all be out until 2012. Gen. Casey hinted that the Army is prepared to stay longer. That isn’t consistent with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated between the outgoing Bush administration and the Maliki government in Baghdad, but Casey appears to be laying the groundwork for any last-minute change of plans. Regardless, the United States needs the cooperation of Iraq’s neighbors to prevent the country from falling back into sectarian chaos as U.S. troops do draw down, and to contain the violence if the worse-case scenario occurs.

Iran: With presidential elections less than three weeks away, President Obama is surely hoping that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s days in power are numbered. But there is little that the United States can do to hasten that end, and if Washington is perceived to be interfering in Iran’s internal politics, that will surely strengthen Ahmadinejad’s otherwise very weak hand. Obama was right to take a wait-and-see approach to Iran, and should urge other countries in the region to do the same until after June 12th.

Afghanistan/Pakistan: They aren’t Middle Eastern countries, but they are Muslim countries, and the conduct of military operations there clearly affects the United States’ global standing, and therefore on the level of support that we can expect going forward. President Obama should reiterate at every possible opportunity our essential goals, what we are prepared to do to achieve them, and what others can do to help us.

In general, during the course of his travels, President Obama is likely to adopt a conciliatory, even deferential tone. He will stress the need for cooperation over confrontation, and for problem-solving over trouble-making. But so long as the rejectionists and the extremists can dictate events on the ground, he will also need a strong dose of humility.
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Last Friday President Obama announced his plan for withdrawing U.S. military forces from Iraq. The planned withdrawal, if not graceful, will certainly be overdue, at least to most of his political base, if not to the military itself.

But the devil is always in the details so let’s examine a few. First, announcing a goal is easy, implementing it is difficult. For the military, which never goes anywhere without literally immense amounts of baggage, this means logistics, logistics, logistics.

As this post in Wired’s Danger Room blog notes, “How do you remove from the country in a year and a half 90,000 or so troops, 40,000 aircraft and vehicles, and 80,000 containers (not to mention 100,000 contractors) spread across more than 280 installations in anything approaching an orderly way?”

See also this 2007 article by veteran military reporter David Wood for details.

This is not to say it is impossible. After all U.S. forces withdrew the bulk of its half a million plus forces in a matter of months after Operation Desert Storm in 1991. But back then the U.S. had not constructed numerous huge military bases. Still, if the U.S. really wants to keep the timetable it better kick planning into high gear now.

It is not just a matter of packing up. Assumptions need to be rethought. Consider the February 12 testimony of Janet St. Laurent Managing Director, Defense Capabilities and Management United States Government Accountability Office to the House Armed Services Committee. She said, “with regard to an Iraq drawdown, DOD’s plans will need to consider the fact that some early planning assumptions about the conditions and timing of redeployments may no longer be applicable in light of the SOFA and evolving U.S. strategy.”

Evolving U.S. strategy is code for send more troops to Afghanistan. But if troops are delayed leaving Iraq it will mean delays, perhaps, not immediately, but certainly in the long run, in deploying troops to Afghanistan, due to the need to rotate troops.

And while you may be able to send more troops to Afghanistan in the near term, providing them with all the necessary equipment may be problematic. St. Laurent said:

the availability of equipment may be limited because the Army and Marine Corps have already deployed much of their equipment to Iraq and much of their prepositioned assets also have been withdrawn to support ongoing operations. Similarly, DOD will need to assess its requirements for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to support increased force levels in Afghanistan, given its current allocation of assets to support ongoing operations in Iraq.

(more…)

Over the past few days I have noticed another spike in media talking heads suggesting that the Obama administration will find it tough to roll back the Bush admin torture/interrogation policies. The case they are making is that it is these policies that have kept us safe over the last few years.

I wish that someone would respond by reminding these media types that last year the Washington Post ran an op-ed from a US interrogator in Iraq who made clear that when his team went against the grain and did not use torture they got the intel that led to the discovery of Zarqawi. He also notes that Abu Gharib and Gitmo caused foreign fighters to flood to Iraq and calculates the number of US troop casualties caused by this flocking of foreign fighters.

 Money Quote:

“I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.”

See here for more details from that piece. (more…)

Be warned, I go long today.

As I write a weekly column on private military and security contractors for UPI and have written a just published book on private security contractors in Iraq, it is an easy guess what I am blogging about today.

That’s right, yesterday’s 35-count indictment against the six Blackwater contractors accused of voluntary manslaughter, attempt to commit manslaughter and weapons violations for their alleged roles in the September 16 2007 shooting at Nisoor Square in Baghdad, Iraq.

Given the key dependence on private contractors by the U.S. Defense and State Departments, as well as the intelligence community and numerous other agencies the implications of the indictment and eventual trial verdict will have an impact that go far beyond Iraq. Let’s face facts, contractors are the U.S. government’s American Express card; nowadays Uncle Sam dares not leave home without them when it undertakes an overseas operation, whether it be war, humanitarian relief or something in between.

Based on the indictment it appears that at least some of the early press coverage of the event at Nissor Square was correct.

Blackwater claimed the convoy was attacked by armed insurgents but Iraqi officials disagreed. Iraq’s Ministry of Interior said that Blackwater contractors fired an unprovoked barrage.

U.S. military reports from the scene indicated that Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation and used excessive force against Iraqi civilians.

It may very well be the case, as a New York Times article reported that the cascade of events began when a single bullet apparently fired by a Blackwater guard killed an Iraqi man whose weight probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward. The car continued to roll toward the convoy, which responded with an intense barrage of gunfire in several directions, striking Iraqis who were desperately trying to flee.

Interestingly, in late 2007 it was reported that American investigators were told that during the shootings at least one Blackwater guard continued firing on civilians while colleagues urgently called for a cease-fire. At least one guard apparently also drew a weapon on a fellow guard who did not stop shooting. But no mention of any of this was made at yesterday’s Department of Justice/FBI news conference.

Back then FBI agents reportedly found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq. That seems not to have changed, as yesterday’s indictment listed only 14 counts of voluntary manslaughter.

The spin thus far on the indictment seems to place the blame entirely on the contractors and nobody else, as emphasized in yesterday’s press conference. (more…)

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a series of short comments on what Barack Obama’s “first job” as President should be.  Most were from distinguished global leaders.  Some were from … um … others, like a former Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman.  Not surprisingly, the comments evinced a broad range of priorities, from keeping Americans safe from WMD terror, to addressing the failing economy and global climate crisis, to reclaiming America’s mantle of moral leadership in the world.  I particularly appreciated Zbigniew Brzezinski’s focus on the “conflict-ridden” zone from Egypt to India.  He calls for a comprehensive approach to include 3 major priorities in that region:

1. A readiness to negotiate directly with Iran about its nuclear ambitions and both sides’ regional security concerns, without preconditions and without counterproductive threats of war (though we should keep the option of much more severe sanctions on the table).

2. A revised strategy for Afghanistan that would explore the possibility of local arrangements with various Taliban forces. If local Taliban leaders agree to expel al-Qaeda remnants, consider the possibility of a NATO drawdown in those regions.

(more…)