Baghdad Sunni protest deepens sectarian tension

Waleed Ibrahim
Reuters
20 May 2005

Baghdad's main Sunni Muslim mosques closed for three days on Friday to protest against what clerics said were killings of preachers by a Shi'ite militia, stoking fears sectarian strife could slide toward civil war. The closure, called by the influential Muslim Clerics Association, came amid a surge of violence that has killed more than 500 people since a new Shi'ite-led government promising improved security was announced last month.

"In protest over attacks on mosques and killings of clerics, the detentions of worshippers and theft of their property, the Sunni leadership is closing mosques," preacher Muayad al-A'adhami said at Friday prayers at the Abu Hanifa mosque. Last week, Harith al-Dhari, head of the Muslim Clerics Association, accused the Shi'ite Badr Brigades militia of carrying out attacks on Sunnis.

The leader of the Badr Brigades, the military wing of one of Iraq's leading Shi'ite parties, denied the charges. Minority Sunni Arabs, once dominant under Saddam Hussein, have been increasingly isolated since Jan. 30 elections. Iraq's Shi'ites and Kurds, who triumphed in the polls, say they will give Sunnis a key role in government -- even though they only won 17 of the 275 seats in parliament -- in a bid to defuse the Sunni-led insurgency.

Sunni clerics said the mosque protests were limited to Baghdad but frustrations have spread to towns such as Ramadi in the west, where witnesses said thousands protested on Friday over allegations of U.S. desecration of the Koran. The U.S. military says the allegations are false. "Political solutions are over and military solutions will start. We will die rather than accept the desecration of our holy book and the detention of our women," said Samir al-Dulaimi, head of the Muslim Clerics Association in Anbar province, during the protest.

Mainly Sunni insurgents have stepped up suicide bombings since the government was announced.

A little-known Sunni group claimed responsibility on Friday for a car bombing a day earlier that killed at least two people and wounded five near a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Baghdad. The authenticity of the statement, from the Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba (Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions), could not immediately be verified. A group using that name claimed responsibility for an attack that killed at least 31 people in a Shi'ite town earlier this month and for a March suicide bombing that killed 50 people at a Shi'ite mosque in northern Iraq.

SECTARIAN ANGER

Iraqi officials accuse the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of ordering suicide bombings in a bid to ignite a full-scale sectarian conflict. Recent discoveries of dozens of bodies of Iraqis who had been shot execution-style have fueled the tension. Most victims were Shi'ites but some were Sunni Arabs. Shi'ites have largely heeded calls by their clerics to show restraint but escalating violence has strained their patience.

Although Sunnis lack a united leadership, the Muslim Clerics Association has considerable influence so accusations against the Badr Brigades are likely to focus Sunni anger. "The Badr Brigades are responsible for all that is happening to Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq," Dulaimi said.

Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiery Shi'ite cleric who led two uprisings against U.S. troops in Iraq, told his supporters to avoid getting drawn into a sectarian conflict. "You shall not let yourselves be the starting point of a sectarian strife," Sadr said ahead of Friday prayers near the sacred Shi'ite city of Najaf. His followers burned a U.S. flag to protest against the presence of American troops in Iraq.

In Baghdad, insurgents kept up a campaign to topple the U.S.-backed government with attacks on Iraqi forces. Two policemen were killed in a roadside bomb attack on a patrol. West of the capital, guerrillas fired rockets at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison, wounding five detainees, the U.S. military said. No U.S. troops were injured.

Iraq has repeatedly accused Syria of allowing insurgents to cross its borders to carry out attacks. Damascus denies this. On a visit to Ankara, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said on Friday Iraq would send a delegation to Damascus soon to seek Syria's help in stopping infiltration.

In a move likely to enrage Saddam loyalists, pictures of the toppled dictator in his underpants were splashed across the front page of Britain's biggest-selling daily newspaper on Friday. The same photos later appeared in the New York Post. The Sun also published a picture of Saddam in its Saturday edition, showing the former Iraqi leader in a white robe apparently praying behind razor wire in his prison. The paper has said it got the pictures from U.S. military sources who handed them over "in the hope of dealing a body blow to the resistance in Iraq."

Washington promised an investigation.

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Citation: Waleed Ibrahim, "Baghdad Sunni protest deepens sectarian tension," Reuters, 20 May 2005. Original URL: http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050520/wl_nm/iraq_dc_54&printer=1

Shiites Stage Mass Anti-U.S. Protests

Abdul Hussein Al-obeidi
Associated Press
20 May 2005

Thousands of Shiites stomped on American flags painted on roads outside mosques in a show of anger over the U.S. presence in Iraq, while Sunni leaders called Friday for a closure of places of worship to protest the sectarian violence many fear may erupt into civil war. .......

Tensions spiraled throughout Iraq, particularly in its southern Shiite heartland, as more than 10,000 protesters heeded a call by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to step on and drive over American and Israeli flags painted on roads outside mosques. Many of the worshippers were chanting or waving the Quran, Islam's holy book.

Al-Sadr, a burly, black-bearded cleric, launched two uprisings against U.S. forces in Baghdad and Najaf in April and August last year, then went into hiding before surfacing Monday to demand that U.S.-led forces withdraw from Iraq. His appeal came after U.S. and Iraqi forces detained 13 al-Sadr supporters during a raid this week on a Shiite mosque in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad.

Crowds attended angry services in the Shiite-dominated cities of Najaf, Kufa, and Nasiriyah, where a gunfight broke out between al-Sadr supporters and guards protecting a local provincial governor's office. Four policemen and four civilians were wounded, a hospital official said. Another nine al-Sadr supporters were also wounded, said Sheik al-Khafaji, an official at al-Sadr's Nasiriyah office.

"We warn the government not to fight the al-Sadr movement because all the tyrants of the world could not beat it," Hazim al-Araji, the imam of a Kufa mosque, said during Friday's sermon. "We say to the government: Do not be a tyrant like Saddam or (former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi." Another 5,000 al-Sadr supporters marched in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, the scene of fierce fighting last year between U.S. forces and fighters from his al-Mahdi Army.

Sunni clerics, meanwhile, delivered fiery sermons in Baghdad and Ramadi, in western Iraq's volatile Sunni Triangle, where 3,000 worshippers prayed under a baking sun and heeded a call from three of Iraq's most influential Sunni organizations for places of worship to be shut for three days to protest alleged Shiite violence against them. In Baghdad's Sunni Um al-Qura mosque, cleric Sheik Ahmed al-Samaraei accused the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces of killing Sunni Muslims last week in the capital's eastern Shaab suburb.

"Blood of Muslims is cheap for them," al-Samaraei said. "I demand the government investigates what happened or the matters will worsen."

Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and were oppressed under Saddam, but emerged from January elections with the biggest voting bloc in parliament.

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Citation: Abdul Hussein Al-obeidi, Shiites Stage Mass Anti-U.S. Protests, Associated Press, 20 May 2005. Orginal URL: http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050520/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_050520192130&printer=1

US Moves to Reassert Itself in Iraq Affairs

Paul Richter and Ashraf Khalil
Los Angeles Times
20 May 2005

WASHINGTON _ Facing an intensifying insurgency and a frail government in Baghdad, the Bush administration has reluctantly changed course to deepen its involvement in the process of running Iraq. U.S. officials are taking a more central and visible role in mediating among political factions, pushing for the government to be more inclusive and helping resuscitate public services. At the same time, Washington is maintaining pressure on Iraqi officials to upgrade the nation's fledgling security forces.

The change comes at a time when confidence in the leaders elected in January has been falling and U.S. officials have grown more pessimistic about how soon Iraqi security forces will be able to take charge of the counterinsurgency effort. Both before and after the election, the Bush administration tried to scale back its role and shift decisions to the Iraqi leadership. U.S. officials had feared that a continued high profile might prove counterproductive, giving the impression that Iraqi government leaders were not acting independently. But in recent weeks, as formation of the new government inched along and the insurgency escalated, some Iraqi officials began telling the Americans that they needed more support and mediation to overcome differences among factions, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. "These are Iraqi issues. But that doesn't mean we can't make use of American experience and friendly advice," said Karim Khutar Almusawi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite Muslim political party.

The new American approach came clearly into focus this week. Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, visiting Iraq on Thursday, called for "an inclusive process" in governing the country and urged action on a new constitution. His trip came days after a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice's visit, which carried a signal of American support for the fledgling government, was "very welcome," Almusawi said. U.S. officials acknowledged that they were pressing hard for Iraq to move ahead. Although Iraqis are making the choices, the officials said, Washington has "red lines" that its partners must not cross. For instance, the U.S. insists that the Iraqi government be democratic and that the country be pluralistic, yet united, one official said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of rules that forbid many U.S. officials from talking publicly unless they restrict themselves to the language of prepared policy statements.

One official said that although the Iraqis were "the ultimate determinants of their own destiny _ we have 140,000 troops here, and they are getting shot at." "We're also spending a lot of money. We don't dictate action plans," the official said. "But we constantly remind them that we're working toward the same goal, and we have our 'red lines.' "

Another U.S. official said the administration had been pressuring the recently elected Iraqi leaders to move faster to organize their government because of American worries that their slow start and fractious behavior since the election had heartened insurgents and spurred an increase in violence. He insisted, however, that although American officials would push the Iraqis, they didn't want to make decisions for them. That, he said, would undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi government and cause the United States to become even further entangled in the problems of a country that it one day wants to leave. "There are many people in Iraq who want us to take ownership of some of these problems," he said. "We can't do it."

During their visits to Iraq, Zoellick and Rice made it clear that Washington's top priority was to get the Iraqi government to include greater numbers of Sunni Muslim Arabs, the minority group that has been most alienated and is considered to be behind much of the insurgency. The U.S. diplomats urged Shiite Muslim and Kurdish leaders to draw more Sunni Arabs into the government, give them a larger role in the committee drafting a constitution and write the document in a way that will convince Sunnis that they have a place in the new Iraq. The committee organized last week to write the constitution includes only two Sunni Arabs among its 55 members.

Zoellick told reporters Thursday that although many Sunni Arabs boycotted the election in January, they now "feel they have missed the boat and want to get engaged in the process." During Rice's visit, she sought to mediate a problem among Kurdish Iraqis that has drawn little international notice, but which some Iraqis believe could become a major political stumbling block. The top U.S. diplomat met in the northern city of Irbil with Massoud Barzani, president of Kurdistan and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who has been increasingly at odds with the KDP's long-standing rival party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The two parties forged an alliance during the election, but Barzani and PUK leader Jalal Talabani, now the president of Iraq, have disagreed over which party will have most influence in Iraqi Kurdistan. The standoff has hampered the government's progress in Kurdistan and prevented the newly elected regional parliament from holding its first meeting.

In private talks, Rice urged Barzani to come to an understanding with the PUK and to become more engaged in the work of the government in Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Her public remarks about the meeting were more general, citing the "very important role Mr. Barzani can play" in forging the new constitution. Rice also made it clear that the United States wanted to put more effort into helping the new government improve lagging public services, including providing more electricity and gasoline. Iraq still has long lines at gas stations, and only two-thirds of its electricity needs are met. The continuing shortages are believed to be key reasons that public confidence has been slipping.

Signs emerged during the week that the U.S. diplomats' visits may be helping matters. Talabani and Barzani plan to meet this week to discuss their differences, according to Iraqi political officials and reports in the Kurdish press.

In Baghdad this week, Sunni and Shiite leaders have been discussing ways to involve more Sunnis in the constitution drafting process as advisors, to provide a wider range of opinions and more credibility. This weekend, about 1,000 Sunni elders from a variety of backgrounds are scheduled to meet in the capital to consider candidates for advisory positions. U.S. officials are also hoping that international organizations can help, analysts said. This week, a United Nations team headed by South African lawyer Nicholas "Fink" Haysom, a onetime aide to former President Nelson Mandela, was formally asked to help craft the Iraqi constitution. The Americans "are hoping this will give the process some credibility, inside Iraq and maybe in the eyes of Sunnis outside Iraq too," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a longtime Iraq analyst.

James Dobbins, who has been a top-level U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and other beleaguered regions, said it was essential for outside powers to become engaged in helping shattered and divided countries find a path to reconciliation. The recent experiences in war-torn Afghanistan and the Balkans show that "you need international process to get this done," said Dobbins, who is now head of Rand Corp.'s International Security and Defense Policy Center.

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Citation: Paul Richter and Ashraf Khalil, US Moves to Reassert Itself in Iraq Affairs, Los Angeles Times, 20 May 2005; Original URL: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/la-fg-usiraq20may20,0,331145.story?coll=ny-health-headlines

Not Just A Last Resort? A Global Strike Plan, With a Nuclear Option

William Arkin
The Washington Post
15 May 2005


Early last summer, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a top secret "Interim Global Strike Alert Order" directing the military to assume and maintain readiness to attack hostile countries that are developing weapons of mass destruction, specifically Iran and North Korea.

Two months later, Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, told a reporter that his fleet of B-2 and B-52 bombers had changed its way of operating so that it could be ready to carry out such missions. "We're now at the point where we are essentially on alert," Carlson said in an interview with the Shreveport (La.) Times. "We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes." Carlson said his forces were the U.S. Strategic Command's "focal point for global strike" and could execute an attack "in half a day or less."

In the secret world of military planning, global strike has become the term of art to describe a specific preemptive attack. When military officials refer to global strike, they stress its conventional elements. Surprisingly, however, global strike also includes a nuclear option, which runs counter to traditional U.S. notions about the defensive role of nuclear weapons.

The official U.S. position on the use of nuclear weapons has not changed. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has taken steps to de-emphasize the importance of its nuclear arsenal. The Bush administration has said it remains committed to reducing our nuclear stockpile while keeping a credible deterrent against other nuclear powers. Administration and military officials have stressed this continuity in testimony over the past several years before various congressional committees.

But a confluence of events, beginning with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the president's forthright commitment to the idea of preemptive action to prevent future attacks, has set in motion a process that has led to a fundamental change in how the U.S. military might respond to certain possible threats. Understanding how we got to this point, and what it might mean for U.S. policy, is particularly important now -- with the renewed focus last week on Iran's nuclear intentions and on speculation that North Korea is ready to conduct its first test of a nuclear weapon.

Global strike has become one of the core missions for the Omaha-based Strategic Command, or Stratcom. Once, Stratcom oversaw only the nation's nuclear forces; now it has responsibility for overseeing a global strike plan with both conventional and nuclear options. President Bush spelled out the definition of "full-spectrum" global strike in a January 2003 classified directive, describing it as "a capability to deliver rapid, extended range, precision kinetic (nuclear and conventional) and non-kinetic (elements of space and information operations) effects in support of theater and national objectives."

This blurring of the nuclear/conventional line, wittingly or unwittingly, could heighten the risk that the nuclear option will be used. Exhibit A may be the Stratcom contingency plan for dealing with "imminent" threats from countries such as North Korea or Iran, formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02.

CONPLAN 8022 is different from other war plans in that it posits a small-scale operation and no "boots on the ground." The typical war plan encompasses an amalgam of forces -- air, ground, sea -- and takes into account the logistics and political dimensions needed to sustain those forces in protracted operations. All these elements generally require significant lead time to be effective. (Existing Pentagon war plans, developed for specific regions or "theaters," are essentially defensive responses to invasions or attacks. The global strike plan is offensive, triggered by the perception of an imminent threat and carried out by presidential order.) CONPLAN 8022 anticipates two different scenarios. The first is a response to a specific and imminent nuclear threat, say in North Korea. A quick-reaction, highly choreographed strike would combine pinpoint bombing with electronic warfare and cyberattacks to disable a North Korean response, with commandos operating deep in enemy territory, perhaps even to take possession of the nuclear device.

The second scenario involves a more generic attack on an adversary's WMD infrastructure. Assume, for argument's sake, that Iran announces it is mounting a crash program to build a nuclear weapon. A multidimensional bombing (kinetic) and cyberwarfare (non-kinetic) attack might seek to destroy Iran's program, and special forces would be deployed to disable or isolate underground facilities.

By employing all of the tricks in the U.S. arsenal to immobilize an enemy country -- turning off the electricity, jamming and spoofing radars and communications, penetrating computer networks and garbling electronic commands -- global strike magnifies the impact of bombing by eliminating the need to physically destroy targets that have been disabled by other means.

The inclusion, therefore, of a nuclear weapons option in CONPLAN 8022 -- a specially configured earth-penetrating bomb to destroy deeply buried facilities, if any exist -- is particularly disconcerting. The global strike plan holds the nuclear option in reserve if intelligence suggests an "imminent" launch of an enemy nuclear strike on the United States or if there is a need to destroy hard-to-reach targets.

It is difficult to imagine a U.S. president ordering a nuclear attack on Iran or North Korea under any circumstance. Yet as global strike contingency planning has moved forward, so has the nuclear option.

Global strike finds its origins in pre-Bush administration Air Force thinking about a way to harness American precision and stealth to "kick down the door" of defended territory, making it easier for (perhaps even avoiding the need for) follow-on ground operations.

The events of 9/11 shifted the focus of planning. There was no war plan for Afghanistan on the shelf, not even a generic one. In Afghanistan, the synergy of conventional bombing and special operations surprised everyone. But most important, weapons of mass destruction became the American government focus. It is not surprising, then, that barely three months after that earth-shattering event, the Pentagon's quadrennial Nuclear Posture Review assigned the military and Stratcom the task of providing greater flexibility in nuclear attack options against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria and China.

The Air Force's global strike concept was taken over by Stratcom and made into something new. This was partly in response to the realization that the military had no plans for certain situations. The possibility that some nations would acquire the ability to attack the United States directly with a WMD, for example, had clearly fallen between the command structure's cracks. For example, the Pacific Command in Hawaii had loads of war plans on its shelf to respond to a North Korean attack on South Korea, including some with nuclear options. But if North Korea attacked the United States directly -- or, more to the point, if the U.S. intelligence network detected evidence of preparations for such an attack, Pacific Command didn't have a war plan in place.

In May 2002, Rumsfeld issued an updated Defense Planning Guidance that directed the military to develop an ability to undertake "unwarned strikes . . . [to] swiftly defeat from a position of forward deterrence." The post-9/11 National Security Strategy, published in September 2002, codified preemption, stating that the United States must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies."

"We cannot let our enemies strike first," President Bush declared in the National Security Strategy document.

Stratcom established an interim global strike division to turn the new preemption policy into an operational reality. In December 2002, Adm. James O. Ellis Jr., then Stratcom's head, told an Omaha business group that his command had been charged with developing the capability to strike anywhere in the world within minutes of detecting a target.

Ellis posed the following question to his audience: "If you can find that time-critical, key terrorist target or that weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpile, and you have minutes rather than hours or days to deal with it, how do you reach out and negate that threat to our nation half a world away?"

CONPLAN 8022-02 was completed in November 2003, putting in place for the first time a preemptive and offensive strike capability against Iran and North Korea. In January 2004, Ellis certified Stratcom's readiness for global strike to the defense secretary and the president.

At Ellis's retirement ceremony in July, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Omaha audience that "the president charged you to 'be ready to strike at any moment's notice in any dark corner of the world' [and] that's exactly what you've done."

As U.S. military forces have gotten bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, the attractiveness of global strike planning has increased in the minds of many in the military. Stratcom planners, recognizing that U.S. ground forces are already overcommitted, say that global strike must be able to be implemented "without resort to large numbers of general purpose forces."

When one combines the doctrine of preemption with a "homeland security" aesthetic that concludes that only hyper-vigilance and readiness stand in the way of another 9/11, it is pretty clear how global strike ended up where it is. The 9/11 attacks caught the country unaware and the natural reaction of contingency planners is to try to eliminate surprise in the future. The Nuclear Posture Review and Rumsfeld's classified Defense Planning Guidance both demanded more flexible nuclear options. Global strike thinkers may believe that they have found a way to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle; but they are also having to cater to a belief on the part of those in government's inner circle who have convinced themselves that the gravity of the threats demands that the United States not engage in any protracted debate, that it prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Though the official Washington mantra has always been "we don't discuss war plans," here is a real life predicament that cries out for debate: In classic terms, military strength and contingency planning can dissuade an attacker from mounting hostile actions by either threatening punishment or demonstrating through preparedness that an attacker's objectives could not possibly be achieved. The existence of a nuclear capability, and a secure retaliatory force, moreover, could help to deter an attack -- that is, if the threat is credible in the mind of the adversary.

But the global strike contingency plan cannot be a credible threat if it is not publicly known. And though CONPLAN 8022 suggests a clean, short-duration strike intended to protect American security, a preemptive surprise attack (let alone one involving a nuclear weapon option) would unleash a multitude of additional and unanticipated consequences. So, on both counts, why aren't we talking about it?

Author's e-mail: warkin@igc.org William M. Arkin, who writes frequently about military affairs, is the author of "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World" (Steerforth).


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Citation:
William Arkin. "Not Just A Last Resort? A Global Strike Plan, With a Nuclear Option", Washington Post, 15 May 2005.

Rycroft Memo: minutes of British cabinet meeting on the subject of Iraq, 23 July 2002

originally classified secret and published by the The London Sunday Times, 01 May 2005


SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY


DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.


The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.


(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)


MATTHEW RYCROFT

(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)

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Citation:
"The secret Downing Street memo", The Sunday Times, 01 May 2005.

Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay

Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt
New York Times
1 May 2005

A high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information, senior military and Pentagon officials say. The report on the investigation, which is still a few weeks from being completed and released, will deal with accounts by agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who complained after witnessing detainees subjected to several forms of harsh treatment.

The F.B.I. agents wrote in memorandums that were never meant to be disclosed publicly that they had seen female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners' genitals, and that they had witnessed other detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours.

Although the Pentagon has issued other reports about accusations of abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, the new investigation, by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt of the Air Force, is intended to be the first major inquiry devoted solely to determining what interrogation practices were used at Guantanamo. The investigation was initiated in response to the disclosure of F.B.I. messages that especially concerned Pentagon officials because the bureau's complaints carried great credibility.

It remains unclear, however, how high up the chain of command the report's authors will assign responsibility for the abuses. Pentagon officials have been criticized for absolving high-level officers in previous investigations. The new report by General Schmidt also comes as an increasing number of Guantanamo prisoners who have been released are providing accounts of their treatment for the first time to journalists and supportive American lawyers.

One recently released detainee, interviewed by telephone from Kuwait, said he had witnessed or learned from fellow inmates about many of the abusive practices that have been described in previous reports by nongovernmental groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross. But that detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, also said in a series of interviews with The New York Times that detainees sometimes prevailed over the authorities after protesting conditions with campwide hunger strikes.

Mr. al-Mutairi said there were three major hunger strikes in his more than three years of imprisonment at Guantanamo. He said that after one of them, a protest of guards' handling of copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stepped on, a senior officer delivered an apology over the camp's loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer's apology. A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with The Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans.

The military has long contended that abuses at Guantanamo were aberrations for which soldiers have been disciplined. But in a separate report being released Sunday, Physicians for Human Rights, a group of health professionals based in Cambridge, Mass., says that ''since at least since 2002, the United States has been engaged in systematic psychological torture'' of Guantanamo detainees. The physicians' group said that it believed that the practices of soldiers in Guantanamo had ''led to devastating health consequences for the individuals subjected to them.'' Its report was based mostly on publicly available reports by other organizations and news accounts, but the group's investigators said that they used someone they identified as a confidential source at Guantanamo to corroborate some facts. The group did not describe the source's position or responsibilities at the prison. The physicians' group said its investigators were confident of the veracity of news media accounts of female interrogators flaunting their sexuality to humiliate devout Muslims, including smearing red fluid said to be menstrual blood on prisoners. The report by General Schmidt is intended to cover such accusations, and officials said that some former female interrogators had been questioned.

Lt. Col. Jim Marshall, a spokesman for the United States Southern Command, said Friday that General Schmidt submitted an initial report March 31; the report's authors were still writing their findings, and military lawyers were reviewing them. A final version will probably be approved in two or three weeks by Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the head of the command, Colonel Marshall said. A senior Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been completed, said that the inquiry centered on what procedures were used at Guantanamo and why interrogators thought they were acceptable. The official said there was no evidence of physical mistreatment, but investigators were examining whether interrogators improperly humiliated prisoners or used psychological abuse. The Pentagon official said that the Schmidt report found that some interrogators devised plans that they thought were legal and proper, but in hindsight and with some clearer judgment might have been found to violate permissible standards.

''People determined which interrogation technique they would use, made interrogation plans and wrote them out,'' the Pentagon official said. ''In retrospect, however, how they applied those judgments to a particular technique is what one might want to question.'' Confusion among interrogators and military commanders over how to employ interrogation techniques permitted by the Army's field manual has emerged as a persistent problem in several of the military's investigations into the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, and at other military detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army is preparing to issue a new interrogation manual that expressly prohibits harsh techniques that were revealed during the detainee-abuse scandal.

Mr. al-Mutairi, the released Kuwaiti detainee, described the camp environment as one in which authorities sought to keep prisoners thoroughly obedient. He said the first hunger strike, which spread through word of mouth, was generally caused by the prisoners' despondency over not knowing what would eventually happen to them. It lasted several days, he said, and ended after the authorities released the first handful of detainees and transferred them back to Afghanistan. He said that guards and interrogators used that transfer as an example to give people hope. ''They said, 'This could be you,' and people started to eat again,'' Mr. al-Mutairi said through an interpreter.

The second hunger strike was to protest treatment during interrogations, including the use of sexual taunting by female interrogators. It ended more ambiguously, he said. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a confidential June 2003 report, said the use of sexual taunts by female interrogators was prevalent in 2002 and early 2003, but stopped abruptly in the middle of that year. The third hunger strike was over the treatment of the copies of the Koran, given to each prisoner as part of a package of religious items that the military publicizes as evidence of its religious tolerance.

Mr. al-Mutairi said that the treatment of detainees improved the most just before tribunals began last year. In the tribunals, each prisoner was allowed to go before a three-officer panel to determine if he had been properly imprisoned as an unlawful enemy combatant. ''In general, everybody was behaving very good then,'' he said, ''very professional. Maybe they got orders from the top, but I don't know why.''

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Citation: Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, 1 May 2005, p. 35.

Army Says Only 272,000 Troops -- Not 333,000 -- Are "Serving" in 120 Countries

ESTIMATING HOW MANY OF THE ARMY’S SOLDIERS ARE DEPLOYED
PROVES TRICKY

By Anne Plummer, Inside the Army, 22 November 2004

How many of the Army’s soldiers are off fighting the nation’s wars? The answer depends largely upon who is asked and which soldiers they count. The Army’s latest estimate holds that approximately 256,300 soldiers are serving in 120 countries. The service maintains a force of slightly more than 1 million soldiers, including those in the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard.

According to independent analysis, however, the service has only 178,300 active-duty and reserve soldiers conducting major military operations around the world. Both estimates include those soldiers securing the border in Korea, performing homeland defense missions within the United States, fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conducting peacekeeping in the Balkans, securing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, helping enforce a peace treaty on the Sinai Peninsula and working with forces in the Philippines and Honduras.

So what explains the 78,000-soldier difference?

The service estimate includes those soldiers who may -- or may not -- be engaged in combat missions but fall under the category of “forward-stationed” because of their overseas location. Of the 257,300 soldiers estimated by the Army to be serving in 120 countries, nearly half of them -- 110,500 soldiers -- are in the category of forward-stationed. While most of these forward-stationed soldiers are located in Germany and Korea, even those in Alaska and Hawaii are counted separately from their counterparts in the continental United States, according to the Army. The abroad status of these soldiers, along with those situated in U.S. territories, is enough for the Army to include them in the 257,300 total even though, in the deployment rotation pool, they are much like those inside the continental United States.

“The number of forward-stationed soldiers indicates soldiers who are serving at a great distance from their homes, away from the continental United States,” said Lt. Col. Jerry Healy, a spokesman for the Army’s operations and plans office (G-3), which produced the estimate. “For purposes of monitoring costs and potential morale-associated issues, such numbers are helpful,” he added.

In written statements provided to Inside the Army, the G-3 office said last week that 13,000 soldiers are in Afghanistan, 93,000 are in Iraq and 15,000 are in Kuwait. These 121,000 soldiers are cited by the Army as supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Central Command said 140,000 U.S. military personnel -- a figure that includes those from the other services -- are supporting OIF, and 15,000 personnel are supporting OEF. Approximately 17,000 soldiers are deployed as part of Operation Noble Eagle, the military’s homeland security operation; 1,400 soldiers are at Guantanamo Bay; 700 are in the Sinai Peninsula; 800 are in Honduras as part of Joint Task Force-Bravo; 200 are in the Philippines; and 2,500 are in the Balkans. Another 2,200 are listed as “other ops/exercises,” according to the G-3. The Army has another 32,500 soldiers stationed in Korea, according to a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea.

Add these deployments together, and the Army has 178,300 of its soldiers engaged in what it calls major combat operations. Add the soldiers forward-stationed in places like Europe, the U.S. territories, Alaska and Hawaii, and the Army arrives at 256,300 soldiers “serving” in 120 countries.

Earlier estimates of deployed soldiers produced by the Army were much higher. Until recently, the service has said some 330,000 soldiers were deployed. The estimate was widely quoted by uniformed officers to illustrate the high operational tempo of the force, and lawmakers have used it in heated debates about the appropriate size of the force.

But that figure prompted a phone call to the Army from Charles Knight, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives. Knight was preparing a briefing on whether the Army was stretched too thin and was trying to cross-check some of the numbers then listed on various Army Web sites. Using what Knight called a “napkin-back” estimate, he thought 250,000 sounded closer to the correct number of deployed soldiers -- to include forward-deployed soldiers.

Knight contacted the Army and, on Oct. 18, received a response saying the “latest number” was 269,000. A public Army Web page (www.army.mil/operations) that Knight had used for reference eventually was changed to note that approximately “272,000 soldiers are serving in 120 countries.”

According to Knight, the Web site had previously stated that 330,000 soldiers were “deployed overseas in 120 countries” (Inside the Army, Nov. 15, p12). The new figures, however, still didn’t quite add up. In a Nov. 12 statement provided to ITA, the Army stated that 126,000 soldiers were forward-stationed. The estimate included those in Korea, as well as the 62,000 soldiers in Europe. Approximately 15,500 of the Army troops stationed in Europe, however, had been deployed to Iraq, said Elke Herberger, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Europe. Another 200 of USAREUR’s soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan, Herberger said.

It appears those soldiers were being counted twice -- both as forward-stationed and deployed in Iraq. After being questioned on this point by Inside the Army, the service reduced by 15,500 its estimate of 126,000 forward-stationed soldiers. The Army’s estimate of 271,800 soldiers serving in 120 countries fell to 256,300. The Army maintained, however, that the 121,000-soldier estimate of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was accurate.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Rodney said the Army’s estimate of 330,000 soldiers was calculated in 2003, when the second rotation of troops were being sent into Iraq. “There was a temporary increase in the total number of deployed soldiers due to the transition of forces in the OIF1 and OIF2 rotations,” he said Nov. 19.

Although the number is unlikely to go that high again because the Army is now staggering its rotations, the estimate will continue to fluctuate as the service continues to rotate troops, Rodney said. Counting soldiers likely will become tougher as the Army continues to draw down forces abroad under a new basing strategy that will pull soldiers out of Korea and Germany.

The Army’s presence in Korea, for example, was 37,500 soldiers until recently, when 5,000 of those soldiers were sent to Iraq. That recent deployment means the Army would have to ensure the 5,000-personnel brigade combat team sent from Korea to Iraq is counted as part of the OIF force and not as among the 110,500 forward-stationed soldiers.

While several lawmakers and defense officials continue to debate end strength and other Army issues using an estimate off by at least 70,000 soldiers, the miscalculation is unlikely to alter the course of debate on whether the service needs more end strength: Both sides agree that there are not enough soldiers available for combat tours in Iraq and other hotspots.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who oppose a permanent end strength boost, say the size of the force isn’t the problem. The officials contend that the more than 1 million soldiers in the force need to be reorganized because too many of them are not trained and equipped for the types of missions needed in theater.

Meanwhile, advocates of a bigger Army say it remains unclear whether the new organizational plan will translate into a more potent force. And they maintain that the force needs immediate relief.

According to Knight, though, everyone should be reading from the same page. “The fact that official sources are producing mistaken information is disturbing,” Knight wrote in a Nov. 10 statement issued by the Project on Defense Alternatives. “It is more so that the misinformation is quickly picked up and repeated in the press.”

© 2004 Inside Washington Publishers
______________________________

ARMY SAYS ONLY 272,000 TROOPS -- NOT 330,000 -- ARE ‘SERVING’ IN
120 COUNTRIES

by Anne Plummer, Inside the Army, 15 November 2004

The Army recently dropped its widely quoted claim that 333,000 soldiers are deployed in 120 countries after a defense analyst notified the service that the figures didn’t add up.

The new assertion is that only 272,000 soldiers are “serving” in 120 countries. Its appearance on a public Web site calls into question how the service arrived at the 333,000 figure in the first place, and whether it miscounted -- or, as the defense analyst suggests, whether the Army redeployed or simply “misplaced” some 61,000 soldiers in recent weeks.

More likely, said Charles Knight, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, MA, the Army is still miscounting. “They certainly haven’t told me where they made the error,” he told Inside the Army last week. Knight said he discovered the error a few weeks ago when trying to prepare a briefing on whether the Army is stretched too thin.

The issue of the service’s congressionally mandated size, or “end strength,” has been hotly debated since the war in Iraq began in spring 2003. Knight said he was trying to calculate the number of active-duty soldiers deployed overseas when he discovered apparent “accounting anomalies,” including some published on a public Army Web site (www.army.mil/operations). Until recently, the Web site stated that 333,000 soldiers were “deployed overseas” in 120 countries, according to Knight. But when he clicked on individual icons on a map representing various overseas deployments, including the war in Iraq, the total came to only 172,500, with another 3,000 personnel listed as deployed in “other operations/exercises around the globe.” Another 17,000 personnel were deployed inside the United States in support of homeland defense, according to the site.

Knight estimated that even if the Army counted those troops deployed inside the United States at training ranges or assigned to homeland defense missions, as well as those permanently stationed in Europe, the total still would have been far from the 330,000 figure widely quoted in the press and by senior Army officials. Knight said he contacted the Army about the apparent discrepancies and, on Oct. 18, received a response saying the “latest number” was 269,000. The Web page eventually was changed to note that approximately “272,000 soldiers are serving in 120 countries.”

“Since there are soldiers serving in 120 countries, and since we list just the major operations, the numbers will never add up,” the Army told Knight, according to a Nov. 10 statement issued by the Project on Defense Alternatives. Knight says the Army also said some of the locations will not be reported because of security concerns. Even so, Knight says the Army’s move to lower the number raises questions about how the Army is informing the public -- and whether the revised figures are correct.

“The fact that official sources are producing mistaken information is disturbing,” Knight says in the Nov. 10 statement. “It is more so that the misinformation is quickly picked up and repeated in the press.”

As of Nov. 11, the Army Web site maintained that 187,600 troops are deployed in support of the major operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; Operation Noble Eagle, homeland defense missions; detainee operations at Guantanamo Bay; peacekeeping in the Balkans; operations in Korea; and the Multinational Force and Observers Mission in the Sinai Peninsula.

But if 272,000 are serving, where are the remaining 84,400 soldiers? Some of them could be deployed at Army training ranges like the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Polk, LA. Also, the Army’s use of the more general term “serving” -- as opposed to “deployed” -- seems to indicate the total figure includes personnel stationed in Europe. Unlike soldiers in South Korea, who are assigned the task of protecting the country from an attack from the north, soldiers in Europe are not typically regarded as supporting a combat mission; rather, they are considered “forward deployed” because of their overseas location.

In a statement provided Nov. 12 to Inside the Army, a service spokesman confirmed that the 272,000 serving soldiers include 126,000 troops “forward stationed,” primarily in Korea and Europe. He did not say how the Army arrived at the earlier 330,000 figure.

© 2004 Inside Washington Publishers

Afraid to tell the truth

Joe Conason
Salon.com
06 May 2005

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A secret memo publicized in Britain confirms the lies on which Bush based his Iraq policy. Why has it received so little notice in the U.S. press?

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Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?

There is a "smoking memo" that confirms the worst assumptions about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, but although that memo generated huge pre-election headlines in Britain, its existence has hardly been mentioned here.

On May 1, the Sunday Times of London published the confidential minutes of a meeting held almost three years ago at 10 Downing Stree, residence of the British prime minister, where Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet discussed the British government's ongoing consultations with the Bush administration over Iraq. Those in attendance included the defense secretary, the foreign secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence chief and Blair's closest personal aides.

The minutes of that meeting, set down in a memorandum by foreign policy advisor Matthew Rycroft, were circulated to all who were present. Dated July 23, 2002, the Rycroft memo begins with the following admonishment: "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." Evidently that doesn't include those of us living in the United States, although press coverage of the document in Britain created a sensational 11th-hour backlash against Blair. (The prime minister admitted that the Iraq war had been a "deeply divisive" issue as he savored a narrow election victory Friday.)

What the minutes clearly show is that Bush and Blair secretly agreed to wage war for "regime change" nearly a year before the invasion -- and months before they asked the United Nations Security Council to support renewed weapons inspections as an alternative to armed conflict. The minutes also reveal the lingering doubts over the legal and moral justifications for war within the Blair government.

But for Americans, the most important lines in the July 23 minutes are those attributed to Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, who in spy jargon is to be referred to only as "C." The minutes indicate that Sir Richard had discovered certain harsh realities during a visit to the United States that summer:

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route ... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

At the same meeting, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirmed Sir Richard's assessment:

"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Those few lines sum up everything that went wrong in the months and years to come -- and place the clear stamp of falsehood on the Bush administration's public pronouncements as the president pushed the nation toward war.

When Bush signed the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq on Oct. 16, 2002 -- three months after the Downing Street memorandum -- he didn't say that military action was "inevitable." Instead, the president assured Americans and the world that he still hoped war could be avoided.

"I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary," he said at a press conference. "Hopefully this can be done peacefully. Hopefully we can do this without any military action." He promised that he had "carefully weighed the human cost of every option before us" and that if the United States went into battle, it would be "as a last resort."

In the months that followed, as we now know, the president and his aides grossly exaggerated, and in some instances falsified, the intelligence concerning the Iraqi regime's supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Defenders of his policy have since insisted that he too was misled with bad information, provided by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies.

But "C" heard something very different from Blair's allies in Washington.

According to him, Bush, determined to oust Saddam, planned to "justify" a preventive war by tying the terrorist threat to Iraq's WMD arsenal -- and manipulating the intelligence to fit his policy instead of determining the policy based on the facts.

That is precisely what happened, and precisely the opposite of what the president vowed to do. Not only did Bush and his top aides lie about their approach to the alleged threat posed by Iraq, but they continued to lie about that process in the war's aftermath.

And what of the aftermath of the war in Iraq? Evidently "little discussion" was devoted to that topic as the Bush administration prepared to sell the war, or so "C" reported to his colleagues in London. Iraqis and Americans, as well as their coalition partners, have been suffering the dismal results of that lack of planning ever since.

Despite much happy talk from Washington about the successes achieved in Iraq, recent polls show that Americans are more disenchanted than ever with the war. Nearly 60 percent now say the president made the wrong decision and that the outcome is not worth the price in lives and treasure. What would they say if the media dared to tell them the truth about how it all happened?
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Citation:
Joe Conason. "Afraid to tell the truth", Salon.com, 06 May 2005.

U.S. back to stage one in Iraq

Martin Sieff
United Press International
May 2, 2005

The most sobering aspect of the ongoing wave of terror in Iraq is not that things have changed, but that they haven't.

By Monday, at least 74 people had been killed in attacks all across the country since Friday and so far the numbers show no signs of abating.

The political and strategic motivation for the current wave of attacks appears clear: It is to discredit the Shiite-Kurdish coalition government that has finally been laboriously cobbled together after many weeks of wrangling. It would appear, therefore, that the insurgents had carefully husbanded their resources and prepared for this moment over the past three months since the Jan. 30 national elections.

The scale of these attacks certainly did not come as a surprise to U.S. military intelligence officers in Iraq or to professional analysts in Washington. Most of them have repeatedly warned both within the Army and in think tanks for many weeks that the idea that the elections had knocked the steam out of the insurgency and politically isolated it was illusory. There has been no significant evidence whatsoever on the ground to support that contention.

Even when assaults on U.S. forces in Iraq fell significantly in number and in terms of casualties inflicted through February and March, murderous assaults on Iraqis, especially on the new Iraqi security forces continued unabated. And even where U.S. casualties fell significantly, they never fell below the level of at least one U.S. soldier being killed per day. During March, 34 were killed; more were seriously injured.

Furthermore, U.S. military analysts had noted the increasing coordination, ambition and sophistication of attempted insurgent operations over the past few weeks. Nor did the timing of the new offensive come as a surprise to them. The prime political goal of seeking to discredit the new government before it could establish itself was an obvious one.

What is of far greater concern to U.S. commanders and analysts is that despite this broad strategic sense of when, and even on what scale, the new attacks would come, U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies have so far proven totally unable to prevent them. This appears to graphically demonstrate that U.S. forces in Iraq two years after occupying the country are losing the most important front in the war -- the intelligence one.

In this sense, indeed, the position of the U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies, for all the overwhelming superiority of U.S. forces and firepower, is far inferior to that in Vietnam during the 1967-72 period. For the Phoenix counter-insurgency program did indeed inflict devastating damage on the political, undercover and intelligence forces or cadres of the Viet Cong. By contrast, U.S. forces and those of the new Iraqi government have so far signally failed to systematically penetrate the insurgent forces and significantly disrupt their organization.

Instead, evidence has been accumulating that extreme Islamist groups including al-Qaida have systematically penetrated the new Iraqi police and security forces and that they enjoy excellent and lethally efficient intelligence on their personnel.

Iraqi security forces have repeatedly been massacred at their mustering points. Individual members have been assassinated at home or kidnapped and then mutilated and killed. The failure of the U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies to protect their own stands in striking contrast to the success security forces in neighboring Saudi Arabia have had. They repeatedly were able to react fast with accurate intelligence and devastating raids against al-Qaida attempts to terrorize and intimidate them.

The U.S. authorities in Iraq therefore are now paying big time -- and the Iraqi people are paying even more -- for two cardinal errors during the first crucial months after the occupation when the Department of Defense civilian echelon jealously ran policy in Iraq, freezing out both the State Department, whose officers had accurately predicted the nature of the problems that would be faced, and even the professional uninformed military themselves.

The first big mistake was totally dismantling former President Saddam Hussein's armed forces rather than taking them over and using them to maintain order. In the security vacuum that was then created, Saddam Baathist, or Arab Socialist loyalists, and the Sunni Islamist forces were able rapidly establish themselves.

The second great U.S. mistake was to try and rush up the new Iraqi security forces from scratch too quickly and on far too vast scale.

This was especially ironic given the Anglophile, excessive admiration neo-conservatives have always displayed toward the British Empire. For wherever the British established themselves, especially in Iraq after World War I, they spent years and took exceptional pains to try and slowly and carefully built up native military forces on whose reliability they could especially rely.

Revealingly, the one province of the entire British Empire where this policy proved the most difficult and ultimately unsuccessful was Iraq. The Iraqi army rebelled three times in only 22 years against political leaderships established by and supported by the British between 1936 and 1958.

Nevertheless, the insurgents are still a long way away from winning. They have repeatedly been able to mount formidable waves of terrorist attacks for a few days, or even weeks at a time, all the way back to August 2003. But they have not so far been able to sustain that level of activity for any longer period. To do so may risk exposing their underlying networks of support and intelligence.

Still, the current wave of attacks does confirm that the security structures and state institutions of Iraq are as yet totally inadequate for the ambitious goals that President George W. Bush has made clear that he demands of them. Neither the Jan. 30 elections nor the formation of a still fragile and fractious coalition government has proven any kind of magic solution to make the insurgents' support, resources and infrastructure vanish. The U.S. forces in Iraq and their allies are still only at Step One on the long road to that destination.
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Citation:
Martin Sieff. "U.S. back to stage one in Iraq", United Press International, May 2, 2005. Original URL: http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050502-045347-6429r.htm

Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Preventing Proactive Moves

Mark Mazzetti
Los Angeles Times
May 2, 2005

WASHINGTON — The strains imposed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made it far more difficult for the U.S. military to beat back new acts of aggression, launch a pre-emptive strike or prevent conflict in another part of the world, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded in a classified analysis presented to Congress today.

In a sober assessment of the Pentagon's ability to deal with global threats, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers concluded that the American military is at greater risk this year than last year of being unable to properly execute the missions for which it must prepare around the globe.

The assessment stated that the military is at "significant risk" of being unable to prevail against enemies abroad in the manner that Pentagon war plans mandate.

Pentagon officials said that the analysis — the latest assessment of military risk that the Pentagon sends each year to Congress — concluded that the United States military would still be able to win any war the president asked it to fight. It would just be more difficult to win in the time frame and with the number of troops detailed in the Pentagon's myriad contingency plans.

"The assessment is that we would succeed, but there would be higher casualties and more collateral damage," said one senior Defense official. "We would have to win uglier."

The analysis reflects at a strategic level the strains on manpower, equipment and other capabilities that have been highly visible during the continuing struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new assessment, which comes amid rising tensions with Iran and North Korea over the advances both countries have made in developing nuclear weapons, does not conclude that the military is at a greater risk of being unable to carry out its missions to protect U.S. soil. That risk, Defense officials said, is assessed as "moderate."

Military and civilian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing details about a classified document. And they stressed that America's enemies should not take solace in the new analysis, nor think that the United States is somehow more vulnerable than it was last year.

Yet Myers' report, the "Military Risk Assessment and Threat Mitigation Plan," is a concession to the military realities of the past three years.

Just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon issued a sweeping defense strategy detailing a new vision for winning swift wars against global terrorist networks and outlaw regimes. One year later, the White House unveiled its "National Security Strategy," which discussed using the U.S. military to launch preemptive wars and snuff out threats before they materialized — a strategy that would later be known as "The Bush Doctrine."

Now, with nearly 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq two years after the fall of Baghdad, along with commitments in Afghanistan and for the global war on terrorism, many Pentagon officials admit that the bloody insurgency in Iraq has tempered that vision of what the U.S. military can and cannot do.

"The activities we have taken on are at least as great as what we anticipated that we would be able to," said a second senior Defense official, adding that additional tasks would be "impacted" by the current U.S. deployments abroad.

Another reason for the new assessment, officials said, is that the Pentagon has rewritten every major war plan over the past few years — using advances in technology to plan faster wars with fewer U.S. troops.

The new standards are more difficult to meet, and thus Myers believes the military is at greater risk of being unable to hit specific targets for planning and executing missions.

"The performance targets that we've set for operational force — we've raised those," said the second senior Defense official.

And one chart included in the report stated that while the risk is assessed to be higher this year, it is "trending lower" over the next two years as the Pentagon hopes to reduce the number of troops stationed in Iraq.

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Citation:
Mark Mazzetti. "Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Preventing Proactive Moves", Los Angeles Times, 02 May 2005. Original URL:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-050205myers_lat,0,46401,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines