By Jon Hemming
Reuters, 27 September 2007
BALKH, Afghanistan - As Afghanistan struggles to cut its raging opium production, aid workers try to find alternative crops, but for some former poppy farmers the choice was easy -- they planted marijuana instead.
Afghanistan's opium crop topped all records this year, producing some 93 percent of the world's supply of the drug.
But while there has been a sharp rise in poppy production in the troubled south, the drug crop has been eliminated in a growing number of provinces in the safer north of the country.
Balkh province in the north was trumpeted as a success story -- from 7,000 hectares of poppies cultivated in 2006, it was declared opium-free in 2007 after strong local government action.
But around the ancient citadel of Balkh, in fields where pink poppy flowers stood last year, jagged green marijuana stalks poke above other crops and in places whole cannabis fields produce a pungent aroma strong enough to be picked by passing motorists.
The farmers are still cautious. "They are not my fields," said Shamseddin, surrounded by head-high cannabis plants in full flower. "I don't know who they belong to," he said, dropping a sickle to the ground and nudging it away with his foot.
Others said they only planted marijuana to shield their cotton fields from livestock or that it was just a trial crop.
LACK OF FUNDS
"The landlords used to plant poppy, but then the government came along and destroyed the crops," said farm worker Mohammad Yassin.
"This year we planted marijuana, the dealers will come and buy the crop from us, so we'll see what we make from it. We probably won't plant any next year."
Marijuana, while not as profitable as opium, still makes more money than other legal crops.
"In order to survive and feed their families, the farmers have to cultivate marijuana," said Balkh drug squad chief Faiz Mohammad. "Other crops don't give a good profit."
Last month the United States unveiled a carrot-and-stick strategy to combat opium production. It plans to spend $25 million to $50 million in the next fiscal year to reward provinces that make significant progress against drugs.
The governor of Balkh, a former warlord, was credited for much of the success in eliminating opium in his province, but has complained he has yet to receive the promised incentives for doing so, let alone any funds for cutting back cannabis crops.
"Every year the international community announces that it is spending millions of dollars on counter-narcotics but we haven't seen a dime of that money," the Institute of War and Peace Reporting quoted governor Mohammad Atta as saying.
Balkh drugs squad chief Faiz Mohammad said his officers had made a start in informing farmers they should not plant cannabis and had requested funding from the national and local government to destroyed marijuana fields, but it had yet to arrive.
Citation: Jon Hemming. "Afghan farmers find alternative to opium: marijuana," Reuters, 27 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070927/wl_nm/afghan_drugs_dc
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28 September 2007
25 September 2007
Afghan army may fill key security role by 2009: NATO
By David Brunnstrom
Reuters, 24 September 2007
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Afghan forces may be able to take over some large-scale regional security operations from NATO but not before 2009 or 2010, a senior NATO commander said on Monday.
Brigadier-General Vincent Lafontaine, operations commander of the 40,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan, said the process of trying to put the Afghan army at the head of some missions had already started and the aim was to step this up next spring.
"It's the beginning and we will have to improve," the French general told a news conference in Brussels by video-link.
Asked when the Afghan National Army (ANA) might be able to take over a regional security role from some of NATO's provincial reconstruction teams, he replied:
"It could not be possible on a large scale before 2009-2010."
Western forces have been in Afghanistan since shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities by al Qaeda, whose chief Osama bin Laden was sheltered by the Taliban regime.
The country has seen a steady escalation of violence in the last two years, the worst since the Taliban's 2001 overthrow.
Lafontaine said NATO did not have the resources in Afghanistan to control such a large country quickly, so its strategy relied on improving the capabilities of the army and police.
"IT WILL TAKE MORE TIME"
"Because we are under-resourced, it will take more time than we had initially hoped," he said.
The general said the Afghan army should reach 70,000 men by 2009 but a lot of work was still needed to create an efficient police force.
Lafontaine said the NATO force still needed additional transport and medical evacuation helicopters.
Holding ground secured by NATO troops required better Afghan army capabilities, while this in turn required more embedded NATO teams to help with training and the conduct of operations, he said.
Lafontaine said NATO had been successful in the past year in restricting large-scale insurgent activity and in limiting the Taliban to harassing operations, such as suicide and roadside bombings and kidnappings.
But he stressed NATO's overall aim was not military victory, but to help create conditions for a political solution.
A military operation in the southern province of Helmand to disrupt insurgent activity and clear the way to deploy Afghan troops there was drawing to a close, he said, adding:
"Currently the results seem good."
Some 2,500 troops launched the operation on Wednesday. Most are British, but the force also includes Afghan, Czech, Estonian and U.S. contingents.
Citation: David Brunnstrom. "Afghan army may fill key security role by 2009: NATO," Reuters, 24 September 2007.
Original URL: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldnews&storyID=2007-09-24T141749Z_01_L24581072_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-NATO.xml
Reuters, 24 September 2007
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Afghan forces may be able to take over some large-scale regional security operations from NATO but not before 2009 or 2010, a senior NATO commander said on Monday.
Brigadier-General Vincent Lafontaine, operations commander of the 40,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan, said the process of trying to put the Afghan army at the head of some missions had already started and the aim was to step this up next spring.
"It's the beginning and we will have to improve," the French general told a news conference in Brussels by video-link.
Asked when the Afghan National Army (ANA) might be able to take over a regional security role from some of NATO's provincial reconstruction teams, he replied:
"It could not be possible on a large scale before 2009-2010."
Western forces have been in Afghanistan since shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities by al Qaeda, whose chief Osama bin Laden was sheltered by the Taliban regime.
The country has seen a steady escalation of violence in the last two years, the worst since the Taliban's 2001 overthrow.
Lafontaine said NATO did not have the resources in Afghanistan to control such a large country quickly, so its strategy relied on improving the capabilities of the army and police.
"IT WILL TAKE MORE TIME"
"Because we are under-resourced, it will take more time than we had initially hoped," he said.
The general said the Afghan army should reach 70,000 men by 2009 but a lot of work was still needed to create an efficient police force.
Lafontaine said the NATO force still needed additional transport and medical evacuation helicopters.
Holding ground secured by NATO troops required better Afghan army capabilities, while this in turn required more embedded NATO teams to help with training and the conduct of operations, he said.
Lafontaine said NATO had been successful in the past year in restricting large-scale insurgent activity and in limiting the Taliban to harassing operations, such as suicide and roadside bombings and kidnappings.
But he stressed NATO's overall aim was not military victory, but to help create conditions for a political solution.
A military operation in the southern province of Helmand to disrupt insurgent activity and clear the way to deploy Afghan troops there was drawing to a close, he said, adding:
"Currently the results seem good."
Some 2,500 troops launched the operation on Wednesday. Most are British, but the force also includes Afghan, Czech, Estonian and U.S. contingents.
Citation: David Brunnstrom. "Afghan army may fill key security role by 2009: NATO," Reuters, 24 September 2007.
Original URL: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldnews&storyID=2007-09-24T141749Z_01_L24581072_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-NATO.xml
18 September 2007
What happens to private contractors who kill Iraqis? Maybe nothing
Blackwater USA employees are accused of killing several civilians, but there might not be anyone with the authority to prosecute them.
By Alex Koppelman and Mark Benjamin
Salon.com, 18 September 2007
An incident this past weekend in which employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm that has become controversial for its extensive role in the war in Iraq, allegedly opened fire on and killed several Iraqis seems to be the last straw for Iraqi tolerance of the company. Iraqi government officials have promised action, including but not limited to the suspension or outright revocation of the company's license to operate in Iraq.
But pulling Blackwater's license may be all the Iraqis can do. Should any Iraqis ever seek redress for the deaths of the civilians in a criminal court, they will be out of luck. Because of an order promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-defunct American occupation government, there appears to be almost no chance that the contractors involved would be, or could be, successfully prosecuted in any court in Iraq. CPA Order 17 says private contractors working for the U.S. or coalition governments in Iraq are not subject to Iraqi law. Should any attempt be made to prosecute Blackwater in the United States, meanwhile, it's not clear what law, if any, applies.
"Blackwater and all these other contractors are beyond the reach of the justice process in Iraq. They can not be held to account," says Scott Horton, who chairs the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association. "There is nothing [the Iraqi government] can do that gives them the right to punish someone for misbehaving or doing anything else."
L. Paul Bremer, then the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the initial occupation government of Iraq, issued CPA Order 17 in June 2004, the day before the CPA ceased to exist. "Contractors," it says, "shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts."
The Iraqi government has contested the continued application of this order, but because of restraints that inhibit the Iraqi government from changing or revoking CPA orders, Order 17 technically still has legal force in Iraq. Furthermore, as Peter W. Singer, an expert on private security contractors who is a senior fellow at the center-left Brookings Institute, points out, in order for the Iraqi government to prosecute those contractors, the U.S. government would have to accede to it. And that, Singer says, poses a whole new set of thorny questions.
"The question for the U.S. is whether it will hand over its citizens or contractors to an Iraqi court, particularly an Iraqi court that's going to try and make a political point out of this," Singer says. If the United States is not willing to do so because of concerns that the trial will be politically motivated, he adds, there's a new question at hand. "If we really say that openly, doesn't that defeat everything we heard in the Kabuki play last week with [General David] Petraeus and [U.S. Ambassador Ryan] Crocker, that everything was going great? What happens if we say, 'No, we don't think you can deal with this fairly in your justice system?'"
That leaves international and U.S. law. But international law is probably out. Even before the Bush administration, the United States had established a precedent of rejecting the jurisdiction of international courts. The United States is not, for example, a member of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. (In 2005, the government of Iraq announced its decision to join the court; it reversed that decision two weeks later.)
U.S. law, meanwhile, is hopelessly murky. More so than in any of America's previous conflicts, contractors are an integral part of the U.S. effort in Iraq, providing logistical support and performing essential functions that were once the province of the official military. There are currently at least 180,000 in Iraq, more than the total number of U.S. troops. But the introduction of private contractors into Iraq was not accompanied by a definitive legal construct specifying potential consequences for alleged criminal acts. Various members of Congress are now attempting to clarify the laws that might apply to contractors. In the meantime, experts who spoke with Salon say there's little clarity on what law applies to contractors like the ones involved in Sunday's incident, and the Bush administration has shown little desire to take action against contractor malfeasance.
In June of this year, the Congressional Research Service -- a nonpartisan research arm of Congress -- issued a report on private security contractors in Iraq that included a discussion of their legal status. The report's authors gave a bleak picture of prospects for prosecution under U.S. law, referring at one point to "the U.S. government's practical inability to discipline errant contract employees."
The problem is that no one seems quite sure what law, if any, would apply to security firm contractors, and any potential applications are untested and would be vigorously challenged. Uniformed military personnel are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and "persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field" are technically subject as well. But the application of the UCMJ to these contractors would undoubtedly be challenged on constitutional grounds, and even if it were to hold up in court, the CRS report noted a particular irony: At least one court has held that "a serviceman who had been discharged was no longer amenable to court-martial." In other words, Blackwater could protect its employees from the UCMJ simply by firing them.
Another potential avenue for prosecution is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000, or MEJA, which applies to civilians. Originally written only to cover civilian employees of the Department of Defense and contractors working for the DOD, it was changed after the Abu Ghraib scandal, which involved contractors not working for DOD, to cover persons "employed by or accompanying the Armed Forces outside the United States." But even that definition might be too narrow to apply to the Blackwater employees in question. Those employees, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed in an interview with Salon, work for the State Department, not the DOD. "[They] report to our diplomatic security office in Baghdad."
Horton says he believes that "Blackwater is preparing to make the argument, if they ever get in the crosshairs of this, that they are there with a Department of State diplomatic contract and, therefore, MEJA doesn't apply."
Rep. David Price, D-N.C., is the sponsor of a law that attempts to deal with this loophole, the Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007.
"I just want to know whether it can and will be prosecuted if prosecution is warranted, and I don't think we have the clear legislative coverage of this that we should," Price said in an interview Monday. "If the contractors were under a DOD contract, that wouldn't be the question so much as whether the administration's doing its job pressing forward, but here you do have a real question about whether it has the authority in the first place."
Singer concurs. "There's a lot of stuff that could be done. It's just there's no easy answers," he says. "You could use them as a test case for UCMJ. You could hand them over to the Iraqis. President Bush says it's a functioning democracy. You could try to test out MEJA on them. You could investigate it and find out that actually it was a rightful shooting. There's lots of coulds, but there's no silver-bullet solution. We've painted ourselves in a corner."
Back in Baghdad, the Iraqis may not have the power to enforce the one action they've taken so far, the simple revocation of Blackwater's license. A spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, told reporters Monday: "We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq. The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice."
But it's not clear that Blackwater even has a license to revoke. Speculation abounded on Monday that it did not. On June 16, the Washington Post reported that "Blackwater USA ... [has] not applied, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew."
Lawrence T. Peter, the director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an industry trade group, told the Post on Monday that Blackwater did have a license. He seems to be contradicted by his own organization's Web site, however, which lists Blackwater as in the process of obtaining one. Salon contacted Peter to ask whether Blackwater was licensed. He did not answer the question, but a spokesman did forward a statement emphasizing that members of his trade group "pride themselves" on abiding by the "Rules for Use of Force" in effect.
By Monday afternoon, Iraqi officials seemed to be backing away from their earlier statements, making their pronouncements about Blackwater's license much less definitive. Time magazine reported that "a senior Iraqi official ... said that prime minister Maliki is expected to discuss the episode at a cabinet session scheduled for Tuesday and that, as far as the license being permanently revoked, 'it's not a done deal yet.'"
Additional reporting by Erin Renzas.
Citation: Alex Koppelman and Mark Benjamin. "What happens to private contractors who kill Iraqis? Maybe nothing," Salon.com, 18 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/18/blackwater/print.html
By Alex Koppelman and Mark Benjamin
Salon.com, 18 September 2007
An incident this past weekend in which employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm that has become controversial for its extensive role in the war in Iraq, allegedly opened fire on and killed several Iraqis seems to be the last straw for Iraqi tolerance of the company. Iraqi government officials have promised action, including but not limited to the suspension or outright revocation of the company's license to operate in Iraq.
But pulling Blackwater's license may be all the Iraqis can do. Should any Iraqis ever seek redress for the deaths of the civilians in a criminal court, they will be out of luck. Because of an order promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-defunct American occupation government, there appears to be almost no chance that the contractors involved would be, or could be, successfully prosecuted in any court in Iraq. CPA Order 17 says private contractors working for the U.S. or coalition governments in Iraq are not subject to Iraqi law. Should any attempt be made to prosecute Blackwater in the United States, meanwhile, it's not clear what law, if any, applies.
"Blackwater and all these other contractors are beyond the reach of the justice process in Iraq. They can not be held to account," says Scott Horton, who chairs the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association. "There is nothing [the Iraqi government] can do that gives them the right to punish someone for misbehaving or doing anything else."
L. Paul Bremer, then the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the initial occupation government of Iraq, issued CPA Order 17 in June 2004, the day before the CPA ceased to exist. "Contractors," it says, "shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts."
The Iraqi government has contested the continued application of this order, but because of restraints that inhibit the Iraqi government from changing or revoking CPA orders, Order 17 technically still has legal force in Iraq. Furthermore, as Peter W. Singer, an expert on private security contractors who is a senior fellow at the center-left Brookings Institute, points out, in order for the Iraqi government to prosecute those contractors, the U.S. government would have to accede to it. And that, Singer says, poses a whole new set of thorny questions.
"The question for the U.S. is whether it will hand over its citizens or contractors to an Iraqi court, particularly an Iraqi court that's going to try and make a political point out of this," Singer says. If the United States is not willing to do so because of concerns that the trial will be politically motivated, he adds, there's a new question at hand. "If we really say that openly, doesn't that defeat everything we heard in the Kabuki play last week with [General David] Petraeus and [U.S. Ambassador Ryan] Crocker, that everything was going great? What happens if we say, 'No, we don't think you can deal with this fairly in your justice system?'"
That leaves international and U.S. law. But international law is probably out. Even before the Bush administration, the United States had established a precedent of rejecting the jurisdiction of international courts. The United States is not, for example, a member of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. (In 2005, the government of Iraq announced its decision to join the court; it reversed that decision two weeks later.)
U.S. law, meanwhile, is hopelessly murky. More so than in any of America's previous conflicts, contractors are an integral part of the U.S. effort in Iraq, providing logistical support and performing essential functions that were once the province of the official military. There are currently at least 180,000 in Iraq, more than the total number of U.S. troops. But the introduction of private contractors into Iraq was not accompanied by a definitive legal construct specifying potential consequences for alleged criminal acts. Various members of Congress are now attempting to clarify the laws that might apply to contractors. In the meantime, experts who spoke with Salon say there's little clarity on what law applies to contractors like the ones involved in Sunday's incident, and the Bush administration has shown little desire to take action against contractor malfeasance.
In June of this year, the Congressional Research Service -- a nonpartisan research arm of Congress -- issued a report on private security contractors in Iraq that included a discussion of their legal status. The report's authors gave a bleak picture of prospects for prosecution under U.S. law, referring at one point to "the U.S. government's practical inability to discipline errant contract employees."
The problem is that no one seems quite sure what law, if any, would apply to security firm contractors, and any potential applications are untested and would be vigorously challenged. Uniformed military personnel are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and "persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field" are technically subject as well. But the application of the UCMJ to these contractors would undoubtedly be challenged on constitutional grounds, and even if it were to hold up in court, the CRS report noted a particular irony: At least one court has held that "a serviceman who had been discharged was no longer amenable to court-martial." In other words, Blackwater could protect its employees from the UCMJ simply by firing them.
Another potential avenue for prosecution is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000, or MEJA, which applies to civilians. Originally written only to cover civilian employees of the Department of Defense and contractors working for the DOD, it was changed after the Abu Ghraib scandal, which involved contractors not working for DOD, to cover persons "employed by or accompanying the Armed Forces outside the United States." But even that definition might be too narrow to apply to the Blackwater employees in question. Those employees, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed in an interview with Salon, work for the State Department, not the DOD. "[They] report to our diplomatic security office in Baghdad."
Horton says he believes that "Blackwater is preparing to make the argument, if they ever get in the crosshairs of this, that they are there with a Department of State diplomatic contract and, therefore, MEJA doesn't apply."
Rep. David Price, D-N.C., is the sponsor of a law that attempts to deal with this loophole, the Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007.
"I just want to know whether it can and will be prosecuted if prosecution is warranted, and I don't think we have the clear legislative coverage of this that we should," Price said in an interview Monday. "If the contractors were under a DOD contract, that wouldn't be the question so much as whether the administration's doing its job pressing forward, but here you do have a real question about whether it has the authority in the first place."
Singer concurs. "There's a lot of stuff that could be done. It's just there's no easy answers," he says. "You could use them as a test case for UCMJ. You could hand them over to the Iraqis. President Bush says it's a functioning democracy. You could try to test out MEJA on them. You could investigate it and find out that actually it was a rightful shooting. There's lots of coulds, but there's no silver-bullet solution. We've painted ourselves in a corner."
Back in Baghdad, the Iraqis may not have the power to enforce the one action they've taken so far, the simple revocation of Blackwater's license. A spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, told reporters Monday: "We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq. The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice."
But it's not clear that Blackwater even has a license to revoke. Speculation abounded on Monday that it did not. On June 16, the Washington Post reported that "Blackwater USA ... [has] not applied, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew."
Lawrence T. Peter, the director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an industry trade group, told the Post on Monday that Blackwater did have a license. He seems to be contradicted by his own organization's Web site, however, which lists Blackwater as in the process of obtaining one. Salon contacted Peter to ask whether Blackwater was licensed. He did not answer the question, but a spokesman did forward a statement emphasizing that members of his trade group "pride themselves" on abiding by the "Rules for Use of Force" in effect.
By Monday afternoon, Iraqi officials seemed to be backing away from their earlier statements, making their pronouncements about Blackwater's license much less definitive. Time magazine reported that "a senior Iraqi official ... said that prime minister Maliki is expected to discuss the episode at a cabinet session scheduled for Tuesday and that, as far as the license being permanently revoked, 'it's not a done deal yet.'"
Additional reporting by Erin Renzas.
Citation: Alex Koppelman and Mark Benjamin. "What happens to private contractors who kill Iraqis? Maybe nothing," Salon.com, 18 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/18/blackwater/print.html
17 September 2007
Iraqi civilian deaths rise slightly in August
Reuters, 01 September 2007
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Civilian deaths from violence in Iraq rose slightly in August, with 1,773 people killed, government statistics showed on Saturday.
The figures from various ministries showed 87 police and army personnel reported killed in August, a big drop from the previous month when 224 were killed.
The civilian toll was up 7 percent from 1,653 people killed in July. But it was unclear how the figure was affected by the death toll from massive truck bomb attacks against the minority Yazidi community in northern Iraq on August 14.
More than 500 people were killed in those bombings, the Iraqi Red Crescent has said. The provincial governor of the area has put the death toll at 344 with 70 still missing.
The overall August figure of 1,773 is largely in line with civilian death tolls for most months this year.
U.S. military deaths in August were 81 so far, according to the Web site icasualties.org, which tracks the number of coalition deaths in Iraq. That is roughly the same as July.
During the April-June period, U.S. military deaths topped 100 each month.
Washington has said the fall in the number of deaths of its soldiers was a sign its tactic of sending an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq and spreading them out in neighborhoods was having its desired effect of reducing violence.
The impact of that "surge" of troops along with Iraq's political situation will be the focus of a series of pivotal reports to the U.S. Congress in the coming two weeks.
The Iraqi government statistics showed 472 militants were killed and 2,019 captured in August.
More than 3,700 American troops have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Citation: "Iraqi civilian deaths rise slightly in August," Reuters, 01 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSANW16403020070901?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&sp=true
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Civilian deaths from violence in Iraq rose slightly in August, with 1,773 people killed, government statistics showed on Saturday.
The figures from various ministries showed 87 police and army personnel reported killed in August, a big drop from the previous month when 224 were killed.
The civilian toll was up 7 percent from 1,653 people killed in July. But it was unclear how the figure was affected by the death toll from massive truck bomb attacks against the minority Yazidi community in northern Iraq on August 14.
More than 500 people were killed in those bombings, the Iraqi Red Crescent has said. The provincial governor of the area has put the death toll at 344 with 70 still missing.
The overall August figure of 1,773 is largely in line with civilian death tolls for most months this year.
U.S. military deaths in August were 81 so far, according to the Web site icasualties.org, which tracks the number of coalition deaths in Iraq. That is roughly the same as July.
During the April-June period, U.S. military deaths topped 100 each month.
Washington has said the fall in the number of deaths of its soldiers was a sign its tactic of sending an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq and spreading them out in neighborhoods was having its desired effect of reducing violence.
The impact of that "surge" of troops along with Iraq's political situation will be the focus of a series of pivotal reports to the U.S. Congress in the coming two weeks.
The Iraqi government statistics showed 472 militants were killed and 2,019 captured in August.
More than 3,700 American troops have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Citation: "Iraqi civilian deaths rise slightly in August," Reuters, 01 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSANW16403020070901?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&sp=true
Stories Not Reported
Strategy Page, 17 September 2007
A major problem with the war on terror is keeping score. Even if you count things like the number of terrorists killed or captured, and the number of attacks, there's no consensus on what the numbers mean. Moreover, journalists and pundits rarely take a close look at what might have happened if nothing were done. Granted, it's difficult to report on another time line that didn't happen. The government actually spends a lot of money on computer simulations that do just this. But these tend to make poorly attended news stories, so journalists avoid them. Since these simulations are not reported, they, effectively, do not exist. But consider that, without an invasion of Iraq, al Qaeda would still be flying high and exploiting its popularity to carry out more attacks in the West.
Meanwhile, the real war on terror started off well enough, with the invasion of Afghanistan a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Taliban government was overthrown within two months, but most of the terrorist leaders escaped to the tribal territories in Pakistan. Oops. That was widely interpreted as a defeat. The problem was, explaining the details of all this was rather more than the media could handle.
Military planners were better at sorting things out. But they had to be, and they had plenty of practice. Secrecy was necessary to make military operations effective, and that secrecy meant not telling the media, or anyone else, lots of interesting things. Despite that restriction, that's a lot that is known via open sources.
Start with Afghanistan. The area has been in a state of perpetual civil war for thousands of years. The tribal thing. Neighboring powers (Mongols, Iranians) have conquered the region, but only when it was worth the effort. That means controlling Afghanistan no longer mattered after the "silk road" trade routes became useless after the 16th century (when European ships became capable to reaching the Far East faster and more economically than the caravans moving from China to the Middle East). After that, the tribes were largely left alone. If there was too much activity by tribal raiders, the more civilized neighbors (Russians, Iranians, British in India) would raid right back until the tribes agreed to cool it. The tribes were always a nuisance, they were never stronger militarily than they more numerous, civilized and better armed, neighbors.
No central government has ruled the Pushtun tribes in northern Pakistan for centuries. Knowing that, it made sense that Osama and his Taliban buddies would flee for the Pakistani border, and sanctuary with the Pushtun tribes on the other side, when it became obvious that the American smart bombs were giving the rebellious (against the Taliban) tribes of northern Afghanistan an insurmountable advantage.
In the last six years, Pakistan has been unable to assert control of the tribal territories, where numerous terrorists are hiding out. You can complain about that all you want, but that's that. Sending American troops into Pakistan risks turning the entire country against the invaders. It's not like the Pakistanis are pro-terrorist, most are not. But they have been living with the tribal problem for thousands of years, and don't want foreigners coming in and making things worse. Some U.S. Special Operations officers have urged that some quick operations inside Pakistan be undertaken. But the risk of success (grabbing Osama and company) is too low, and the chance of creating a lot more hostile Pakistanis is too great. It's a stalemate, with the Taliban setting up shop in northern Pakistan and sending raiding parties into Afghanistan. This greatly upsets the Afghans, but they don't want war with Pakistan either. So there you are, a problem with no easy solutions.
Then there's Iraq. The idea of taking down the nastiest dictator in the Middle East had lots of support, until someone actually did it. Few in the U.S. government like to admit it, but this is a very clever strategy. It's known, since antiquity, as "taking the war to the enemy." Setting up a democracy in a region that has none (at least among the Arabs), and suffering nearly 30,000 casualties (so far) to help it get established, is bold. Al Qaeda hates democracy, and considers it un-Islamic. Planting U.S. troops in Iraq, and holding elections put Shia Arabs in power. Al Qaeda howled even louder, as Sunni Moslems (which al Qaeda represents) consider Shia Moslems to be heretics. Now al Qaeda was forced to turn its attention from attacks in the West, and concentrate on its own back yard. That went very badly for the terrorists. Practicing their usual tactics on Moslems, even if most of the victims were Shia, hurt their popularity in the Islamic world. Eventually, even their Sunni Arab allies in Iraq turned against them.
Establishing democracy, and efficient government, in the Arab world is another front in the war on terror that did not get the attention it deserves. Establishing an Arab democracy has never been done before, and it is key to doing something about the corruption and poor government that has created terrorist organizations in the region for centuries. Al Qaeda is not the first group of religious fanatics to appear and try to "purify" the Islamic world. Until there is some serious reform, al Qaeda won't be the last lot of murderous advocates for change.
Another front of the war is the media battle. Here, al Qaeda has been most successful. Those who oppose the U.S. in general (for a variety of reasons) have become allies (openly or covertly) with Islamic radical groups. That made al Qaeda look better than it really is. But, in general, the terrorists have been taking a beating. It's not newsworthy to admit this, but there it is.
Citation: "Stories Not Reported," Strategy Page, 17 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20070917.aspx
A major problem with the war on terror is keeping score. Even if you count things like the number of terrorists killed or captured, and the number of attacks, there's no consensus on what the numbers mean. Moreover, journalists and pundits rarely take a close look at what might have happened if nothing were done. Granted, it's difficult to report on another time line that didn't happen. The government actually spends a lot of money on computer simulations that do just this. But these tend to make poorly attended news stories, so journalists avoid them. Since these simulations are not reported, they, effectively, do not exist. But consider that, without an invasion of Iraq, al Qaeda would still be flying high and exploiting its popularity to carry out more attacks in the West.
Meanwhile, the real war on terror started off well enough, with the invasion of Afghanistan a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Taliban government was overthrown within two months, but most of the terrorist leaders escaped to the tribal territories in Pakistan. Oops. That was widely interpreted as a defeat. The problem was, explaining the details of all this was rather more than the media could handle.
Military planners were better at sorting things out. But they had to be, and they had plenty of practice. Secrecy was necessary to make military operations effective, and that secrecy meant not telling the media, or anyone else, lots of interesting things. Despite that restriction, that's a lot that is known via open sources.
Start with Afghanistan. The area has been in a state of perpetual civil war for thousands of years. The tribal thing. Neighboring powers (Mongols, Iranians) have conquered the region, but only when it was worth the effort. That means controlling Afghanistan no longer mattered after the "silk road" trade routes became useless after the 16th century (when European ships became capable to reaching the Far East faster and more economically than the caravans moving from China to the Middle East). After that, the tribes were largely left alone. If there was too much activity by tribal raiders, the more civilized neighbors (Russians, Iranians, British in India) would raid right back until the tribes agreed to cool it. The tribes were always a nuisance, they were never stronger militarily than they more numerous, civilized and better armed, neighbors.
No central government has ruled the Pushtun tribes in northern Pakistan for centuries. Knowing that, it made sense that Osama and his Taliban buddies would flee for the Pakistani border, and sanctuary with the Pushtun tribes on the other side, when it became obvious that the American smart bombs were giving the rebellious (against the Taliban) tribes of northern Afghanistan an insurmountable advantage.
In the last six years, Pakistan has been unable to assert control of the tribal territories, where numerous terrorists are hiding out. You can complain about that all you want, but that's that. Sending American troops into Pakistan risks turning the entire country against the invaders. It's not like the Pakistanis are pro-terrorist, most are not. But they have been living with the tribal problem for thousands of years, and don't want foreigners coming in and making things worse. Some U.S. Special Operations officers have urged that some quick operations inside Pakistan be undertaken. But the risk of success (grabbing Osama and company) is too low, and the chance of creating a lot more hostile Pakistanis is too great. It's a stalemate, with the Taliban setting up shop in northern Pakistan and sending raiding parties into Afghanistan. This greatly upsets the Afghans, but they don't want war with Pakistan either. So there you are, a problem with no easy solutions.
Then there's Iraq. The idea of taking down the nastiest dictator in the Middle East had lots of support, until someone actually did it. Few in the U.S. government like to admit it, but this is a very clever strategy. It's known, since antiquity, as "taking the war to the enemy." Setting up a democracy in a region that has none (at least among the Arabs), and suffering nearly 30,000 casualties (so far) to help it get established, is bold. Al Qaeda hates democracy, and considers it un-Islamic. Planting U.S. troops in Iraq, and holding elections put Shia Arabs in power. Al Qaeda howled even louder, as Sunni Moslems (which al Qaeda represents) consider Shia Moslems to be heretics. Now al Qaeda was forced to turn its attention from attacks in the West, and concentrate on its own back yard. That went very badly for the terrorists. Practicing their usual tactics on Moslems, even if most of the victims were Shia, hurt their popularity in the Islamic world. Eventually, even their Sunni Arab allies in Iraq turned against them.
Establishing democracy, and efficient government, in the Arab world is another front in the war on terror that did not get the attention it deserves. Establishing an Arab democracy has never been done before, and it is key to doing something about the corruption and poor government that has created terrorist organizations in the region for centuries. Al Qaeda is not the first group of religious fanatics to appear and try to "purify" the Islamic world. Until there is some serious reform, al Qaeda won't be the last lot of murderous advocates for change.
Another front of the war is the media battle. Here, al Qaeda has been most successful. Those who oppose the U.S. in general (for a variety of reasons) have become allies (openly or covertly) with Islamic radical groups. That made al Qaeda look better than it really is. But, in general, the terrorists have been taking a beating. It's not newsworthy to admit this, but there it is.
Citation: "Stories Not Reported," Strategy Page, 17 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20070917.aspx
Blackwater license being revoked in Iraq
By Bassem Mroue
The Associated Press, 17 September 2007
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government said Monday that it was revoking the license of an American security firm accused of involvement in the deaths of eight civilians in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.
The Interior Ministry said it would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting. It was the latest accusation against the U.S.-contracted firms that operate with little or no supervision and are widely disliked by Iraqis who resent their speeding motorcades and forceful behavior.
Underscoring the seriousness of the matter, the State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned to call Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to express regret and assure him that the U.S. has launched an investigation into the matter to ensure nothing like it happens again.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.
"We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities," Khalaf said.
The spokesman said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but said the shooting was still under investigation. It was not immediately clear if the measure against Blackwater was intended to be temporary or permanent.
Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., provides security for many U.S. civilian operations in the country.
The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of "Little Bird" helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.
Phone messages left early Monday at the company's office in North Carolina and with a spokeswoman were not immediately returned.
The U.S. Embassy said a State Department motorcade came under small-arms fire that disabled one of the vehicles, which had to be towed from the scene near Nisoor Square in the Mansour district.
"There was a convoy of State Department personnel and a car bomb went off in proximity to them and there was an exchange of fire as the personnel were returning to the International Zone," embassy spokesman Johann Schmonsees said, referring to the heavily fortified U.S.-protected area in central Baghdad also known as the Green Zone.
Officials provided no information about Iraqi casualties but said no State Department personnel were wounded or killed.
The embassy also refused to answer any questions on Blackwater's status or legal issues, saying it was seeking clarification on the issue as part of the investigation.
Al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a "foreign security company" and called it a "crime."
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States had not been notified of any Iraqi government decision to revoke Blackwater's license and declined to speculate as to how that might affect State Department activities if it happened.
"The bottom line is that the secretary wants to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to avoid the loss of innocent life," McCormack told reporters in Washington.
The decision to pull the license was likely to be challenged, as it would be a major blow to a company at the forefront of one of the main turning points in the war.
The 2004 battle of Fallujah — an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians — was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.
Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq — some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles — to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.
Monday's action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given Iraqis' dislike of the contractors.
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings "a crime that we cannot be silent about."
Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.
"There have been so many innocent people they've killed over there, and they just keep doing it," said Katy Helvenston, the mother of Steve Helvenston, a Blackwater contractor who died during the 2004 ambush in Fallujah. "They have just a callous disregard for life."
Helvenston is now part of a lawsuit that accuses Blackwater of cutting corners that ultimately led to the death of her son and three others.
The question of whether they could face prosecution is legally murky. Unlike soldiers, the contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there.
Khalaf, however, denied that the exemption applied to private security companies.
Iraqi police said the contractors were in a convoy of six sport utility vehicles and left after the shooting.
"We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby. One minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody in the street started to flee immediately," said Hussein Abdul-Abbas, who owns a mobile phone store in the area.
___
Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Citation: Bassem Mroue. "Blackwater license being revoked in Iraq," The Associated Press, 17 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070917/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
The Associated Press, 17 September 2007
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government said Monday that it was revoking the license of an American security firm accused of involvement in the deaths of eight civilians in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.
The Interior Ministry said it would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting. It was the latest accusation against the U.S.-contracted firms that operate with little or no supervision and are widely disliked by Iraqis who resent their speeding motorcades and forceful behavior.
Underscoring the seriousness of the matter, the State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned to call Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to express regret and assure him that the U.S. has launched an investigation into the matter to ensure nothing like it happens again.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.
"We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities," Khalaf said.
The spokesman said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but said the shooting was still under investigation. It was not immediately clear if the measure against Blackwater was intended to be temporary or permanent.
Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., provides security for many U.S. civilian operations in the country.
The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of "Little Bird" helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.
Phone messages left early Monday at the company's office in North Carolina and with a spokeswoman were not immediately returned.
The U.S. Embassy said a State Department motorcade came under small-arms fire that disabled one of the vehicles, which had to be towed from the scene near Nisoor Square in the Mansour district.
"There was a convoy of State Department personnel and a car bomb went off in proximity to them and there was an exchange of fire as the personnel were returning to the International Zone," embassy spokesman Johann Schmonsees said, referring to the heavily fortified U.S.-protected area in central Baghdad also known as the Green Zone.
Officials provided no information about Iraqi casualties but said no State Department personnel were wounded or killed.
The embassy also refused to answer any questions on Blackwater's status or legal issues, saying it was seeking clarification on the issue as part of the investigation.
Al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a "foreign security company" and called it a "crime."
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States had not been notified of any Iraqi government decision to revoke Blackwater's license and declined to speculate as to how that might affect State Department activities if it happened.
"The bottom line is that the secretary wants to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to avoid the loss of innocent life," McCormack told reporters in Washington.
The decision to pull the license was likely to be challenged, as it would be a major blow to a company at the forefront of one of the main turning points in the war.
The 2004 battle of Fallujah — an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians — was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.
Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq — some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles — to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.
Monday's action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given Iraqis' dislike of the contractors.
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings "a crime that we cannot be silent about."
Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.
"There have been so many innocent people they've killed over there, and they just keep doing it," said Katy Helvenston, the mother of Steve Helvenston, a Blackwater contractor who died during the 2004 ambush in Fallujah. "They have just a callous disregard for life."
Helvenston is now part of a lawsuit that accuses Blackwater of cutting corners that ultimately led to the death of her son and three others.
The question of whether they could face prosecution is legally murky. Unlike soldiers, the contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there.
Khalaf, however, denied that the exemption applied to private security companies.
Iraqi police said the contractors were in a convoy of six sport utility vehicles and left after the shooting.
"We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby. One minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody in the street started to flee immediately," said Hussein Abdul-Abbas, who owns a mobile phone store in the area.
___
Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Citation: Bassem Mroue. "Blackwater license being revoked in Iraq," The Associated Press, 17 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070917/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
14 September 2007
NATO lacks troops to guarantee Afghan peace: report
By Mark John
Reuters, 14 September 2007
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The NATO force in Afghanistan does not have enough troops or equipment to secure advances made against Taliban insurgents and to guarantee a successful end to its mission, a lawmakers' report concluded on Friday.
The findings of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which draws legislators from 42 countries, echoes recent complaints by NATO commanders that troop shortages are hampering operations and come as some allies face domestic pressure to pull troops out.
"The NATO mission still suffers from a lack of personnel and assets," the assembly's Defence and Security Committee concluded after a six-day tour of allied operations last week which included talks with local and national Afghan officials.
"Fundamentally, the delegation came away with a sense that current efforts are making significant incremental progress, but not at a rate that will ensure without doubt an acceptable end state to our mission there," it concluded.
The report did not recommend how many reinforcements were needed on top of the 50,000 troops currently under NATO and U.S. command. The most pressing needs included more helicopters, intelligence and reconnaissance assets and trainers to build up the Afghan security forces, it said.
NATO commanders say they have had success in wresting towns from the Taliban and handing them back to government control, only to watch them be re-taken by insurgents because of the weakness of local Afghan army or police forces.
NATO wants to accelerate efforts to train up the Afghan army but is facing resistance from many allies who refuse to send either troops or trainers into the southern heartlands of the Taliban where most fighting takes place.
"Consolidation means being able to ensure that the insurgents do not return," NATO Parliamentary Assembly Secretary-General Simon Lunn told Reuters.
"'More' in this case would imply more boots on the ground, more trainers and more enablers," he said, using the military term for helicopters and other vital operational equipment.
Top soldiers including U.S. General Dan McNeill, commander of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, and General Ray Henault, the Canadian who heads up NATO's Military Committee in Brussels, have in recent days complained of troop shortfalls.
But they have stopped short of making specific calls for more troops at a time when key allies such as Canada and the Netherlands -- both in the south -- face tough decisions about extending their missions in the face of domestic opposition.
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly draws its members from the 26 NATO allies and 16 other countries. Its aims range from making the alliance more accountable to fostering dialogue on security issues.
Citation: Mark John. "NATO lacks troops to guarantee Afghan peace: report," Reuters, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/afghan_nato_dc;_ylt=AqBhnNy.dj0JX.ZOFPz7KxfOVooA
Reuters, 14 September 2007
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The NATO force in Afghanistan does not have enough troops or equipment to secure advances made against Taliban insurgents and to guarantee a successful end to its mission, a lawmakers' report concluded on Friday.
The findings of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which draws legislators from 42 countries, echoes recent complaints by NATO commanders that troop shortages are hampering operations and come as some allies face domestic pressure to pull troops out.
"The NATO mission still suffers from a lack of personnel and assets," the assembly's Defence and Security Committee concluded after a six-day tour of allied operations last week which included talks with local and national Afghan officials.
"Fundamentally, the delegation came away with a sense that current efforts are making significant incremental progress, but not at a rate that will ensure without doubt an acceptable end state to our mission there," it concluded.
The report did not recommend how many reinforcements were needed on top of the 50,000 troops currently under NATO and U.S. command. The most pressing needs included more helicopters, intelligence and reconnaissance assets and trainers to build up the Afghan security forces, it said.
NATO commanders say they have had success in wresting towns from the Taliban and handing them back to government control, only to watch them be re-taken by insurgents because of the weakness of local Afghan army or police forces.
NATO wants to accelerate efforts to train up the Afghan army but is facing resistance from many allies who refuse to send either troops or trainers into the southern heartlands of the Taliban where most fighting takes place.
"Consolidation means being able to ensure that the insurgents do not return," NATO Parliamentary Assembly Secretary-General Simon Lunn told Reuters.
"'More' in this case would imply more boots on the ground, more trainers and more enablers," he said, using the military term for helicopters and other vital operational equipment.
Top soldiers including U.S. General Dan McNeill, commander of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, and General Ray Henault, the Canadian who heads up NATO's Military Committee in Brussels, have in recent days complained of troop shortfalls.
But they have stopped short of making specific calls for more troops at a time when key allies such as Canada and the Netherlands -- both in the south -- face tough decisions about extending their missions in the face of domestic opposition.
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly draws its members from the 26 NATO allies and 16 other countries. Its aims range from making the alliance more accountable to fostering dialogue on security issues.
Citation: Mark John. "NATO lacks troops to guarantee Afghan peace: report," Reuters, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/afghan_nato_dc;_ylt=AqBhnNy.dj0JX.ZOFPz7KxfOVooA
Poll: Civilian death toll in Iraq may top 1 million
A British survey offers the highest estimate to date. At least 4 die in a Sadr City car bombing.
By Tina Susman
Los Angeles Times, 14 September 2007
BAGHDAD -- -- A car bomb blew up in the capital's Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday, killing at least four people, as a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million.
The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.
The military has said civilian deaths from sectarian violence have fallen more than 55% since President Bush sent an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq this year, but it does not provide specific numbers.
According to the ORB poll, a survey of 1,461 adults suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.
ORB said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?"
Based on Iraq's estimated number of households -- 4,050,597 -- it said the 1.2 million figure was reasonable.
There was no way to verify the number, because the government does not provide a full count of civilian deaths. Neither does the U.S. military.
Both, however, say that independent organizations greatly exaggerate estimates of civilian casualties.
ORB said its poll had a margin of error of 2.4%. According to its findings, nearly one in two households in Baghdad had lost at least one member to war- related violence, and 22% of households nationwide had suffered at least one death. It said 48% of the victims were shot to death and 20% died as a result of car bombs, with other explosions and military bombardments blamed for most of the other fatalities.
The survey was conducted last month.
It was the highest estimate given so far of civilian deaths in Iraq. Last year, a study in the medical journal Lancet put the number at 654,965, which Iraq's government has dismissed as "ridiculous."
The car bomb in Sadr City injured at least 10 people and set fire to several shops. Also Thursday, police said they had found the bodies of nine people believed to be victims of sectarian killings across the capital.
In its latest salvo at Iran, the U.S. military accused the Islamic Republic of providing the 240-millimeter rocket that earlier this week slammed into Camp Victory, the sprawling base that houses the U.S. Army headquarters. The attack on the base near Baghdad's airport injured 11 soldiers and killed one "third-country national."
At a news conference, a military spokesman, Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, displayed a chunk of metal that he said had come from the rocket. Asked how he could be sure it was of Iranian origin, Bergner said its color and markings were unique to rockets from Iran.
The United States accuses Iran's Shiite leaders of providing weapons, training and other assistance to Shiite militias fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran denies the accusation.
Citation: Tina Susman. "Poll: Civilian death toll in Iraq may top 1 million," Los Angeles Times, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,1207545.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=6&cset=true
By Tina Susman
Los Angeles Times, 14 September 2007
BAGHDAD -- -- A car bomb blew up in the capital's Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday, killing at least four people, as a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million.
The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.
The military has said civilian deaths from sectarian violence have fallen more than 55% since President Bush sent an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq this year, but it does not provide specific numbers.
According to the ORB poll, a survey of 1,461 adults suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.
ORB said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?"
Based on Iraq's estimated number of households -- 4,050,597 -- it said the 1.2 million figure was reasonable.
There was no way to verify the number, because the government does not provide a full count of civilian deaths. Neither does the U.S. military.
Both, however, say that independent organizations greatly exaggerate estimates of civilian casualties.
ORB said its poll had a margin of error of 2.4%. According to its findings, nearly one in two households in Baghdad had lost at least one member to war- related violence, and 22% of households nationwide had suffered at least one death. It said 48% of the victims were shot to death and 20% died as a result of car bombs, with other explosions and military bombardments blamed for most of the other fatalities.
The survey was conducted last month.
It was the highest estimate given so far of civilian deaths in Iraq. Last year, a study in the medical journal Lancet put the number at 654,965, which Iraq's government has dismissed as "ridiculous."
The car bomb in Sadr City injured at least 10 people and set fire to several shops. Also Thursday, police said they had found the bodies of nine people believed to be victims of sectarian killings across the capital.
In its latest salvo at Iran, the U.S. military accused the Islamic Republic of providing the 240-millimeter rocket that earlier this week slammed into Camp Victory, the sprawling base that houses the U.S. Army headquarters. The attack on the base near Baghdad's airport injured 11 soldiers and killed one "third-country national."
At a news conference, a military spokesman, Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, displayed a chunk of metal that he said had come from the rocket. Asked how he could be sure it was of Iranian origin, Bergner said its color and markings were unique to rockets from Iran.
The United States accuses Iran's Shiite leaders of providing weapons, training and other assistance to Shiite militias fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran denies the accusation.
Citation: Tina Susman. "Poll: Civilian death toll in Iraq may top 1 million," Los Angeles Times, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,1207545.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=6&cset=true
Lack of jobs, services is missing from Iraq discussion
By David Wood
The Baltimore Sun, 14 September 2007
WASHINGTON — For all this week's fevered rhetoric, endless squabbling over benchmarks and charts and debating troop numbers, a critical piece of the Iraq puzzle has gone largely unmentioned: jobs.
President Bush often boasts of past U.S. successes in rebuilding war-ravaged Europe and Korea.
But Iraq, after four years of American occupation and a $44 billion investment by U.S. taxpayers, still has a stagnant economy, dozens of idle factories, dysfunctional government ministries that cannot provide sufficient electricity, clean water or basic health care — and millions of unemployed people.
And that, according to war critics and Pentagon officials, is a recipe for continued conflict in Iraq, no matter how many troops are deployed or withdrawn or how much "reconciliation" is achieved among Baghdad's politicians.
"If your government is delivering services for you, you're going to feel a lot better about your government," said Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. For ordinary Iraqis, living inside a war is frightening enough. Having no way to provide for your family is perhaps worse, a predicament that builds resentment and anger and, U.S. military officers say, creates a pool of Iraqis who support the insurgents, either passively or actively.
Many attacks on U.S. troops, officers say, involve ordinary Iraqis who are paid $50 or so to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at soldiers and run, or dig a roadside hole for a homemade bomb.
Unemployment is "rampant" among Iraq's 7.7 million working-age males, said Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Brinkley, director of the Pentagon's task force on improving Iraqi industry. He said at least half of all Iraqi workers are unemployed.
"There is no human population in the world that can withstand that level of economic distress and not experience attendant violence, unrest [and] sympathy with violent actors," Brinkley said last week.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said recently that victory in Iraq "requires an economy that provides jobs to those citizens, so they can do something besides build bombs for a hundred dollars."
As Bush acknowledged Thursday night, "For most Iraqis, the quality of life is far from where it should be."
Yet a large part of the problem, according to Gen. David Petraeus and others, is that the Bush administration has been sluggish about mobilizing the government's nonmilitary resources for Iraq, to provide job training and significant startup help for state-owned factories, help set up a banking system, help streamline trade agreements and tax collection, help organize, man and equip health and other ministries, and other critical nonmilitary functions.
Although he is held in high regard by Bush, Petraeus has been unable to persuade the White House to pour more resources into the nonmilitary fight. In his speech and in a report to be delivered to Congress today, Bush noted the role of provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq, which combine civilian American experts in operating regional governments and schools, sewer and water systems, courts and other functions with a U.S. military unit. They are empowered to make quick loans and grants, but the intent is to help Iraqis figure out how to jump-start and sustain solid economic, commercial and governmental activity.
There are 25 such teams at work across Iraq, an increase from 10 in January.
"We are surging diplomatic and civilian resources to ensure that military progress is quickly followed up with real improvements in daily life," Bush said Thursday night.
In congressional testimony this week, Crocker asserted that after four years of such investment, the Iraq economy "is starting to make some gains." Iraq's economy is pegged to grow at 6 percent this year, according to an International Monetary Fund estimate, and oil revenues will enable Iraq to invest $10 billion this year in capital investment, Crocker said.
But overall, he acknowledged, "the Iraqi economy is performing significantly under potential."
Against this dismal backdrop, the White House is pinning hopes that the provincial reconstruction teams can achieve solid gains — and quickly.
But Ginger Cruz, deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, testified before a congressional committee last week that the reconstruction teams are seriously understaffed with qualified personnel. Only 29 of 610 team advisers in Iraq are fluent in Arabic and familiar with Iraqi culture.
A larger problem for them is funding. According to Cruz, the budget allows for a staff of only 800 people in a country of 26 million, about one-tenth of what is needed.
Most teams lack armored transportation and security, limiting some to one trip a week. In Karbala and Najaf, she said, there is no U.S. military presence and teams do not travel there.
That, she said, "raises the question: How can they accomplish the mission?"
Citation: David Wood. "Lack of jobs, services is missing from Iraq discussion," The Baltimore Sun, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003883925_bushside14.html
The Baltimore Sun, 14 September 2007
WASHINGTON — For all this week's fevered rhetoric, endless squabbling over benchmarks and charts and debating troop numbers, a critical piece of the Iraq puzzle has gone largely unmentioned: jobs.
President Bush often boasts of past U.S. successes in rebuilding war-ravaged Europe and Korea.
But Iraq, after four years of American occupation and a $44 billion investment by U.S. taxpayers, still has a stagnant economy, dozens of idle factories, dysfunctional government ministries that cannot provide sufficient electricity, clean water or basic health care — and millions of unemployed people.
And that, according to war critics and Pentagon officials, is a recipe for continued conflict in Iraq, no matter how many troops are deployed or withdrawn or how much "reconciliation" is achieved among Baghdad's politicians.
"If your government is delivering services for you, you're going to feel a lot better about your government," said Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. For ordinary Iraqis, living inside a war is frightening enough. Having no way to provide for your family is perhaps worse, a predicament that builds resentment and anger and, U.S. military officers say, creates a pool of Iraqis who support the insurgents, either passively or actively.
Many attacks on U.S. troops, officers say, involve ordinary Iraqis who are paid $50 or so to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at soldiers and run, or dig a roadside hole for a homemade bomb.
Unemployment is "rampant" among Iraq's 7.7 million working-age males, said Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Brinkley, director of the Pentagon's task force on improving Iraqi industry. He said at least half of all Iraqi workers are unemployed.
"There is no human population in the world that can withstand that level of economic distress and not experience attendant violence, unrest [and] sympathy with violent actors," Brinkley said last week.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said recently that victory in Iraq "requires an economy that provides jobs to those citizens, so they can do something besides build bombs for a hundred dollars."
As Bush acknowledged Thursday night, "For most Iraqis, the quality of life is far from where it should be."
Yet a large part of the problem, according to Gen. David Petraeus and others, is that the Bush administration has been sluggish about mobilizing the government's nonmilitary resources for Iraq, to provide job training and significant startup help for state-owned factories, help set up a banking system, help streamline trade agreements and tax collection, help organize, man and equip health and other ministries, and other critical nonmilitary functions.
Although he is held in high regard by Bush, Petraeus has been unable to persuade the White House to pour more resources into the nonmilitary fight. In his speech and in a report to be delivered to Congress today, Bush noted the role of provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq, which combine civilian American experts in operating regional governments and schools, sewer and water systems, courts and other functions with a U.S. military unit. They are empowered to make quick loans and grants, but the intent is to help Iraqis figure out how to jump-start and sustain solid economic, commercial and governmental activity.
There are 25 such teams at work across Iraq, an increase from 10 in January.
"We are surging diplomatic and civilian resources to ensure that military progress is quickly followed up with real improvements in daily life," Bush said Thursday night.
In congressional testimony this week, Crocker asserted that after four years of such investment, the Iraq economy "is starting to make some gains." Iraq's economy is pegged to grow at 6 percent this year, according to an International Monetary Fund estimate, and oil revenues will enable Iraq to invest $10 billion this year in capital investment, Crocker said.
But overall, he acknowledged, "the Iraqi economy is performing significantly under potential."
Against this dismal backdrop, the White House is pinning hopes that the provincial reconstruction teams can achieve solid gains — and quickly.
But Ginger Cruz, deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, testified before a congressional committee last week that the reconstruction teams are seriously understaffed with qualified personnel. Only 29 of 610 team advisers in Iraq are fluent in Arabic and familiar with Iraqi culture.
A larger problem for them is funding. According to Cruz, the budget allows for a staff of only 800 people in a country of 26 million, about one-tenth of what is needed.
Most teams lack armored transportation and security, limiting some to one trip a week. In Karbala and Najaf, she said, there is no U.S. military presence and teams do not travel there.
That, she said, "raises the question: How can they accomplish the mission?"
Citation: David Wood. "Lack of jobs, services is missing from Iraq discussion," The Baltimore Sun, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003883925_bushside14.html
An assassination that blows apart Bush's hopes of pacifying Iraq
Last week George Bush flew into Iraq to meet Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, leader of Anbar province.
This week General David Petraeus told the US Congress how Anbar was a model for Iraq
Yesterday Abu Risha was assassinated by bombers in Anbar
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent, 14 September 2007
Ten days after President George Bush clasped his hand as a symbol of America's hopes in Iraq, the man who led the US-supported revolt of Sunni sheikhs against al-Qa'ida in Iraq was assassinated.
Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha and two of his bodyguards were killed either by a roadside bomb or by explosives placed in his car by a guard, near to his home in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, the Iraqi province held up by the American political and military leadership as a model for the rest of Iraq.
His killing is a serious blow to President Bush and the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who have both portrayed the US success in Anbar, once the heart of the Sunni rebellion against US forces, as a sign that victory was attainable across Iraq.
On Monday General Petraeus told the US Congress that Anbar province was "a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose al-Qa'ida and reject its Taliban-like ideology".
But yesterday's assassination underlines that Iraqis in Anbar and elsewhere who closely ally themselves with the US are in danger of being killed. "It shows al-Qa'ida in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy," General Petraeus said in reaction to the killing. But Abu Risha might equally have been killed by the many non al-Qa'ida insurgent groups in Anbar who saw him as betraying them.
The assassination comes at a particularly embarrassing juncture for President Bush, who was scheduled to address the American people on television last night to sell the claim made by General Petraeus that the military "surge" was proving successful in Iraq and citing the improved security situation in Anbar to prove it.
Abu Risha, 37, usually stayed inside a heavily fortified compound containing several houses where he lived with his extended family. A US tank guards the entrance to the compound, which is opposite the largest US base in Ramadi.
He spent yesterday morning meeting tribal sheikhs to discuss the future of Anbar. He also received long lines of petitioners as he drank small glasses of sweet tea and chain-smoked. He carried a pistol stuck in a holster strapped to his waist and dressed in dark flowing robes.
Surprisingly, he is said to have recently reduced the number of his bodyguards because of improved security situation in Anbar, although he ought to have known that as leader of the anti al-Qai'da Anbar Salvation Council he was bound to be a target for assassins.
Iraqi police in Ramadi suspect that the bomb that killed the sheikh was planted by one of the petitioners who came to see him. "The sheikh's car was totally destroyed by the explosion. Abu Risha was killed," said a Ramadi police officer, Ahmed Mahmoud al-Alwani. Giving a different account of the assassination, the Interior Ministry spokesman said that a roadside bomb killed Abu Risha. Soon afterwards a second car bomb blew up.
"The car bomb had been rigged just in case the roadside bomb missed his convoy," said an Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj-Gen Abdul-Karim Khalaf.
He added that the Interior Ministry planned to build a statue to Abu Risha as a "martyr" at the site of the explosion or elsewhere. However, statues, as well as living politicians, often have a short life in Iraq.
Abu Risha's death underlines the degree to which the White House and General Petraeus have cherry-picked evidence to prove that it is possible to turn the tide in Iraq. They have, for instance, given the impression that some Sunni tribal leaders turning against al-Qa'ida in Anbar and parts of Diyala and Baghdad is a turning point in the war.
In reality al-Qa'ida is only a small part of the insurgency, with its fighters numbering only 1,300 as against 103,000 in the other insurgent organisations according to one specialist on the insurgency. Al-Qa'ida has largely concentrated on horrific and cruel bomb attacks on Shia civilians and policemen and has targeted the US military only as secondary target.
The mass of the insurgents belong to groups that are nationalist and Islamic militants who have primarily fought the US occupation. They were never likely to sit back while the US declared victory in their main bastion in Anbar province.
There is no doubt that Abu Risha fulfilled a need and spoke for many Sunni who were hostile to and frightened by al-Qa'ida. Their hatred sprung less from the attacks on the Shia than al-Qa'ida setting up an umbrella organisation called the Islamic State of Iraq last year that sought to enforce total control in Sunni areas.
It tried to draft one young man from every Sunni family into its ranks, sought protection money and would kill Sunni who held insignificant government jobs collecting the garbage or driving trucks for the agriculture ministry as traitors.
The importance of the assassination of Abu Risha is that it once again underlines the difference between the bloody reality of Iraq as it is and the way it is presented by the US administration. He is one of a string of Iraqi leaders who have been killed in Iraq since the invasion of 2003 because they were seen as being too close to the US. These include the Shia religious leader Sayid Majid al-Khoei, murdered in Najaf in April 2003, and Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, killed by a suicide bomber the same year.
In practice the surge has by itself has done little to improve security, according to Iraqis, a majority of whom say security has got worse. The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has actually gone up from 50,000 to 60,000 in recent months, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees. Baghdad has become a largely Shia city with the Sunni pressed into smaller and smaller enclaves.
Cultivating an alliance with the Sunni tribes had been a long-term US policy since 2004 but finally caught fire because of al-Qa'ida overplayed their hand last year. It has the disadvantage that the US has, in effect, created a new Sunni tribal militia which takes orders from the US military and is well paid by it and does not owe allegiance to the Shia-Kurdish government in Baghdad. This is despite the fact that the US has denounced militias in Iraq and demanded they be dissolved.
The US success in Anbar was real but it was also overblown because the wholly Sunni province is not typical of the rest of Iraq. The strategy advocated by Washington exaggerated the importance of al-Qa'ida and seldom spoke of the other powerful groups who had not been driven out of Anbar.
Abu Risha had real support in Anbar, particularly in Ramadi where many people yesterday referred to him as "hero" and expressed sadness at his death.
But President Bush's highly publicised visit to Anbar may well have been Abu Risha's death knell. There are many Sunni who loathe al-Qa'ida, but very few who approve of the US occupation. By giving the impression that Abu Risha was one of America's most important friends, Mr Bush ensured that some of the most dangerous men in the world would try to kill him.
The testimony by General Petraeus to Congress earlier this week has proved effective from the point of view of the White House in establishing the US commander in Iraq as a credible advocate of the administration's military strategy.
But critics of General Petraeus have described him as "a military Paris Hilton" whose celebrity is not matched by his achievements. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul in 2003-4 was lauded for re-establishing Iraqi police units only for them to desert or join the insurgents who captured most of the city after the general left.
A model for Iraq?
General David Petraeus in his testimony to Congress:
"The most significant development in the past six months likely has been the emergence of tribes and local citizens rejecting al-Qa'ida and other extremists. This has, of course, been most visible in Anbar. A year ago the province was assessed as "lost" politically. Today, it is a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose al-Qa'ida and reject its Taliban-like ideology."
Citation: Patrick Cockburn. " An assassination that blows apart Bush's hopes of pacifying Iraq," The Independent, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2961318.ece
The Independent, 14 September 2007
This week General David Petraeus told the US Congress how Anbar was a model for Iraq
Yesterday Abu Risha was assassinated by bombers in Anbar
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent, 14 September 2007
Ten days after President George Bush clasped his hand as a symbol of America's hopes in Iraq, the man who led the US-supported revolt of Sunni sheikhs against al-Qa'ida in Iraq was assassinated.
Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha and two of his bodyguards were killed either by a roadside bomb or by explosives placed in his car by a guard, near to his home in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, the Iraqi province held up by the American political and military leadership as a model for the rest of Iraq.
His killing is a serious blow to President Bush and the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who have both portrayed the US success in Anbar, once the heart of the Sunni rebellion against US forces, as a sign that victory was attainable across Iraq.
On Monday General Petraeus told the US Congress that Anbar province was "a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose al-Qa'ida and reject its Taliban-like ideology".
But yesterday's assassination underlines that Iraqis in Anbar and elsewhere who closely ally themselves with the US are in danger of being killed. "It shows al-Qa'ida in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy," General Petraeus said in reaction to the killing. But Abu Risha might equally have been killed by the many non al-Qa'ida insurgent groups in Anbar who saw him as betraying them.
The assassination comes at a particularly embarrassing juncture for President Bush, who was scheduled to address the American people on television last night to sell the claim made by General Petraeus that the military "surge" was proving successful in Iraq and citing the improved security situation in Anbar to prove it.
Abu Risha, 37, usually stayed inside a heavily fortified compound containing several houses where he lived with his extended family. A US tank guards the entrance to the compound, which is opposite the largest US base in Ramadi.
He spent yesterday morning meeting tribal sheikhs to discuss the future of Anbar. He also received long lines of petitioners as he drank small glasses of sweet tea and chain-smoked. He carried a pistol stuck in a holster strapped to his waist and dressed in dark flowing robes.
Surprisingly, he is said to have recently reduced the number of his bodyguards because of improved security situation in Anbar, although he ought to have known that as leader of the anti al-Qai'da Anbar Salvation Council he was bound to be a target for assassins.
Iraqi police in Ramadi suspect that the bomb that killed the sheikh was planted by one of the petitioners who came to see him. "The sheikh's car was totally destroyed by the explosion. Abu Risha was killed," said a Ramadi police officer, Ahmed Mahmoud al-Alwani. Giving a different account of the assassination, the Interior Ministry spokesman said that a roadside bomb killed Abu Risha. Soon afterwards a second car bomb blew up.
"The car bomb had been rigged just in case the roadside bomb missed his convoy," said an Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj-Gen Abdul-Karim Khalaf.
He added that the Interior Ministry planned to build a statue to Abu Risha as a "martyr" at the site of the explosion or elsewhere. However, statues, as well as living politicians, often have a short life in Iraq.
Abu Risha's death underlines the degree to which the White House and General Petraeus have cherry-picked evidence to prove that it is possible to turn the tide in Iraq. They have, for instance, given the impression that some Sunni tribal leaders turning against al-Qa'ida in Anbar and parts of Diyala and Baghdad is a turning point in the war.
In reality al-Qa'ida is only a small part of the insurgency, with its fighters numbering only 1,300 as against 103,000 in the other insurgent organisations according to one specialist on the insurgency. Al-Qa'ida has largely concentrated on horrific and cruel bomb attacks on Shia civilians and policemen and has targeted the US military only as secondary target.
The mass of the insurgents belong to groups that are nationalist and Islamic militants who have primarily fought the US occupation. They were never likely to sit back while the US declared victory in their main bastion in Anbar province.
There is no doubt that Abu Risha fulfilled a need and spoke for many Sunni who were hostile to and frightened by al-Qa'ida. Their hatred sprung less from the attacks on the Shia than al-Qa'ida setting up an umbrella organisation called the Islamic State of Iraq last year that sought to enforce total control in Sunni areas.
It tried to draft one young man from every Sunni family into its ranks, sought protection money and would kill Sunni who held insignificant government jobs collecting the garbage or driving trucks for the agriculture ministry as traitors.
The importance of the assassination of Abu Risha is that it once again underlines the difference between the bloody reality of Iraq as it is and the way it is presented by the US administration. He is one of a string of Iraqi leaders who have been killed in Iraq since the invasion of 2003 because they were seen as being too close to the US. These include the Shia religious leader Sayid Majid al-Khoei, murdered in Najaf in April 2003, and Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, killed by a suicide bomber the same year.
In practice the surge has by itself has done little to improve security, according to Iraqis, a majority of whom say security has got worse. The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has actually gone up from 50,000 to 60,000 in recent months, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees. Baghdad has become a largely Shia city with the Sunni pressed into smaller and smaller enclaves.
Cultivating an alliance with the Sunni tribes had been a long-term US policy since 2004 but finally caught fire because of al-Qa'ida overplayed their hand last year. It has the disadvantage that the US has, in effect, created a new Sunni tribal militia which takes orders from the US military and is well paid by it and does not owe allegiance to the Shia-Kurdish government in Baghdad. This is despite the fact that the US has denounced militias in Iraq and demanded they be dissolved.
The US success in Anbar was real but it was also overblown because the wholly Sunni province is not typical of the rest of Iraq. The strategy advocated by Washington exaggerated the importance of al-Qa'ida and seldom spoke of the other powerful groups who had not been driven out of Anbar.
Abu Risha had real support in Anbar, particularly in Ramadi where many people yesterday referred to him as "hero" and expressed sadness at his death.
But President Bush's highly publicised visit to Anbar may well have been Abu Risha's death knell. There are many Sunni who loathe al-Qa'ida, but very few who approve of the US occupation. By giving the impression that Abu Risha was one of America's most important friends, Mr Bush ensured that some of the most dangerous men in the world would try to kill him.
The testimony by General Petraeus to Congress earlier this week has proved effective from the point of view of the White House in establishing the US commander in Iraq as a credible advocate of the administration's military strategy.
But critics of General Petraeus have described him as "a military Paris Hilton" whose celebrity is not matched by his achievements. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul in 2003-4 was lauded for re-establishing Iraqi police units only for them to desert or join the insurgents who captured most of the city after the general left.
A model for Iraq?
General David Petraeus in his testimony to Congress:
"The most significant development in the past six months likely has been the emergence of tribes and local citizens rejecting al-Qa'ida and other extremists. This has, of course, been most visible in Anbar. A year ago the province was assessed as "lost" politically. Today, it is a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose al-Qa'ida and reject its Taliban-like ideology."
Citation: Patrick Cockburn. " An assassination that blows apart Bush's hopes of pacifying Iraq," The Independent, 14 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2961318.ece
The Independent, 14 September 2007
13 September 2007
We're losing in Afghanistan too
Contra Donald Rumsfeld's rosy assessment, the country looks a lot like it did on Sept. 10, 2001.
By John Kiriakou and Richard Klein
Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2007
Former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld says in the current edition of GQ magazine that the war in Afghanistan has been "a big success," with people living in freedom and life "improved on the streets."
To anyone working in the country, there is only one possible, informed response: What Afghanistan is the man talking about?
In reality, Afghanistan -- former Taliban stronghold, Al Qaeda haven and warlord-cum-heroin-smuggler finishing school -- feels more and more like Sept. 10, 2001, than a victory in the U.S. war on terrorism.
The country is, plain and simple, a mess. Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies have quietly regained territory, rendering wide swaths of the country off-limits to U.S. and Afghan forces, international aid workers and even journalists. Violent attacks against Western interests are routine. Even Kabul, which the White House has held up as a postcard for what is possible in Afghanistan, has become so dangerous that foreign embassies are in states of lockdown, diplomats do not leave their offices, and venturing beyond security perimeters requires daylight-only travel, armored vehicles, Kevlar and armed escorts.
Fear reigns among average Afghans in Kabul. Street crime, virtually unheard of in Afghan culture, has increased dramatically over the last three years as angry, unemployed and often radicalized young men settle scores with members of other tribes and clans, steal and rob to feed their families and vent their frustration with a government that appears powerless to help them. Taking a chance by eating in one of Kabul's handful of restaurants or going shopping in one of the few markets left is a new version of Russian roulette.
For U.S. officials and diplomats, Kabul is simply a prison. Embassies are completely closed to vehicular and even foot traffic. Indeed, at the American Embassy, the consular section issues visas only to Afghan government officials. If an average Afghan wants a visa to the U.S., he or she must travel to Islamabad, Pakistan, to apply. To allow Afghans to stand in line for visas at the embassy in Kabul would invite terrorist attacks or attract suicide bombers.
Consider that an American Embassy staffer going to the U.S. Agency for International Development office across the street is required to use an underground tunnel that links the two compounds. Even though the street is closed to all traffic other than official U.S. or U.N. vehicles and is patrolled and guarded by armored personnel carriers, tanks and Kalashnikov-carrying security personnel with a safety perimeter of several blocks, the risk from snipers, mortars or grenades is ever present.
Working in Supermax Afghanistan makes the USAID's performance all the more heroic. Since 2003, the agency has overseen the investment of more than $4 billion in Afghanistan, has built more than 500 schools and an equal number of clinics and has paved more than 1,000 miles of roads, all while suffering about 130 casualties at the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
By some measures, Afghanistan should be a feel-good story by now -- the Taliban is, officially at least, out of power, Al Qaeda has been chased to the wilds of the Afghan-Pakistani border and U.S. forces are on hand to consolidate and solidify a peaceful new order.
But the truth is very different. By any measure, this remains a "hot" war with a well-armed, motivated and organized enemy. Village by village, tribe by tribe and province by province, Al Qaeda is coming back, enforcing a form of Islamic life and faith rooted in the 12th century, intimidating reformers, exacting revenge and funding itself with dollars from massive poppy cultivation and heroin smuggling. As Al Qaeda reestablishes itself, Osama bin Laden remains free to send video messages and serve as an ideological beacon to jihadis worldwide. The country's president, Hamid Karzai, meanwhile, is in effect little more than the mayor of Kabul.
The war in Afghanistan is a political and military one-step-forward-two-steps-back exercise. The work there isn't just unfinished, it is more dangerous and less certain than policymakers in Washington and talking heads in New York studios can imagine. Those suggesting otherwise are either naive or flacking a political agenda.
John Kiriakou, now in the private sector, served as a CIA counter-terrorism official from 1998 to 2004 and recently returned from Afghanistan. Richard Klein, a former State Department official, is managing director for the Middle East and Arabian Gulf at Kissinger McLarty Associates in Washington.
Citation: John Kiriakou and Richard Klein. "We're losing in Afghanistan too," Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-klein13sep13,0,1086825.story?coll=la-news-comment
By John Kiriakou and Richard Klein
Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2007
Former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld says in the current edition of GQ magazine that the war in Afghanistan has been "a big success," with people living in freedom and life "improved on the streets."
To anyone working in the country, there is only one possible, informed response: What Afghanistan is the man talking about?
In reality, Afghanistan -- former Taliban stronghold, Al Qaeda haven and warlord-cum-heroin-smuggler finishing school -- feels more and more like Sept. 10, 2001, than a victory in the U.S. war on terrorism.
The country is, plain and simple, a mess. Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies have quietly regained territory, rendering wide swaths of the country off-limits to U.S. and Afghan forces, international aid workers and even journalists. Violent attacks against Western interests are routine. Even Kabul, which the White House has held up as a postcard for what is possible in Afghanistan, has become so dangerous that foreign embassies are in states of lockdown, diplomats do not leave their offices, and venturing beyond security perimeters requires daylight-only travel, armored vehicles, Kevlar and armed escorts.
Fear reigns among average Afghans in Kabul. Street crime, virtually unheard of in Afghan culture, has increased dramatically over the last three years as angry, unemployed and often radicalized young men settle scores with members of other tribes and clans, steal and rob to feed their families and vent their frustration with a government that appears powerless to help them. Taking a chance by eating in one of Kabul's handful of restaurants or going shopping in one of the few markets left is a new version of Russian roulette.
For U.S. officials and diplomats, Kabul is simply a prison. Embassies are completely closed to vehicular and even foot traffic. Indeed, at the American Embassy, the consular section issues visas only to Afghan government officials. If an average Afghan wants a visa to the U.S., he or she must travel to Islamabad, Pakistan, to apply. To allow Afghans to stand in line for visas at the embassy in Kabul would invite terrorist attacks or attract suicide bombers.
Consider that an American Embassy staffer going to the U.S. Agency for International Development office across the street is required to use an underground tunnel that links the two compounds. Even though the street is closed to all traffic other than official U.S. or U.N. vehicles and is patrolled and guarded by armored personnel carriers, tanks and Kalashnikov-carrying security personnel with a safety perimeter of several blocks, the risk from snipers, mortars or grenades is ever present.
Working in Supermax Afghanistan makes the USAID's performance all the more heroic. Since 2003, the agency has overseen the investment of more than $4 billion in Afghanistan, has built more than 500 schools and an equal number of clinics and has paved more than 1,000 miles of roads, all while suffering about 130 casualties at the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
By some measures, Afghanistan should be a feel-good story by now -- the Taliban is, officially at least, out of power, Al Qaeda has been chased to the wilds of the Afghan-Pakistani border and U.S. forces are on hand to consolidate and solidify a peaceful new order.
But the truth is very different. By any measure, this remains a "hot" war with a well-armed, motivated and organized enemy. Village by village, tribe by tribe and province by province, Al Qaeda is coming back, enforcing a form of Islamic life and faith rooted in the 12th century, intimidating reformers, exacting revenge and funding itself with dollars from massive poppy cultivation and heroin smuggling. As Al Qaeda reestablishes itself, Osama bin Laden remains free to send video messages and serve as an ideological beacon to jihadis worldwide. The country's president, Hamid Karzai, meanwhile, is in effect little more than the mayor of Kabul.
The war in Afghanistan is a political and military one-step-forward-two-steps-back exercise. The work there isn't just unfinished, it is more dangerous and less certain than policymakers in Washington and talking heads in New York studios can imagine. Those suggesting otherwise are either naive or flacking a political agenda.
John Kiriakou, now in the private sector, served as a CIA counter-terrorism official from 1998 to 2004 and recently returned from Afghanistan. Richard Klein, a former State Department official, is managing director for the Middle East and Arabian Gulf at Kissinger McLarty Associates in Washington.
Citation: John Kiriakou and Richard Klein. "We're losing in Afghanistan too," Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-klein13sep13,0,1086825.story?coll=la-news-comment
11 September 2007
US to build military base on Iraq-Iran border
Agence France-Presse, 10 September 2007
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US military said on Monday that it is to build a base on Iraq's border with Iran to stem what it charges is rampant smuggling of weapons and fighters.
The base, which the military describes as a "life support area", will be set up near the headquarters of the Department of Border Enforcement in Badrah, in the central province of Wasit.
The province, currently the theatre of a massive US-led military crackdown targeting Shiite militiamen allegedly involved in weapons smuggling, shares a 200 kilometre (125 mile) border with Iran.
It said the base is "not really permanent, although it will be manned 24/7 and will be used for as long as necessary."
The base will also accommodate some of the 2,000 Georgian soldiers being deployed in the province to staff new checkpoints being set up to control the border, the military said.
"We've got a major problem with Iranian munitions streaming into Iraq," Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of US army forces in central Iraq, was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
"This Iranian interference is troubling and we have to stop it."
The newspaper gave further details about the base, saying it will have living quarters for some 200 soldiers, will be built six kilometres (four miles) from the border and should be completed by November.
It said the US military also plans to install X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at Zurbatiya, the main border crossing between Iran and Iraq.
On August 19, Lynch charged that some 50 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were inside Iraq training Shiite extremists to launch attacks on US and Iraqi security forces.
The US military has regularly accused Iranian forces of training Iraqi militants to use rockets and explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) -- fist-sized bombs capable of slicing through heavy armour -- but Lynch's comments marked the first claims that they were operating inside Iraq.
The US military says EFPs are manufactured in Iran, smuggled into Iraq and delivered to Shiite extremists for attacks on US-led coalition forces. Tehran denies the charge.
Citation: "US to build military base on Iraq-Iran border," Agence France-Presse, 10 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070910/pl_afp/usiraqiranmilitary
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US military said on Monday that it is to build a base on Iraq's border with Iran to stem what it charges is rampant smuggling of weapons and fighters.
The base, which the military describes as a "life support area", will be set up near the headquarters of the Department of Border Enforcement in Badrah, in the central province of Wasit.
The province, currently the theatre of a massive US-led military crackdown targeting Shiite militiamen allegedly involved in weapons smuggling, shares a 200 kilometre (125 mile) border with Iran.
It said the base is "not really permanent, although it will be manned 24/7 and will be used for as long as necessary."
The base will also accommodate some of the 2,000 Georgian soldiers being deployed in the province to staff new checkpoints being set up to control the border, the military said.
"We've got a major problem with Iranian munitions streaming into Iraq," Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of US army forces in central Iraq, was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
"This Iranian interference is troubling and we have to stop it."
The newspaper gave further details about the base, saying it will have living quarters for some 200 soldiers, will be built six kilometres (four miles) from the border and should be completed by November.
It said the US military also plans to install X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at Zurbatiya, the main border crossing between Iran and Iraq.
On August 19, Lynch charged that some 50 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were inside Iraq training Shiite extremists to launch attacks on US and Iraqi security forces.
The US military has regularly accused Iranian forces of training Iraqi militants to use rockets and explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) -- fist-sized bombs capable of slicing through heavy armour -- but Lynch's comments marked the first claims that they were operating inside Iraq.
The US military says EFPs are manufactured in Iran, smuggled into Iraq and delivered to Shiite extremists for attacks on US-led coalition forces. Tehran denies the charge.
Citation: "US to build military base on Iraq-Iran border," Agence France-Presse, 10 September 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070910/pl_afp/usiraqiranmilitary
Off the Record with Don Rumsfeld
The much maligned former secretary of defense talks about his time in office—and insists he has nothing to apologize for
By Lisa DePaulo
GQ, 10 September 2007
The private plane about to deliver Rummy and Mrs. Rummy to their getaway in Taos, New Mexico, is idling on the tarmac at Dulles when the Secretary arrives. He enters smiling, beaming, swaggering, a compact little 75-year-old package of waning testosterone, dressed in real-man-headed-to-his-ranch khaki, two dachshunds (names: Reggie and Chester) yapping at his loafers, classy, no-nonsense wife of fifty-two years Velcroed to his side. In other words, the perfect tableau of a Bush-administration official—except, of course, that he no longer is and has chosen this outing to talk at length for the first time since he was rudely banished from the kingdom last December.
Two young, studly pilots—from the private firm Rummy uses to book his private planes—greet him in the doorway of the airport lobby. They are terribly excited to have the Secretary as their charge this morning. They've never met the man before—were never "lucky enough"—and so, yes, they fall into the category (small, if you believe the press; huge, if you believe the Rumsfelds) of Great Admirers. They stand erect and giddy, very respectful. "Mister Secretary," they say in unison, extending their hands, explaining that they, Jeff and Jason, will be safely delivering him to Taos this morning, sir! Rumsfeld seizes the moment. He has always known how to play to his audience. "Let me tell you, as an old navy pilot, fellas…" And he's off and running, flashing that special Rumsfeldian ability to exude charm and arrogance at the same time: praising their fine choice of career, giving them tips on the runway layout in Taos, conspiratorially gauging whether we might have to stop for fuel, and letting them know, in that passive-aggressive way he has, that he personally has already scoped out the weather conditions. "You don't need any final instructions or anything?" he says more than asks.
"No, sir!"
Jason and Jeff head off to the cockpit, leaving the Rummys—and their two security guys—to schlep their stuff to the plane. (Rummy still has round-the-clock government security, because of "threats and things," but he doesn't want to talk about that. This will be the first of a great many Things Rummy Doesn't Want to Talk About.) But Oh Lordy, as Rummy would say, what the heck are they bringing with them to Taos? What is all this stuff? Is that a king-size mattress pad from Macy's, with the tags still hanging off it, that they are lugging across the country? And what's with the straw rugs? Joyce, a.k.a. Mrs. Rummy, says she found those nifty rugs at a hardware store, though her preferred shopping venue is Target. As for the mattress pad, it was on sale! And they needed a new one at the ranch. They are, they explain, frugal.
Except when it comes to their preferred mode of transport.
The Lear 60 they have leased for the journey is about fifty feet away on the tarmac. Would the Secretary like a ride out to the plane? asks one of the security guys. Rummy gives him his best "You idiot, I'm Donald Rumsfeld" look. "'Course not!" he barks.
And we are off to Taos.
"Feel free to open the windows, ladies," says Rummy, in his oozing-charm voice. (He is either Rummy or Mr. Secretary or DHR, as he refers to himself; or DR, as his staff refers to him, with abbreviated reverence.) Open the windows? "No, no," he says. An impatient snarl. (Is she going to take everything literally?) The shades! The shades!
We settle in on the plane. Me, Joyce (with both dogs on her lap), DHR, and in the fourth seat, DHR's reading materials. Mounds and mounds of newspapers: USA Today, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, etc. (Though the next day, he will claim, when asked what it's like to get excoriated in the press: "I don't spend a lot of time reading newspapers.") He has also brought with him a thick stack of e-mails and memos that he has printed out for the trip. He still does his famous "snowflake" thing, so named for his propensity to put every thought that crosses his mind into memos and distribute them like a blizzard (to whom, these days, it is not clear), with the exception, perhaps, of those things he does not recall, such as his role, or nonrole, in the Pat Tillman cover-up, which he will testify about a month after our trip. For much of the four-hour flight to New Mexico, he hands notes and papers, one page at a time, across the aisle to Joyce with a "Sweetheart, look at this" instruction. Or: "Here, this is interesting." Or: "Here, now this is interesting."
I let at least two states pass underneath us before I dare to ask: So…whatcha all reading?
Heh heh. "You see the mountains? There they are!" says DHR.
No, really, what's so interesting?
"Bad thunderstorms, like they said."
Finally, he begins to hand pages across the aisle to me, with a caveat: "You can read it, but you can't use it." Heh heh
The Rumsfelds are headed to Taos on this gorgeous summer day to greet the only creature who might be more stubborn than DR. That would be Gus, the new mule Rummy bought for Joyce for her seventy-fifth birthday. "I said to Don," says Joyce, filing her nails, "'I want a mule.' Because our horses, I haven't been on in six years. And I just feel, at this age, it's safer for me to be on a mule than a horse. A mule is not spooked easily, very sure-footed, calm…"
DHR puts his paper down and squints. Joyce wanted a mule, he says, so he bought her one. The least he could do.
And you know, says Joyce, "in the history of the army, they were on mules." So they had that little military connection.…
"Kit Carson rode one from California to Taos, New Mexico!" says Rummy.
"Isn't that crazy?" says Joyce.
So how, exactly, do you go about buying a mule?
"On the Internet!" Rummy says.
He goes on to explain that he found "this mule fella in Missouri. I found the man who trained them and bred them. And, uh, he sent a video. And we looked at the video and satisfied ourselves that Gus was at least a possibility. There's always a risk! When you buy a—"
A mule online?
"You can get a bad one. But from the video, he looks like a good-looking animal."
And you named him Gus because…?
"Oh no, it was already named. The animal's name, technically, was Augustus. But that's a little too grand for us. So he's gonna be Gus." He picks up another newspaper. The headlines are full of news about Hillary, Barack, Rudy, McCain. Surely he has an opinion on how the election is shaping up.
"The what?" says Rummy.
The presidential election.
"I think, uh…?I'm gonna eat my lunch now."
Kevin, his security guard who's sitting in the jump seat behind the cockpit, proffers the prepackaged lunches. "Chicken or tuna salad," says Rummy. "Ladies?"
He eats in silence, occasionally gazing out the window, then declares that he is going to "not talk for a while."
Joyce is less reticent. While her husband shields himself with The Wall Street Journal, she talks about how surreal it has been for them to "reenter," as she puts it. For six years, they lived in the bubble of the Bush administration—they couldn't even go to Taos! But now that they are "reentering," life has gotten interesting again. Why, just the other day, they flew commercial for the first time in six years!
"It was fun," says Rummy, piping up.
"Oh, my gosh," says Joyce. "It was exciting. And then we went on the train to New York. Which was the first time since he left the Pentagon. It was the first time we had done anything really like that! And it was absolutely… We were like two kids on an adventure!"
DHR has his nose back in the papers as Joyce tells the rest of the story about the amazing train ride. "And then the conductor came through and said, 'There's been a terrible tragedy.' And we thought—I mean, from where we're coming from, 'terrible tragedy' is serious. And the conductor said, 'Anna Nicole Smith has died.' "
A little snort from Rummy.
"And so isn't that…," Joyce trails off. "I mean, it's really… And then the darling couple in front of us, who had said nothing, they turned around and said, 'We've been trying to respect your privacy, but we're quite sure you have no idea who Anna Nicole Smith is.' Isn't that adorable?!"
He peers over his newspaper and snorts again.
"And Don said, 'Help us out a little bit.' "
They exchange a knowing chuckle.
"But I mean, it was the real world, you know?" says Joyce.
Speaking of the real world, when the Rummys are in Taos, do they ever get to hang out with Julia Roberts?
Rummy smiles. "Noooo. But we've met her, and she's very nice."
"She just had another baby, Don. A boy," says Joyce.
So they've met her?
"Well, yeah, I'd say," says Rummy. "I sold her some land. We had land that abutted each other, and she wanted it, so we sold it to her. But don't put that in there! I don't want that in the story."
("That's okay," whispers Joyce. "It was all over the Taos papers.")
For the next half hour, his lovely and open wife tells me about the love affair the two have shared for more than six decades. They met when they were 14. Freshman year in high school, Winnetka, Illinois. "I was obsessed!" she says. "But he wasn't crazy about me." She spent her high school years offering condolences to the other girls he shafted. Finally, she snagged him senior year. Then he got accepted to Princeton. And she made a decision—"it was deliberate," she says—to go as far away as possible. She picked Colorado. "I went west when he went east, because I didn't want to spend four years hoping he would call."
Rummy pretends to be ignoring this conversation.
Then what?
Well…Joyce was no dummy. She got herself "pinned" to another guy, and Rummy went berserk. ("I think it still bothers him," she whispers.) He instantly proposed.
DR peers over his newspaper. "Oh, come on! She was so crazy about me that she ran off and got pinned to some guy in Colorado!"
"See?" says Joyce. "That still makes him a little mad, right?"
"Do you think it was a strategy?" Rummy asks me.
I think it was a brilliant strategy!
"Yeah, well. Do you want more lunch?"
He returns to the papers, and Joyce returns to the topic of reentering. I probably won't believe this, she says, but one of the really great things that's happened since the president did or did not fire her husband is that everywhere they go, people just adore Donald Rumsfeld. "They come up to him on the street and tell him how much they like him," says Joyce. "They throw their arms around him! Wherever we go. Even in New York, where you'd think it would be enemy territory! People come up to him and throw their arms around him."
She says that he got "hundreds and hundreds of letters" when he left the Pentagon. All positive. "I said to Don, 'Did you get any bad ones?' " DHR squints over his papers. Well, there was one negative letter, says Joyce. "From someone who was mad because he sold property to Julia Roberts."
Rummy grimaces.
He tosses another memo across to Joyce for her opinion. "Lisa's gonna think all my good ideas come from you," he says. To me: "I feel like her secretary." (Speaking of which, Joyce reminds him, they need to thank Lynne Cheney for dinner.) Finally, he starts to share. Among the things I am allowed to read: his eulogy for Gerald Ford (yes, he carries it around with him) and a rather fascinating chronology he has typed up interspersing the life of Donald Rumsfeld with Major World Events ("1946: DHR meets Joyce.… 1947: DHR becomes an Eagle Scout.… 2003: Operation Iraqi Freedom begins"). I learn that he was born the day after the stock market hit bottom in 1932, that he was 11 on D-day, and that his father died, of Alzheimer's, the same year Ford made Rummy chief of staff. Rummy says he stole this chronology idea from a book he read on Churchill. He thinks it might be a nifty way to start his own book—which he is, in fact, planning to write, despite coy protestations. The chronology is a reminder of the profound influence DHR has wielded for more than half a century: naval officer. Four-term congressman. The youngest (and then oldest) secretary of defense. Top aide under Ford and Nixon (who once called him "a ruthless little bastard"). Ambassador to NATO. Middle East envoy. Two lucrative stints as a CEO in private industry—
He hands over another memo. "I sat down the other day and made a list of challenges in the world," he says. ("Subject: Challenges.") Another is an April 26, 2006, memo addressed to President Bush titled "Some Illustrative New Approaches and Initiatives to Meet the 21st-Century Challenges." (I can read it, but I can't have it.)
We move on to some photographs. DHR in his Princeton-graduation photo, DHR on a unicycle, DHR with Gerald Ford in bedroom slippers. And a really creepy shot of DHR's face on a shooting target in Iraq. "These were found in the terrorist training camp," he explains. "Before the war even started, they were there."
With you as the target?
"Yeah. When we conquered Baghdad, we went into this terrorist training camp and this was their target, all over the place. They were using these."
Didn't that freak you out?
A loud belly laugh. "There are so many things that should freak me out!" Then, a straight face. "No. Not really."
Rummy collects his papers and memos and stuffs them into his old, beat-up leather briefcase. (He's had it since 1977.) Then he gathers up the newspapers and offers them to me. In return I toss him the New York Post, the only paper he hasn't devoured today. On the cover: Paris Hilton, just released from jail. He reads the headline—V-D DAY!—and cracks up. Then he starts to read the story.
Suddenly, the quizzical Rumsfeldian look.
"Sweetheart?" he says to his wife. "What's a hair extension?"
"It's a very big thing right now," says Joyce. "I just learned about it three weeks ago."
Rummy looks on in horror as she describes—quite accurately—how it is done.
"Hmmmph," he says.
As we approach Taos, he gestures out the window. Look! "There's the Rio Grande." And the famous Gorge Bridge. "A friend flew under that Gorge Bridge. He got arrested for it. He was foolhardy." A beat. "And there's Julia Roberts's land!" (But he'd prefer I not mention that.)
When the plane touches down, the Rummys applaud. "Way to go!" DHR shouts to the cockpit. "You could have been a navy pilot!" Then to me: "He had a little runway left there, didn't use it all." This is apparently high praise.
Joyce tells me I should dress as casually as possible when I come to visit the farm tomorrow. Jeans? "Absolutely!" (They prefer to call it a farm, not a ranch.) "Not those shoes," adds Rummy, pointing to my high heels. "Those aren't Taos shoes."
I mention that maybe we could talk about Iraq tomorrow.
A squint of the eyes. A dawning realization.
"What is this for?" he asks. "And why?"
*****
That night Rummy calls, as promised, with directions to the farm. I already have a set of directions from his guy back in Washington—with the words please destroy after use on a sticky note on top—but I indulge him. He seems in good spirits; he explains that he and Joyce are enjoying their "last night alone" before Gus arrives. His directions are complicated, military-precise, every detail mentioned—including two "cattle guards" that one must navigate correctly. Um, what's a cattle guard? "That is such a New York question!" says Rummy, roaring with laughter.
At nine the next morning, he's waiting in the driveway of the farm with Chester and Reggie. "C'mon, Reggie, it's Lisa! He can't see well." Reggie nuzzles my ankles. "Good dog." Today he's dressed in real-man-on-the-farm garb: old, faded jeans, a Patagonia vest, an oxford shirt and white undershirt, New Balance sneakers. Despite a limp (he wiped out on the slopes last winter and screwed up his hip pretty good) that has added a bit of frailty to the Persona, he still has the macho thing going. He walks like a man with a ranch.
"You wanna leave your gear here, and I'll walk you around a bit?" he asks.
Though Rummy doesn't make a habit of inviting members of the press to his farm, he seems to love showing it off. The place is—there's just no way to say it without clichés—peaceful, quiet, rustic, stunning in its raw natural beauty. It's his fifty-acre piece of heaven, his sanctuary—particularly now. In fact, it kinda ticked him off that he got out here only a handful of times while he was secretary of defense. "Have been a little busy for the last six and a half years," he says, chuckling. One of the upsides to his exile—though he doesn't call it that—is being able to come here whenever the heck he wants. He shows me every barn, every tractor, every animal on the property. "I just love it here," he says. "Where's my chain saw?"
If you're expecting Don Rumsfeld—out of government now, on his farm, in a moment of repose—to play the bitter, angry, reflective, tragic fallen hero…ain't gonna happen. If he feels any of those things, he's not showing it. (And if he did, he probably wouldn't be Donald H. Rumsfeld.) The man does not do regret. Over the course of the next few hours, he will answer every question asked of him, and even when the answer is "I'm not gonna talk about that," there's never a flash of anger. Impatience, yes, but never anger.
And anyway, he would much rather show me around. "You gotta see this," he says, leading me past piles of horse manure, past an outhouse, over an irrigation ditch, into a series of dilapidated barns. Rummy's spread used to be a dairy farm—he bought it from the farmer's wife at auction, after the guy died—and he has kept everything the old man left here. His tools, his machinery, his clothes, his rifle holster ("You ever seen one?"). He even kept his dirt-encrusted delivery log. "Look at this: 'Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Homogenized for Herman Quintana. Put it in the icebox.' Isn't that interesting? He pretty much ran this place by himself. So he had to do it wisely."
The Rumsfelds lease part of their land to a friend who runs cattle out here—"They were all right here this morning," Rummy says; "it looked to be thirty head in this patch"—and have some handsome-looking horses. In another barn, he stores his guns. Which come in handy, with the darn coyotes. He has to be careful that Chester and Reggie don't get eaten. "They go after the young ones," he explains. "They got a calf one night." He tells the story of how he tried to save that calf in the middle of the night. "Joyce likes to keep the ammunition far away from the weapons. So we keep the weapons locked up in here and the ammunition somewhere else. And one night, you could hear the coyotes killing a calf. As sure as anything. It was calving season. And I raced out here, got the ammunition, then I ran to the gun locker, got that open, then I ran all the way back." He stops for a second, stares out at the field where it happened. Did I just detect a hint of emotion? I did. "By the time I got out there, they'd finished."
Was it bad?
"Yeah."
So then what do you do with—
"A dead calf?" That hint of emotion is suddenly gone. "Oh, they kind of pack it up," he says matter-of-factly. "A dead horse or anything, they pack it up and take it out to the dump."
He shows me his little workshop ("I like to fix things"), the guesthouse, the barn he converted to a playroom filled with dollhouses and a Foosball table (for the grandkids). Then, suddenly, there's a bit of a crisis: Reggie, the older dachshund who can't see much anymore, has somehow gotten into the corral with the horses. "Oh no! Reggie! Come, pal!" To me: "This is not good. They'll stomp him to death. They don't know what he is. He could be a coyote or something.… Where the hell is he? Reggie! Ho! I don't see him. Stay here, Chester."
He goes off and rescues Reggie. But the darn dog keeps wandering off. Will he know not to go back in there with the horses?
"No, he may not," says DR. "But he's gotta learn, I suppose." He shrugs. Learning the hard way is apparently a Rumsfeld tradition.
(A week later, Reggie will have what first appears to be a stroke. And Rumsfeld—though he won't admit this—will be crushed.)
He leads me into the farmhouse. Their main house, where Joyce is spending the morning, is across the highway, on even more land. (They've made quite a haul in New Mexico real estate acquisitions over the years.) But since it's being renovated, they've been bunking down on the farm. The farmhouse is adorable. It's a "real adobe" Taos house, with two-foot-thick walls and beamed ceilings. Joyce has it decorated in southwestern WASP: warm, muted colors; tasteful rugs on stone floors; a few carefully selected pieces of art (a simple wooden cross, a Curtis print of the Taos pueblo, a painting by a local artist of the famous St. Francis of Assisi church in Taos—made more famous by Georgia O'Keeffe—where they like to go to Mass on Sundays even though they're not Catholic); framed pictures of their three children and seven grandchildren; and a touch of whimsy, like the black steel cow sprawled out in the foyer. "That scare ya?" asks DR. "Joyce found that." To commemorate one of their favorite cows, who died birthing a calf. His wife is the type of woman who turned his old congressional spittoon into a centerpiece for dinner parties. You can see why he loves her.
"We can sit here, if you want to visit," says Rummy, offering a sturdy chair at the kitchen table. For several minutes, he futzes around, trying to figure out how to pour me a glass of water. (Where the heck did Joyce put the glasses?) Then he sits down, crosses his legs, and gestures at the tape recorder. Right. He had asked me to remind him first about an article in yesterday's paper speculating on whether he was shopping some tell-all book. "I don't even want to bother with that article," he says. (It will be a memoir, not a darn tell-all, spanning the full seventy-five years of his illustrious life and career.) Okay. "But I'll tell you what I'm doing. Joyce and I are in the process of typing up the papers that I was working on on the plane over. To create a new foundation. But this is a foundation that will be an operating foundation. And we have four purposes at the present time.…"
So he's not, as the article speculated, about to write a book that will "correct the factual record, so he can sleep more gently"?
"Noooo! That's nonsense!" An impatient snarl. "I sleep fine."
He'd like to explain the four purposes of his foundation: "One is to provide fellowships for postgraduate work in a variety of areas, including economics and foreign policy and national-security affairs. Our second purpose is to sponsor a lecture series—Pipe down!" One of the dogs is barking. "We ran out of food, so he's hungry." He looks to the ceiling. "Oh, Joyce, tell me how to do this!" To the dog: "We don't have any food. I'll give you a YipYap, that's what I'll give ya."
A YipYap?
"It's something that Joyce has to calm them down. It's a treat. Kind of a little… Here, pal. The third thing is, we're interested in microenterprise. Most of the poor countries of the world—I shouldn't say most—a number of the poorer countries of the world have corrupt governments, and so when nations help nations, a lot of that money doesn't end up going to the people; it gets stuck in graft and corruption." He explains that before he came back to government, he worked on microloans with some outfit doing work in India and was impressed by it. He wants to do it in Afghanistan. "The fourth thing we'll do is be involved and interested in the Central Asian former Soviet republics.…" A brief history lesson, then an explanation of what the Big Goal is: "We talked about it and decided that these were four things that looked like it would be timely to be helpful on. Each of us believes in free political systems and free economic systems, and so that's a thread that will run through. I just think there ought to be a way…to try to be helpful to these former Soviet republics in ways that make their transition from a communist system and a command economy to a free political system and a free economy better. So that is what we're doing. If I do write a book, the funds from the book would go right into that foundation."
Sounds ambitious.
"It is!"
You could just hang out in Taos and not do anything.
"Oh, that's not like me. I have too much energy to do that. And it's a wonderful world, all the things that can be done."
Is it your legacy you're worried about?
"Nooo! I don't think in that term."
You don't? Maybe a little bit?
"No. You get up and do what you do. And when it's over, it's over."
He pushes out his chair, checks his watch.
But when you look back…
"You know? I am not a person who looks back. You say, 'When you look back.' If you asked me when was the last time I looked back, I don't do much of it. I just don't. Tomorrow's what's important, much more important than yesterday."
But how do you want to be remembered?
"Oh, I don't know," he says. "Accurately."
Okay, then. How do you think you'll be remembered?
"I don't have any idea." He's slightly annoyed now. But: "I know it'll be different than it is today; it always is. I think you read in that little paper I showed you on the plane that Harry Truman went out of office with, I think, a 19 or 20 percent approval rating. And yet what was accomplished in his presidency, with all those institutions that served the world and our country so well for fifty years, it's just amazing."
Do you think your old buddy W. hopes he's Harry Truman in fifty years?
"I. Don't. Know."
Do you miss him?
"Um, no."
A wry Rummy smile.
How about Colin Powell? Are you still close?
"No! We're not close. Never were."
Cheney?
"I still see Cheney."
Yes, they have houses right near each other on the eastern shore of Maryland. And yes, it is true they watched the last two presidential elections together over at Dick's place, and no, Rummy is not sure if they'll be doing that again.
"I don't know!" he says. "He's a busy guy."
A few things he will say about W. He believes that someday he'll be vindicated. He believes he's a lot more intelligent and curious than people give him credit for. "Oh, my goodness gracious!" That's a yes. "But you say 'than people give him credit for.' Than the press. Let's lay it on the line. 'Than the press gives him credit for.' Just think, in my lifetime, the Republican presidential candidates: Eisenhower, considered to be a bumbler, bad syntax. Gerald Ford, the best athlete they had in decades, and they called him a stumblebum and demeaned him and made fun of him. Said he wasn't smart, which he was. He'd gone to Michigan, he'd gone to Yale Law School. I mean… And Ronald Reagan. You read his diaries now, and the man is remarkable. And yet he was dismissed as a movie actor and not very smart. So I mean, the fact that President Bush is demeaned is no different than Eisenhower or Ford or Reagan. And the fact that people believe that to be the case is not a surprise when they're told it day in, day out, by the, uh, eastern media."
I can see how you and Bush got along in the loyalty department.
"Now, that's funny."
You still like him?
"I do."
You don't talk, though, right?
"Uhhh…I'm trying to think. No."
Was the last time you talked to him the day you resigned?
He can't recall.
What he does recall is that twice before, at the height of the Abu Ghraib disgrace, he offered to resign. "I wrote a note. The first note basically said, 'Look, this is a difficult problem for our country, and it happened on my watch, and you have my resignation anytime you feel it would be helpful.' And then I gave him that, and he rejected it. And then I wrote out a longer resignation, and, uh, resigned as opposed to offering a resignation. And he rejected that."
What does that tell you about him?
Long pause. "I don't know that I want to go there. That's none of my business. To analyze…"
A month and a half after our visit, Reuters would break the story that Rumsfeld gave his final (and apparently third) resignation letter to the president the day before the midterm elections, though Bush chose not to announce it until the day after, infuriating many Republicans who felt the election could have been won if Rummy had been sacrificed first. In Taos, I asked him if he considered resigning before the elections.
"Uhhh, no," he replied. "But it was very clear in my mind that if the Democrats won the House or the Senate or both, that it made sense for me to…that it would be best for the department if someone else was there."
So it could have been different for you if the Republicans had won?
"Mmm-hmm."
I tell him there's something I've been curious about. In the early days, before the invasion, where did Donald Rumsfeld stand, exactly? Were you one of the people driving the bus who wanted to invade Iraq, or—
"No." He cuts me off. "I think [Bush] was quoted in the Woodward book as saying he didn't ask me. And that's true."
But surely, at some point you must have expressed your concerns.
He did. First of all, "we—without separating me from the others—we tried not to have that happen. We tried to get Saddam Hussein to adhere to the U.N. resolutions. We tried to get other countries to put diplomatic pressure on him. Even at the very end, we tried to get him to leave the country and seek safe haven elsewhere so that that"—he means the war—"wouldn't have to happen. And before the war, I sat and—this is on the record, all of this—I sat down and handwrote fifteen, twenty, twenty-five things that could be…could go wrong, could be real problems."
He says he will show me the memo. (And eventually, he does. It's just as he describes it.) "I wrote down all of the things that could be problems: That we wouldn't find weapons of mass destruction. That there'd be a Fortress Baghdad, and a lot of people would be killed. All of this… I read it in a National Security Council meeting. Then I went back to my office—I had handwritten it—and I dictated it and added four or five things. And I think there's probably thirty items on it. And then I sent it around to each of the members of the National Security Council, to the president and the vice president. So that all of them had in their heads the things that were difficult, problematic, worrisome, dangerous."
And how was it received?
"Um…" A pause. He is carefully choosing his words. "I think it was…appreciated by the president that I took the time to do that."
And do you think the president—
"Yeah, I thought he read it. Yeah."
Almost on cue, the dogs start barking. Joyce walks in, with Blanca, their housekeeper.
"Hi, Blanca!" says DR.
"Hi, sir."
He notices that Blanca looks upset. "You doin' all right? What happened?"
Joyce explains that a good friend of Blanca's just lost her son. Killed in a car accident last night. With another friend. Fifteen years old.
"Fifteen," says Rummy, shaking his head. "Oh, that is a shame."
He walks over to Blanca, has a private word with her.
Then we move into the parlor, so Blanca and Joyce can put the groceries away. We sit down at a big, oval wooden table next to Joyce's piano and shelves filled with jigsaw puzzles and Scrabble games. They're big Scrabble people.
So: Could you ever see yourself pulling a Robert McNamara and apologizing for your role in this war?
He doesn't blink. "McNamara is a good man. And an intelligent man.…" And the rest is off the record. "Very much off the record." (DR always adds degrees to his off-the-recordness. There is, to my count, "off the record," "very off the record," and "way off the record." And he always remembers, sometimes in midsentence, to tell you when he's back on. The man is nothing if not precise.)
At one point I ask him what the hardest time in his life was. "The hardest time, without question, was being chief of staff to President Ford," he says. "Because [Ford] stepped into a flying airplane, with no crew! And to come in and be his chief of staff was just a terribly difficult assignment." It was brutal being in charge, he says, "in the immediate aftermath of Watergate, when the reservoir of trust in this country had been drained," where "you'd go out and give a press conference in the White House, and if I said, 'That's the ceiling,' they would wonder why; they'd say, 'Why is he saying that's the ceiling?' I mean, there was no trust in anyone for any reason. The environment was just polluted. It was just rotten in our country."
Harder than the past six years, though?
"Oh yeah. You know, people think now, Gee, isn't everything horrible and isn't it terrible? " But look at the other times in history, in his own lifetime, he says. "I mean, Lyndon Johnson couldn't leave the White House during the Vietnam War, they were throwing blood on the Pentagon… They were digging graves in my front lawn the last time I was secretary of defense! So you know, everything's new and everything changes, and nothing changes."
There are a lot of people who think that you guys are cold and callous, I say, that you don't hear criticism, that it doesn't seem to affect you when you see the death toll every day coming out of Iraq.
"Oh." It's more of a moan than an "oh."
Why is that?
"Probably ignorance."
But it has to affect you.
"Oh." The moan again. "Off the record…" And he tells a story that, frankly, should be on the record. It's personal and pretty heart-wrenching, the kind of thing that people who despise Donald Rumsfeld might be surprised to hear.
Why do you want this offthe record?
"I just do. I don't like to talk about myself."
Days later, I ask if I could put the story he told me on the record. And he responds with one of his dictated memos. ("Subject: Lisa's Questions on Hospital Visits.") What follows is several paragraphs of efficient, sterile prose utterly devoid of the seeming emotion I sensed when he talked at the kitchen table about visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital with Joyce. But that is Rummy. Given the chance—even a second chance—to show a pulse, he chooses not to.
DHR still lives by a code that no doubt served him well—to a point. You don't self-aggrandize, you don't kiss and tell, you don't open a vein and act like you're on Oprah. An example: I tell him I'd really love to know where he stands on social issues. He has lived a life fuller than most, and his intellectual wattage is undeniable. Surely he has thought about some of this stuff. He snorts. No, really. How does Donald Rumsfeld feel about gay marriage, abortion, etc.?
"Um, I'm not gonna get into it."
But why?
"The administration has positions on these things, and if you're part of the administration, you're supportive of the administration."
Yeah, but you're not anymore.
"I know. But it's just not the way I am."
He has made it very clear that he is not a man who looks back. But surely, I say, when you think about the past six years, where it began and where it is now, there must be regrets.
"Well, sure." A pause. Is he going to elaborate? Sort of. "I mean, you'd always wish things were perfect, but they never are. The enemy has a brain. And the enemy watches what our folks do, and they adjust to it and adapt to it, and in the process there's friction. And, uh, I mean, the fact that we were not able to get a division in through Turkey at the outset meant that the Saddamists, today's insurgents, had free play for a good period of time.…" And so on. "I mean, there's a dozen things like that."
But what would you have done differently?
"Oh, I don't think I'm gonna get into that." He checks his watch again. "We're winding up, right?"
So do you ever feel like you've been made the fall guy with Iraq?
"No. I think anyone who's involved in a war—eh, wars are difficult things, they're messy things, they're dangerous things, people die, people get wounded. And anyone who's involved, someone's not gonna like it, someone's gonna be critical of it. So I—if you're in the business I was in, uh, that goes with the territory."
It's hard to argue with this logic. But it does have the added benefit of deflecting any sort of criticism. It is also the kind of mindset that lets you sleep at night.
He goes on. "If you do anything, somebody's not gonna like it, that's inevitable. Therefore, if you want to be liked—as Tony Blair said, popular, which is a terrible word—if you don't do anything, then everyone's gonna like you. And if you do do something, somebody's not gonna like it. And when you cancel weapons systems, you're gonna get a bunch of generals unhappy about it. Because that's what they spent their whole life on, working on those things, getting ready for it. That doesn't bother me. I've been changing things for decades. I went into companies and changed them. And I—I'm comfortable with that, I accept that, that there's gonna be opposition to things. I was asked to come into the department, by the president, to transform it. I could have gone in and not done that. And everyone would have been smiling. And the defense contractors that were doing what they were doing would be happy, the congressmen who had things going on in their districts would be happy…
"The fact is, we're in a conflict and a struggle—the first conflict of the twenty-first century for the United States of America. It is new, it is unfamiliar to the American people, and there's… In a very real sense, the American military cannot lose a battle, they can't lose a war. On the other hand, they can't win the struggle themselves. It requires diplomacy, it requires economic assistance, it requires a range of things that are well beyond the purview of the Department of Defense." His purview. "In terms of what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan today, what the Department of Defense is doing is working. What isn't working is the diplomatic side. The government of Iraq has not been able to find ways to bring the elements of that country together sufficiently that they can create an environment hospitable to, uh, whatever one wants to call their evolving way of life, a democracy or a representative system or a freer system. Look at Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, 28 million people are free. They have their own president, they have their own parliament. Improved a lot on the streets."
All your theories worked there, in other words.
"It's been a big success! The Iraqi government has not been successful as yet. And, uh, it's gonna take some time and some effort."
When do you see it resolved?
"I'm not gonna get into that."
Right. But if you distill the general sense…the measured general sense…of what the American public feels about Iraq right now, it would be: a plan in but not a plan out. Do you agree with that?
"No! No, no! The military has to have plans for post-major-conflict stabilization, and they did. And, uh, the focus of the insurgents and the terrorists and the Al Qaeda have put on Iraq… It's enormously important to them."
But you sleep okay?
"I do. Always have."
No nightmares?
"Nope."
But surely, it has to be rough getting trashed every day.
He chuckles. "No. I get up and go right on."
Even when there's a headline where another general says, "Rumsfeld failed America"?
"Uh-huh. And you know, that's one general out of forty. So—"
Is that how you deal with it?
"Yeah. I mean, you should see the hundreds and hundreds of letters I received. Appreciating my service to the country. And complimenting me.… People that fuss, they're mostly retired people who don't agree with some of the things that we're doing. But I tell ya, I walk down the street—people are wonderful! It's incredible. Oh, my goodness, it's overwhelming."
Does that surprise you?
"Nope."
It is interesting, really, that the Rumsfelds have chosen Taos as their refuge. You couldn't possibly find a more liberal-hippie-crunchy hangout. And in fact, while the locals will tell you they tolerated Donald Rumsfeld's presence just fine before Iraq— "He was just another rich guy," says one nose-pierced store owner—they haven't exactly made his life easy since then. He doesn't get a whole lot of hugs in Taos—except for one guy, not terribly popular, who rides around town shouting, "Viva Rumsfeld!" there've been numerous protests. Like the time some group carried an enormous weapon of mass destruction (a giant papier–mâché Rummy) through the streets of town. Or the time his little grandchildren got heckled in the Fourth of July parade. The Fourth of July parade, for goodness sake! There are the people who shout "Warmonger!" from their pickup trucks. And there was the well-circulated story about the dude in the ski lodge who really let Rummy have it. Gave him such heck—"Well, lookee here! If it isn't Donald Rumsfeld, our favorite local war criminal"—but DHR being DHR, he just ignored him.
Wasn't that a little difficult?
"No, not really. It's a free country. People can say what they want."
Rummy checks his watch again. Golly, we've gone on longer than he'd planned. Do I know how to get back to my hotel? Do I need any suggestions for later? There are some great bars in Taos! The Trading Post is nice also! Gotta check that out. He walks me to my car. The doggies lick good-bye. Wait a minute—do I want to see a real adobe house? I am instructed to follow him in his Toyota Land Cruiser to his real house across the highway…but this is strictly off the record!
An hour later, more good-byes in yet another gravel driveway.This time he really has to go. Gus the mule is due any minute.
Citation: Lisa DePaulo. "Off the Record with Don Rumsfeld," GQ, 10 September 2007.
Original URL: http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_5896
By Lisa DePaulo
GQ, 10 September 2007
The private plane about to deliver Rummy and Mrs. Rummy to their getaway in Taos, New Mexico, is idling on the tarmac at Dulles when the Secretary arrives. He enters smiling, beaming, swaggering, a compact little 75-year-old package of waning testosterone, dressed in real-man-headed-to-his-ranch khaki, two dachshunds (names: Reggie and Chester) yapping at his loafers, classy, no-nonsense wife of fifty-two years Velcroed to his side. In other words, the perfect tableau of a Bush-administration official—except, of course, that he no longer is and has chosen this outing to talk at length for the first time since he was rudely banished from the kingdom last December.
Two young, studly pilots—from the private firm Rummy uses to book his private planes—greet him in the doorway of the airport lobby. They are terribly excited to have the Secretary as their charge this morning. They've never met the man before—were never "lucky enough"—and so, yes, they fall into the category (small, if you believe the press; huge, if you believe the Rumsfelds) of Great Admirers. They stand erect and giddy, very respectful. "Mister Secretary," they say in unison, extending their hands, explaining that they, Jeff and Jason, will be safely delivering him to Taos this morning, sir! Rumsfeld seizes the moment. He has always known how to play to his audience. "Let me tell you, as an old navy pilot, fellas…" And he's off and running, flashing that special Rumsfeldian ability to exude charm and arrogance at the same time: praising their fine choice of career, giving them tips on the runway layout in Taos, conspiratorially gauging whether we might have to stop for fuel, and letting them know, in that passive-aggressive way he has, that he personally has already scoped out the weather conditions. "You don't need any final instructions or anything?" he says more than asks.
"No, sir!"
Jason and Jeff head off to the cockpit, leaving the Rummys—and their two security guys—to schlep their stuff to the plane. (Rummy still has round-the-clock government security, because of "threats and things," but he doesn't want to talk about that. This will be the first of a great many Things Rummy Doesn't Want to Talk About.) But Oh Lordy, as Rummy would say, what the heck are they bringing with them to Taos? What is all this stuff? Is that a king-size mattress pad from Macy's, with the tags still hanging off it, that they are lugging across the country? And what's with the straw rugs? Joyce, a.k.a. Mrs. Rummy, says she found those nifty rugs at a hardware store, though her preferred shopping venue is Target. As for the mattress pad, it was on sale! And they needed a new one at the ranch. They are, they explain, frugal.
Except when it comes to their preferred mode of transport.
The Lear 60 they have leased for the journey is about fifty feet away on the tarmac. Would the Secretary like a ride out to the plane? asks one of the security guys. Rummy gives him his best "You idiot, I'm Donald Rumsfeld" look. "'Course not!" he barks.
And we are off to Taos.
"Feel free to open the windows, ladies," says Rummy, in his oozing-charm voice. (He is either Rummy or Mr. Secretary or DHR, as he refers to himself; or DR, as his staff refers to him, with abbreviated reverence.) Open the windows? "No, no," he says. An impatient snarl. (Is she going to take everything literally?) The shades! The shades!
We settle in on the plane. Me, Joyce (with both dogs on her lap), DHR, and in the fourth seat, DHR's reading materials. Mounds and mounds of newspapers: USA Today, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, etc. (Though the next day, he will claim, when asked what it's like to get excoriated in the press: "I don't spend a lot of time reading newspapers.") He has also brought with him a thick stack of e-mails and memos that he has printed out for the trip. He still does his famous "snowflake" thing, so named for his propensity to put every thought that crosses his mind into memos and distribute them like a blizzard (to whom, these days, it is not clear), with the exception, perhaps, of those things he does not recall, such as his role, or nonrole, in the Pat Tillman cover-up, which he will testify about a month after our trip. For much of the four-hour flight to New Mexico, he hands notes and papers, one page at a time, across the aisle to Joyce with a "Sweetheart, look at this" instruction. Or: "Here, this is interesting." Or: "Here, now this is interesting."
I let at least two states pass underneath us before I dare to ask: So…whatcha all reading?
Heh heh. "You see the mountains? There they are!" says DHR.
No, really, what's so interesting?
"Bad thunderstorms, like they said."
Finally, he begins to hand pages across the aisle to me, with a caveat: "You can read it, but you can't use it." Heh heh
The Rumsfelds are headed to Taos on this gorgeous summer day to greet the only creature who might be more stubborn than DR. That would be Gus, the new mule Rummy bought for Joyce for her seventy-fifth birthday. "I said to Don," says Joyce, filing her nails, "'I want a mule.' Because our horses, I haven't been on in six years. And I just feel, at this age, it's safer for me to be on a mule than a horse. A mule is not spooked easily, very sure-footed, calm…"
DHR puts his paper down and squints. Joyce wanted a mule, he says, so he bought her one. The least he could do.
And you know, says Joyce, "in the history of the army, they were on mules." So they had that little military connection.…
"Kit Carson rode one from California to Taos, New Mexico!" says Rummy.
"Isn't that crazy?" says Joyce.
So how, exactly, do you go about buying a mule?
"On the Internet!" Rummy says.
He goes on to explain that he found "this mule fella in Missouri. I found the man who trained them and bred them. And, uh, he sent a video. And we looked at the video and satisfied ourselves that Gus was at least a possibility. There's always a risk! When you buy a—"
A mule online?
"You can get a bad one. But from the video, he looks like a good-looking animal."
And you named him Gus because…?
"Oh no, it was already named. The animal's name, technically, was Augustus. But that's a little too grand for us. So he's gonna be Gus." He picks up another newspaper. The headlines are full of news about Hillary, Barack, Rudy, McCain. Surely he has an opinion on how the election is shaping up.
"The what?" says Rummy.
The presidential election.
"I think, uh…?I'm gonna eat my lunch now."
Kevin, his security guard who's sitting in the jump seat behind the cockpit, proffers the prepackaged lunches. "Chicken or tuna salad," says Rummy. "Ladies?"
He eats in silence, occasionally gazing out the window, then declares that he is going to "not talk for a while."
Joyce is less reticent. While her husband shields himself with The Wall Street Journal, she talks about how surreal it has been for them to "reenter," as she puts it. For six years, they lived in the bubble of the Bush administration—they couldn't even go to Taos! But now that they are "reentering," life has gotten interesting again. Why, just the other day, they flew commercial for the first time in six years!
"It was fun," says Rummy, piping up.
"Oh, my gosh," says Joyce. "It was exciting. And then we went on the train to New York. Which was the first time since he left the Pentagon. It was the first time we had done anything really like that! And it was absolutely… We were like two kids on an adventure!"
DHR has his nose back in the papers as Joyce tells the rest of the story about the amazing train ride. "And then the conductor came through and said, 'There's been a terrible tragedy.' And we thought—I mean, from where we're coming from, 'terrible tragedy' is serious. And the conductor said, 'Anna Nicole Smith has died.' "
A little snort from Rummy.
"And so isn't that…," Joyce trails off. "I mean, it's really… And then the darling couple in front of us, who had said nothing, they turned around and said, 'We've been trying to respect your privacy, but we're quite sure you have no idea who Anna Nicole Smith is.' Isn't that adorable?!"
He peers over his newspaper and snorts again.
"And Don said, 'Help us out a little bit.' "
They exchange a knowing chuckle.
"But I mean, it was the real world, you know?" says Joyce.
Speaking of the real world, when the Rummys are in Taos, do they ever get to hang out with Julia Roberts?
Rummy smiles. "Noooo. But we've met her, and she's very nice."
"She just had another baby, Don. A boy," says Joyce.
So they've met her?
"Well, yeah, I'd say," says Rummy. "I sold her some land. We had land that abutted each other, and she wanted it, so we sold it to her. But don't put that in there! I don't want that in the story."
("That's okay," whispers Joyce. "It was all over the Taos papers.")
For the next half hour, his lovely and open wife tells me about the love affair the two have shared for more than six decades. They met when they were 14. Freshman year in high school, Winnetka, Illinois. "I was obsessed!" she says. "But he wasn't crazy about me." She spent her high school years offering condolences to the other girls he shafted. Finally, she snagged him senior year. Then he got accepted to Princeton. And she made a decision—"it was deliberate," she says—to go as far away as possible. She picked Colorado. "I went west when he went east, because I didn't want to spend four years hoping he would call."
Rummy pretends to be ignoring this conversation.
Then what?
Well…Joyce was no dummy. She got herself "pinned" to another guy, and Rummy went berserk. ("I think it still bothers him," she whispers.) He instantly proposed.
DR peers over his newspaper. "Oh, come on! She was so crazy about me that she ran off and got pinned to some guy in Colorado!"
"See?" says Joyce. "That still makes him a little mad, right?"
"Do you think it was a strategy?" Rummy asks me.
I think it was a brilliant strategy!
"Yeah, well. Do you want more lunch?"
He returns to the papers, and Joyce returns to the topic of reentering. I probably won't believe this, she says, but one of the really great things that's happened since the president did or did not fire her husband is that everywhere they go, people just adore Donald Rumsfeld. "They come up to him on the street and tell him how much they like him," says Joyce. "They throw their arms around him! Wherever we go. Even in New York, where you'd think it would be enemy territory! People come up to him and throw their arms around him."
She says that he got "hundreds and hundreds of letters" when he left the Pentagon. All positive. "I said to Don, 'Did you get any bad ones?' " DHR squints over his papers. Well, there was one negative letter, says Joyce. "From someone who was mad because he sold property to Julia Roberts."
Rummy grimaces.
He tosses another memo across to Joyce for her opinion. "Lisa's gonna think all my good ideas come from you," he says. To me: "I feel like her secretary." (Speaking of which, Joyce reminds him, they need to thank Lynne Cheney for dinner.) Finally, he starts to share. Among the things I am allowed to read: his eulogy for Gerald Ford (yes, he carries it around with him) and a rather fascinating chronology he has typed up interspersing the life of Donald Rumsfeld with Major World Events ("1946: DHR meets Joyce.… 1947: DHR becomes an Eagle Scout.… 2003: Operation Iraqi Freedom begins"). I learn that he was born the day after the stock market hit bottom in 1932, that he was 11 on D-day, and that his father died, of Alzheimer's, the same year Ford made Rummy chief of staff. Rummy says he stole this chronology idea from a book he read on Churchill. He thinks it might be a nifty way to start his own book—which he is, in fact, planning to write, despite coy protestations. The chronology is a reminder of the profound influence DHR has wielded for more than half a century: naval officer. Four-term congressman. The youngest (and then oldest) secretary of defense. Top aide under Ford and Nixon (who once called him "a ruthless little bastard"). Ambassador to NATO. Middle East envoy. Two lucrative stints as a CEO in private industry—
He hands over another memo. "I sat down the other day and made a list of challenges in the world," he says. ("Subject: Challenges.") Another is an April 26, 2006, memo addressed to President Bush titled "Some Illustrative New Approaches and Initiatives to Meet the 21st-Century Challenges." (I can read it, but I can't have it.)
We move on to some photographs. DHR in his Princeton-graduation photo, DHR on a unicycle, DHR with Gerald Ford in bedroom slippers. And a really creepy shot of DHR's face on a shooting target in Iraq. "These were found in the terrorist training camp," he explains. "Before the war even started, they were there."
With you as the target?
"Yeah. When we conquered Baghdad, we went into this terrorist training camp and this was their target, all over the place. They were using these."
Didn't that freak you out?
A loud belly laugh. "There are so many things that should freak me out!" Then, a straight face. "No. Not really."
Rummy collects his papers and memos and stuffs them into his old, beat-up leather briefcase. (He's had it since 1977.) Then he gathers up the newspapers and offers them to me. In return I toss him the New York Post, the only paper he hasn't devoured today. On the cover: Paris Hilton, just released from jail. He reads the headline—V-D DAY!—and cracks up. Then he starts to read the story.
Suddenly, the quizzical Rumsfeldian look.
"Sweetheart?" he says to his wife. "What's a hair extension?"
"It's a very big thing right now," says Joyce. "I just learned about it three weeks ago."
Rummy looks on in horror as she describes—quite accurately—how it is done.
"Hmmmph," he says.
As we approach Taos, he gestures out the window. Look! "There's the Rio Grande." And the famous Gorge Bridge. "A friend flew under that Gorge Bridge. He got arrested for it. He was foolhardy." A beat. "And there's Julia Roberts's land!" (But he'd prefer I not mention that.)
When the plane touches down, the Rummys applaud. "Way to go!" DHR shouts to the cockpit. "You could have been a navy pilot!" Then to me: "He had a little runway left there, didn't use it all." This is apparently high praise.
Joyce tells me I should dress as casually as possible when I come to visit the farm tomorrow. Jeans? "Absolutely!" (They prefer to call it a farm, not a ranch.) "Not those shoes," adds Rummy, pointing to my high heels. "Those aren't Taos shoes."
I mention that maybe we could talk about Iraq tomorrow.
A squint of the eyes. A dawning realization.
"What is this for?" he asks. "And why?"
*****
That night Rummy calls, as promised, with directions to the farm. I already have a set of directions from his guy back in Washington—with the words please destroy after use on a sticky note on top—but I indulge him. He seems in good spirits; he explains that he and Joyce are enjoying their "last night alone" before Gus arrives. His directions are complicated, military-precise, every detail mentioned—including two "cattle guards" that one must navigate correctly. Um, what's a cattle guard? "That is such a New York question!" says Rummy, roaring with laughter.
At nine the next morning, he's waiting in the driveway of the farm with Chester and Reggie. "C'mon, Reggie, it's Lisa! He can't see well." Reggie nuzzles my ankles. "Good dog." Today he's dressed in real-man-on-the-farm garb: old, faded jeans, a Patagonia vest, an oxford shirt and white undershirt, New Balance sneakers. Despite a limp (he wiped out on the slopes last winter and screwed up his hip pretty good) that has added a bit of frailty to the Persona, he still has the macho thing going. He walks like a man with a ranch.
"You wanna leave your gear here, and I'll walk you around a bit?" he asks.
Though Rummy doesn't make a habit of inviting members of the press to his farm, he seems to love showing it off. The place is—there's just no way to say it without clichés—peaceful, quiet, rustic, stunning in its raw natural beauty. It's his fifty-acre piece of heaven, his sanctuary—particularly now. In fact, it kinda ticked him off that he got out here only a handful of times while he was secretary of defense. "Have been a little busy for the last six and a half years," he says, chuckling. One of the upsides to his exile—though he doesn't call it that—is being able to come here whenever the heck he wants. He shows me every barn, every tractor, every animal on the property. "I just love it here," he says. "Where's my chain saw?"
If you're expecting Don Rumsfeld—out of government now, on his farm, in a moment of repose—to play the bitter, angry, reflective, tragic fallen hero…ain't gonna happen. If he feels any of those things, he's not showing it. (And if he did, he probably wouldn't be Donald H. Rumsfeld.) The man does not do regret. Over the course of the next few hours, he will answer every question asked of him, and even when the answer is "I'm not gonna talk about that," there's never a flash of anger. Impatience, yes, but never anger.
And anyway, he would much rather show me around. "You gotta see this," he says, leading me past piles of horse manure, past an outhouse, over an irrigation ditch, into a series of dilapidated barns. Rummy's spread used to be a dairy farm—he bought it from the farmer's wife at auction, after the guy died—and he has kept everything the old man left here. His tools, his machinery, his clothes, his rifle holster ("You ever seen one?"). He even kept his dirt-encrusted delivery log. "Look at this: 'Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Homogenized for Herman Quintana. Put it in the icebox.' Isn't that interesting? He pretty much ran this place by himself. So he had to do it wisely."
The Rumsfelds lease part of their land to a friend who runs cattle out here—"They were all right here this morning," Rummy says; "it looked to be thirty head in this patch"—and have some handsome-looking horses. In another barn, he stores his guns. Which come in handy, with the darn coyotes. He has to be careful that Chester and Reggie don't get eaten. "They go after the young ones," he explains. "They got a calf one night." He tells the story of how he tried to save that calf in the middle of the night. "Joyce likes to keep the ammunition far away from the weapons. So we keep the weapons locked up in here and the ammunition somewhere else. And one night, you could hear the coyotes killing a calf. As sure as anything. It was calving season. And I raced out here, got the ammunition, then I ran to the gun locker, got that open, then I ran all the way back." He stops for a second, stares out at the field where it happened. Did I just detect a hint of emotion? I did. "By the time I got out there, they'd finished."
Was it bad?
"Yeah."
So then what do you do with—
"A dead calf?" That hint of emotion is suddenly gone. "Oh, they kind of pack it up," he says matter-of-factly. "A dead horse or anything, they pack it up and take it out to the dump."
He shows me his little workshop ("I like to fix things"), the guesthouse, the barn he converted to a playroom filled with dollhouses and a Foosball table (for the grandkids). Then, suddenly, there's a bit of a crisis: Reggie, the older dachshund who can't see much anymore, has somehow gotten into the corral with the horses. "Oh no! Reggie! Come, pal!" To me: "This is not good. They'll stomp him to death. They don't know what he is. He could be a coyote or something.… Where the hell is he? Reggie! Ho! I don't see him. Stay here, Chester."
He goes off and rescues Reggie. But the darn dog keeps wandering off. Will he know not to go back in there with the horses?
"No, he may not," says DR. "But he's gotta learn, I suppose." He shrugs. Learning the hard way is apparently a Rumsfeld tradition.
(A week later, Reggie will have what first appears to be a stroke. And Rumsfeld—though he won't admit this—will be crushed.)
He leads me into the farmhouse. Their main house, where Joyce is spending the morning, is across the highway, on even more land. (They've made quite a haul in New Mexico real estate acquisitions over the years.) But since it's being renovated, they've been bunking down on the farm. The farmhouse is adorable. It's a "real adobe" Taos house, with two-foot-thick walls and beamed ceilings. Joyce has it decorated in southwestern WASP: warm, muted colors; tasteful rugs on stone floors; a few carefully selected pieces of art (a simple wooden cross, a Curtis print of the Taos pueblo, a painting by a local artist of the famous St. Francis of Assisi church in Taos—made more famous by Georgia O'Keeffe—where they like to go to Mass on Sundays even though they're not Catholic); framed pictures of their three children and seven grandchildren; and a touch of whimsy, like the black steel cow sprawled out in the foyer. "That scare ya?" asks DR. "Joyce found that." To commemorate one of their favorite cows, who died birthing a calf. His wife is the type of woman who turned his old congressional spittoon into a centerpiece for dinner parties. You can see why he loves her.
"We can sit here, if you want to visit," says Rummy, offering a sturdy chair at the kitchen table. For several minutes, he futzes around, trying to figure out how to pour me a glass of water. (Where the heck did Joyce put the glasses?) Then he sits down, crosses his legs, and gestures at the tape recorder. Right. He had asked me to remind him first about an article in yesterday's paper speculating on whether he was shopping some tell-all book. "I don't even want to bother with that article," he says. (It will be a memoir, not a darn tell-all, spanning the full seventy-five years of his illustrious life and career.) Okay. "But I'll tell you what I'm doing. Joyce and I are in the process of typing up the papers that I was working on on the plane over. To create a new foundation. But this is a foundation that will be an operating foundation. And we have four purposes at the present time.…"
So he's not, as the article speculated, about to write a book that will "correct the factual record, so he can sleep more gently"?
"Noooo! That's nonsense!" An impatient snarl. "I sleep fine."
He'd like to explain the four purposes of his foundation: "One is to provide fellowships for postgraduate work in a variety of areas, including economics and foreign policy and national-security affairs. Our second purpose is to sponsor a lecture series—Pipe down!" One of the dogs is barking. "We ran out of food, so he's hungry." He looks to the ceiling. "Oh, Joyce, tell me how to do this!" To the dog: "We don't have any food. I'll give you a YipYap, that's what I'll give ya."
A YipYap?
"It's something that Joyce has to calm them down. It's a treat. Kind of a little… Here, pal. The third thing is, we're interested in microenterprise. Most of the poor countries of the world—I shouldn't say most—a number of the poorer countries of the world have corrupt governments, and so when nations help nations, a lot of that money doesn't end up going to the people; it gets stuck in graft and corruption." He explains that before he came back to government, he worked on microloans with some outfit doing work in India and was impressed by it. He wants to do it in Afghanistan. "The fourth thing we'll do is be involved and interested in the Central Asian former Soviet republics.…" A brief history lesson, then an explanation of what the Big Goal is: "We talked about it and decided that these were four things that looked like it would be timely to be helpful on. Each of us believes in free political systems and free economic systems, and so that's a thread that will run through. I just think there ought to be a way…to try to be helpful to these former Soviet republics in ways that make their transition from a communist system and a command economy to a free political system and a free economy better. So that is what we're doing. If I do write a book, the funds from the book would go right into that foundation."
Sounds ambitious.
"It is!"
You could just hang out in Taos and not do anything.
"Oh, that's not like me. I have too much energy to do that. And it's a wonderful world, all the things that can be done."
Is it your legacy you're worried about?
"Nooo! I don't think in that term."
You don't? Maybe a little bit?
"No. You get up and do what you do. And when it's over, it's over."
He pushes out his chair, checks his watch.
But when you look back…
"You know? I am not a person who looks back. You say, 'When you look back.' If you asked me when was the last time I looked back, I don't do much of it. I just don't. Tomorrow's what's important, much more important than yesterday."
But how do you want to be remembered?
"Oh, I don't know," he says. "Accurately."
Okay, then. How do you think you'll be remembered?
"I don't have any idea." He's slightly annoyed now. But: "I know it'll be different than it is today; it always is. I think you read in that little paper I showed you on the plane that Harry Truman went out of office with, I think, a 19 or 20 percent approval rating. And yet what was accomplished in his presidency, with all those institutions that served the world and our country so well for fifty years, it's just amazing."
Do you think your old buddy W. hopes he's Harry Truman in fifty years?
"I. Don't. Know."
Do you miss him?
"Um, no."
A wry Rummy smile.
How about Colin Powell? Are you still close?
"No! We're not close. Never were."
Cheney?
"I still see Cheney."
Yes, they have houses right near each other on the eastern shore of Maryland. And yes, it is true they watched the last two presidential elections together over at Dick's place, and no, Rummy is not sure if they'll be doing that again.
"I don't know!" he says. "He's a busy guy."
A few things he will say about W. He believes that someday he'll be vindicated. He believes he's a lot more intelligent and curious than people give him credit for. "Oh, my goodness gracious!" That's a yes. "But you say 'than people give him credit for.' Than the press. Let's lay it on the line. 'Than the press gives him credit for.' Just think, in my lifetime, the Republican presidential candidates: Eisenhower, considered to be a bumbler, bad syntax. Gerald Ford, the best athlete they had in decades, and they called him a stumblebum and demeaned him and made fun of him. Said he wasn't smart, which he was. He'd gone to Michigan, he'd gone to Yale Law School. I mean… And Ronald Reagan. You read his diaries now, and the man is remarkable. And yet he was dismissed as a movie actor and not very smart. So I mean, the fact that President Bush is demeaned is no different than Eisenhower or Ford or Reagan. And the fact that people believe that to be the case is not a surprise when they're told it day in, day out, by the, uh, eastern media."
I can see how you and Bush got along in the loyalty department.
"Now, that's funny."
You still like him?
"I do."
You don't talk, though, right?
"Uhhh…I'm trying to think. No."
Was the last time you talked to him the day you resigned?
He can't recall.
What he does recall is that twice before, at the height of the Abu Ghraib disgrace, he offered to resign. "I wrote a note. The first note basically said, 'Look, this is a difficult problem for our country, and it happened on my watch, and you have my resignation anytime you feel it would be helpful.' And then I gave him that, and he rejected it. And then I wrote out a longer resignation, and, uh, resigned as opposed to offering a resignation. And he rejected that."
What does that tell you about him?
Long pause. "I don't know that I want to go there. That's none of my business. To analyze…"
A month and a half after our visit, Reuters would break the story that Rumsfeld gave his final (and apparently third) resignation letter to the president the day before the midterm elections, though Bush chose not to announce it until the day after, infuriating many Republicans who felt the election could have been won if Rummy had been sacrificed first. In Taos, I asked him if he considered resigning before the elections.
"Uhhh, no," he replied. "But it was very clear in my mind that if the Democrats won the House or the Senate or both, that it made sense for me to…that it would be best for the department if someone else was there."
So it could have been different for you if the Republicans had won?
"Mmm-hmm."
I tell him there's something I've been curious about. In the early days, before the invasion, where did Donald Rumsfeld stand, exactly? Were you one of the people driving the bus who wanted to invade Iraq, or—
"No." He cuts me off. "I think [Bush] was quoted in the Woodward book as saying he didn't ask me. And that's true."
But surely, at some point you must have expressed your concerns.
He did. First of all, "we—without separating me from the others—we tried not to have that happen. We tried to get Saddam Hussein to adhere to the U.N. resolutions. We tried to get other countries to put diplomatic pressure on him. Even at the very end, we tried to get him to leave the country and seek safe haven elsewhere so that that"—he means the war—"wouldn't have to happen. And before the war, I sat and—this is on the record, all of this—I sat down and handwrote fifteen, twenty, twenty-five things that could be…could go wrong, could be real problems."
He says he will show me the memo. (And eventually, he does. It's just as he describes it.) "I wrote down all of the things that could be problems: That we wouldn't find weapons of mass destruction. That there'd be a Fortress Baghdad, and a lot of people would be killed. All of this… I read it in a National Security Council meeting. Then I went back to my office—I had handwritten it—and I dictated it and added four or five things. And I think there's probably thirty items on it. And then I sent it around to each of the members of the National Security Council, to the president and the vice president. So that all of them had in their heads the things that were difficult, problematic, worrisome, dangerous."
And how was it received?
"Um…" A pause. He is carefully choosing his words. "I think it was…appreciated by the president that I took the time to do that."
And do you think the president—
"Yeah, I thought he read it. Yeah."
Almost on cue, the dogs start barking. Joyce walks in, with Blanca, their housekeeper.
"Hi, Blanca!" says DR.
"Hi, sir."
He notices that Blanca looks upset. "You doin' all right? What happened?"
Joyce explains that a good friend of Blanca's just lost her son. Killed in a car accident last night. With another friend. Fifteen years old.
"Fifteen," says Rummy, shaking his head. "Oh, that is a shame."
He walks over to Blanca, has a private word with her.
Then we move into the parlor, so Blanca and Joyce can put the groceries away. We sit down at a big, oval wooden table next to Joyce's piano and shelves filled with jigsaw puzzles and Scrabble games. They're big Scrabble people.
So: Could you ever see yourself pulling a Robert McNamara and apologizing for your role in this war?
He doesn't blink. "McNamara is a good man. And an intelligent man.…" And the rest is off the record. "Very much off the record." (DR always adds degrees to his off-the-recordness. There is, to my count, "off the record," "very off the record," and "way off the record." And he always remembers, sometimes in midsentence, to tell you when he's back on. The man is nothing if not precise.)
At one point I ask him what the hardest time in his life was. "The hardest time, without question, was being chief of staff to President Ford," he says. "Because [Ford] stepped into a flying airplane, with no crew! And to come in and be his chief of staff was just a terribly difficult assignment." It was brutal being in charge, he says, "in the immediate aftermath of Watergate, when the reservoir of trust in this country had been drained," where "you'd go out and give a press conference in the White House, and if I said, 'That's the ceiling,' they would wonder why; they'd say, 'Why is he saying that's the ceiling?' I mean, there was no trust in anyone for any reason. The environment was just polluted. It was just rotten in our country."
Harder than the past six years, though?
"Oh yeah. You know, people think now, Gee, isn't everything horrible and isn't it terrible? " But look at the other times in history, in his own lifetime, he says. "I mean, Lyndon Johnson couldn't leave the White House during the Vietnam War, they were throwing blood on the Pentagon… They were digging graves in my front lawn the last time I was secretary of defense! So you know, everything's new and everything changes, and nothing changes."
There are a lot of people who think that you guys are cold and callous, I say, that you don't hear criticism, that it doesn't seem to affect you when you see the death toll every day coming out of Iraq.
"Oh." It's more of a moan than an "oh."
Why is that?
"Probably ignorance."
But it has to affect you.
"Oh." The moan again. "Off the record…" And he tells a story that, frankly, should be on the record. It's personal and pretty heart-wrenching, the kind of thing that people who despise Donald Rumsfeld might be surprised to hear.
Why do you want this offthe record?
"I just do. I don't like to talk about myself."
Days later, I ask if I could put the story he told me on the record. And he responds with one of his dictated memos. ("Subject: Lisa's Questions on Hospital Visits.") What follows is several paragraphs of efficient, sterile prose utterly devoid of the seeming emotion I sensed when he talked at the kitchen table about visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital with Joyce. But that is Rummy. Given the chance—even a second chance—to show a pulse, he chooses not to.
DHR still lives by a code that no doubt served him well—to a point. You don't self-aggrandize, you don't kiss and tell, you don't open a vein and act like you're on Oprah. An example: I tell him I'd really love to know where he stands on social issues. He has lived a life fuller than most, and his intellectual wattage is undeniable. Surely he has thought about some of this stuff. He snorts. No, really. How does Donald Rumsfeld feel about gay marriage, abortion, etc.?
"Um, I'm not gonna get into it."
But why?
"The administration has positions on these things, and if you're part of the administration, you're supportive of the administration."
Yeah, but you're not anymore.
"I know. But it's just not the way I am."
He has made it very clear that he is not a man who looks back. But surely, I say, when you think about the past six years, where it began and where it is now, there must be regrets.
"Well, sure." A pause. Is he going to elaborate? Sort of. "I mean, you'd always wish things were perfect, but they never are. The enemy has a brain. And the enemy watches what our folks do, and they adjust to it and adapt to it, and in the process there's friction. And, uh, I mean, the fact that we were not able to get a division in through Turkey at the outset meant that the Saddamists, today's insurgents, had free play for a good period of time.…" And so on. "I mean, there's a dozen things like that."
But what would you have done differently?
"Oh, I don't think I'm gonna get into that." He checks his watch again. "We're winding up, right?"
So do you ever feel like you've been made the fall guy with Iraq?
"No. I think anyone who's involved in a war—eh, wars are difficult things, they're messy things, they're dangerous things, people die, people get wounded. And anyone who's involved, someone's not gonna like it, someone's gonna be critical of it. So I—if you're in the business I was in, uh, that goes with the territory."
It's hard to argue with this logic. But it does have the added benefit of deflecting any sort of criticism. It is also the kind of mindset that lets you sleep at night.
He goes on. "If you do anything, somebody's not gonna like it, that's inevitable. Therefore, if you want to be liked—as Tony Blair said, popular, which is a terrible word—if you don't do anything, then everyone's gonna like you. And if you do do something, somebody's not gonna like it. And when you cancel weapons systems, you're gonna get a bunch of generals unhappy about it. Because that's what they spent their whole life on, working on those things, getting ready for it. That doesn't bother me. I've been changing things for decades. I went into companies and changed them. And I—I'm comfortable with that, I accept that, that there's gonna be opposition to things. I was asked to come into the department, by the president, to transform it. I could have gone in and not done that. And everyone would have been smiling. And the defense contractors that were doing what they were doing would be happy, the congressmen who had things going on in their districts would be happy…
"The fact is, we're in a conflict and a struggle—the first conflict of the twenty-first century for the United States of America. It is new, it is unfamiliar to the American people, and there's… In a very real sense, the American military cannot lose a battle, they can't lose a war. On the other hand, they can't win the struggle themselves. It requires diplomacy, it requires economic assistance, it requires a range of things that are well beyond the purview of the Department of Defense." His purview. "In terms of what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan today, what the Department of Defense is doing is working. What isn't working is the diplomatic side. The government of Iraq has not been able to find ways to bring the elements of that country together sufficiently that they can create an environment hospitable to, uh, whatever one wants to call their evolving way of life, a democracy or a representative system or a freer system. Look at Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, 28 million people are free. They have their own president, they have their own parliament. Improved a lot on the streets."
All your theories worked there, in other words.
"It's been a big success! The Iraqi government has not been successful as yet. And, uh, it's gonna take some time and some effort."
When do you see it resolved?
"I'm not gonna get into that."
Right. But if you distill the general sense…the measured general sense…of what the American public feels about Iraq right now, it would be: a plan in but not a plan out. Do you agree with that?
"No! No, no! The military has to have plans for post-major-conflict stabilization, and they did. And, uh, the focus of the insurgents and the terrorists and the Al Qaeda have put on Iraq… It's enormously important to them."
But you sleep okay?
"I do. Always have."
No nightmares?
"Nope."
But surely, it has to be rough getting trashed every day.
He chuckles. "No. I get up and go right on."
Even when there's a headline where another general says, "Rumsfeld failed America"?
"Uh-huh. And you know, that's one general out of forty. So—"
Is that how you deal with it?
"Yeah. I mean, you should see the hundreds and hundreds of letters I received. Appreciating my service to the country. And complimenting me.… People that fuss, they're mostly retired people who don't agree with some of the things that we're doing. But I tell ya, I walk down the street—people are wonderful! It's incredible. Oh, my goodness, it's overwhelming."
Does that surprise you?
"Nope."
It is interesting, really, that the Rumsfelds have chosen Taos as their refuge. You couldn't possibly find a more liberal-hippie-crunchy hangout. And in fact, while the locals will tell you they tolerated Donald Rumsfeld's presence just fine before Iraq— "He was just another rich guy," says one nose-pierced store owner—they haven't exactly made his life easy since then. He doesn't get a whole lot of hugs in Taos—except for one guy, not terribly popular, who rides around town shouting, "Viva Rumsfeld!" there've been numerous protests. Like the time some group carried an enormous weapon of mass destruction (a giant papier–mâché Rummy) through the streets of town. Or the time his little grandchildren got heckled in the Fourth of July parade. The Fourth of July parade, for goodness sake! There are the people who shout "Warmonger!" from their pickup trucks. And there was the well-circulated story about the dude in the ski lodge who really let Rummy have it. Gave him such heck—"Well, lookee here! If it isn't Donald Rumsfeld, our favorite local war criminal"—but DHR being DHR, he just ignored him.
Wasn't that a little difficult?
"No, not really. It's a free country. People can say what they want."
Rummy checks his watch again. Golly, we've gone on longer than he'd planned. Do I know how to get back to my hotel? Do I need any suggestions for later? There are some great bars in Taos! The Trading Post is nice also! Gotta check that out. He walks me to my car. The doggies lick good-bye. Wait a minute—do I want to see a real adobe house? I am instructed to follow him in his Toyota Land Cruiser to his real house across the highway…but this is strictly off the record!
An hour later, more good-byes in yet another gravel driveway.This time he really has to go. Gus the mule is due any minute.
Citation: Lisa DePaulo. "Off the Record with Don Rumsfeld," GQ, 10 September 2007.
Original URL: http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_5896