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Anti-War Vets Testify for Hill Panel

Spencer Ackerman — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:08:14 GMT

Iraq Veterans Against The War's effort to document what it considers systemic abuses in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars took a major step forward Thursday as five Iraq veterans related their firsthand experiences to members of Congress.

Five members of the anti-war veterans group told a hearing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- not an official House committee but a group of the House's rising left-wing representatives -- about underreported or manipulated statistics concerning U.S.-caused civilian casualties, disproportionate fire and perceptions encouraged by their commanders that Iraqis are "subhuman." Presenting the results of months of inquiry into conditions in the two wars, Kelly Dougherty, Geoffrey Millard, Kristofer Goldsmith, Scott Ewing and Jason Lemieux were the first members of the Winter Soldier project to testify before members of Congress. The last time any such organization presented similar findings was in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War -- and the testimony Thursday was familiar to anyone in attendance with memory of that earlier conflict.

"If these fucking Hajjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen," Millard quoted a superior officer, Col. William Rochelle, as saying in 2005, in response to a briefing about a young soldier who riddled an approaching car with bullets at a traffic control point north of Baghdad. Millard, the co-chairman of Iraq Veterans Against The War's Washington chapter, said that everywhere he went in Iraq, senior officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted soldiers and Marines alike would refer to Iraqis using the derogatory term "Hajjis," much like soldiers in Vietnam referred to the Vietnamese as "gooks."

In March, the veterans' organization put together a weekend-long conference in which numerous veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan told stories like Millard's. Soldiers and Marines accused their chains of command of paying lip service to the stated rules of engagement while encouraging discretion -- not internationally-recognized laws of war -- to govern troop conduct. Yet at those hearings, held at the National Labor College outside of Washington, few politicians and journalists attended. The Washington Post ran its report on Winter Soldier in its Metro section, not in the main news section.

This effort is self-consciously modeled on Vietnam Veterans Against the War's 1971 Winter Soldier investigation into barbarity in Vietnam. Both organizations took the title of their inquiries from Thomas Paine's famous Revolutionary War-era pamphlet, "Crisis," which inveighed against the "summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" who, "in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country." The Vietnam-era investigation reached a climax when a 27-year old sailor named John Kerry, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, challenged Congress not to "ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake."

There was no John Kerry moment Thursday. Nor was there the gravitas of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in January interviews, members of Iraq Veterans Against The War expressed uncertainty over whether Congress would take its often-incendiary charges seriously. Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), praised those testifying as members of a new "greatest generation."

Lemieux, a Marine sergeant who served three Iraq tours from 2003 to 2006, spoke of deliberate falsification of statistics during his service in Anbar Province. Investigating a 2006 incident in which Marines returned fire in a town called Tamim, Lemieux said he found that only four rounds of "poorly aimed enemy fire" resulted in thousands of rounds of artillery, machine gun and grenade fire into "an area of Tamim known to be owned and occupied by local civilians."

But when he showed a report of his investigation to the executive officer of one of the Marine companies involved, Lemieux said the officer fretted that he couldn't show such a disproportionate response to the battalion commander. Lemieux said the officer falsified the report, to show the Marines were in far greater danger. He said the soldier told him, "Lemieux, I think your views on this war are affecting your reports."

Even the war's success stories came under challenge in the hearing. Ewing was an Army scout who served with the 3rd Armored Combat Brigade in the northern town of Tall Afar from 2005 to 2006. Under the command of Col. H.R. McMaster -- who this week was promoted to brigadier general -- Tall Afar was briefly pacified through use of counterinsurgency tactics. Yet Ewing, while praising McMaster, testified that the nature of the occupation required a provocative brutality.

Ewing told a story about coming upon middle-aged Iraqi women "covered in blood" after an Apache attack helicopter opened fire on their front lawn. While his fellow soldiers attempted to apply battlefield medicine, some were badly wounded. He gave no indication that the women had done anything wrong. "Anytime a suicide bomber kills civilians it is highly publicized," Ewing said. "But from my personal experience in Tall Afar, the number of Iraqis killed or injured by our forces far outnumbered those killed by insurgents or suicide bombers."

The hearing's emotional crescendo was the testimony of Goldsmith. " I joined the Army to kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims," Goldsmith said, before apologizing. When he finally went to Baghdad in 2005, he found the Iraqis had greater sympathy to the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada Sadr than the U.S.-backed government. "They feel they have been let down by America and by their own government that George Bush's administration put in power," he said.

His voice occasionally wavering, Goldsmith confessed that he attempted suicide after returning home. "I never deployed a second time. Because of that I received a general discharge," he said. "I lost my college benefits, the $40,000 promised me in the Montgomery GI Bill I will not be eligible to receive. And currently there is a senator in Congress -- excuse me, currently running for president -- who is fighting to kill our Webb GI bill. And I'm one of the soldiers who will never get that money."

Barbara Lee promised Goldsmith, "You will go to college," as she vowed to pass Sen. Jim Webb's new GI Bill.

It is unclear what impact Thursday's hearings will have. President George W. Bush, traveling in Israel, said those who advocate withdrawal from Iraq are akin to the appeasers of the Nazis. However, in a surprise unrelated to Thursday's Winter Soldier testimony, Republican defections allowed House Democrats to defeat an additional $160 billion in war funding.

Dougherty, an Army veteran of Iraq, reminded Congress of the wages of that funding in her testimony. "Every day that the occupation continues, more men, women and children will be killed, maimed and forced to flee their country as refugees," Dougherty said. "More veterans will return home with lifelong scars, emotional and physical."

"I Will Not Be Eligible"

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:17:39 GMT

One last Goldsmith post and then you'll have to forgive me but I can't take any more of this. I'll have a wrap-up piece later today.

Goldsmith said his last dream was to go to college. But when he came home from Iraq, "I attempted suicide. I never deployed a second time. Because of that I received a general discharge. I lost my college benefits, the $40,000 promised me in the Montgomery GI Bill. I will not be eligible to receive. And currently there is a Senator in Congress -- excuse me -- currently running for president, who is fighting to kill our Webb GI bill. And I'm one of the soldiers who will never get that money."

Unnecessary Amputations At Army Hospitals?

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:11:24 GMT

Goldsmith just said something I've never heard of before, showing a photograph of his buddy to the Congressional Progressive Caucus:

"That man went through the same Stop-Loss as I. He almost lost his right leg. The only reason he didn't is because in Germany where they were going to send him, they messed up his paperwork and flew him home. He's now able to walk. But they were going to cut his leg off as a quick fix. And that is what they're doing in the hospitals of Germany to who knows how many hundreds of American veterans."

After the revelations of Walter Reed, should we be surprised, if this is true?

"That Dream Turned Into Nightmares"

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:02:33 GMT

These are the words of Kristofer Goldsmith, who said he dreamed his entire boyhood of joining the Army.

"That dream turned into nightmares. I joined the Army to kill people. I joined the Army to kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims. To kill people that were a skin tone other than mine and inhabiting the Middle East. On September 12, 2001, I remember standing up as a 16 year-old boy -- I was still in high school when this happened -- the day after September 11, and talking about how we should use biological weapons, or chemical weapons, on the entire Middle East, to make it so that religious land, the Holy Land, is not an issue that harms America.

"I want to state that I have since changed. I am no longer a racist. I am no longer filled with hatred like that. But that is what drove me, even harder, to join the Army and to fight in combat.

"I joined as a forward observer and trained to use artillery, some of the most destructive weapons that the Army has. When I deployed to Iraq in 2005, I was not authorized artillery because we had drawn a truce with Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi militia, and the prophet to some across all of Iraq, especially those in Sadr City."

Goldsmith asked for a slide to be presented to the members of Congress listening to him. As I'm on a train listening to streaming audio of the testimony, I don't know what it shows. He said it's of a photograph he took.

"That blue Arabic graffiti right there is on the side of a school somewhere in Sadr City. I didn't know until three days ago when I had a good friend of mine who is Iraqi translate it for me, but in 2005, an Iraqi spraypainted that. And it translates directly to, 'Welcome, America, to the Second Vietnam.' Vietnam and Iraq have been compared not only by Iraq Veterans Against The War and Vietnam Veterans Against The War, but by the very people in Iraq who Americans think are too ignorant to realize what's going on in the world. These are smart, educated people that are dying every day."

He continued to the next slide, which showed more graffiti this time in English. THE US AND ALLAWI ARE TERRORMEN.

"That is the feeling in Sadr City. They feel they have been let down by America and by their own government that George Bush's administration put in power.

"Before I go on I want to say that I do not blame you, as Congress-members, for not ending the war, as many Americans do. I do not blame the president for not ending the war. I blame the people of America and their apathy, because they are -- you are responsible for following what they say. And they have not done a good enough job to convince the rest of your peers -- namely Republicans -- to fight to bring our troops home and save lives in both America and Iraq."

IVAW Member To Refuse Deployment To Iraq

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:26:35 GMT

While the Winter Soldier hearing goes on, this just arrived in my inbox:

Member of Iraq Veterans Against the War to Publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq

Washington, DC – Today, immediately following Winter Soldier on the Hill, Iraq Veterans Against the War member Matthis Chiroux will publicly announce his refusal to report to Active Duty.

Chiroux will be making his statement in the Cannon House Office Building's Rotunda, located just inside the building's main entrance.

Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, 24, originally from Auburn, Alabama, has served in Germany, Japan, Afghanistan and the Philippines since his enlistment in the US Army in June 2002.

The Traffic Control Point

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:22:34 GMT

Geoffrey Millard, a soldier with the New York National Guard, was a general's assistant in Iraq. He related a story he attended a briefing his boss about: a soldier at a traffic control point, faced with a speeding, oncoming car, "made a split-second decision" to fire "more than 200 rounds into the vehicle," killing its inhabitants. "He then watched as the mother, father and two children were carried from that car.

"That evening, as it was briefed to the general -- and I flipped the slides for that briefing -- Col. [William] Rochelle, from the 42nd Infantry Division, DISCOM [Division Support Command] commander -- and I have to apologize for a little vulgarity here, but I feel it's intricate for my testimony -- he turned in his chair to an entire division-level staff, and he said, and I quote, 'If these fucking Hajjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen.'"

In January, Millard told me that story from the living room of his house in Petworth, which serves double duty as IVAW's D.C. headquarters. "I was set back by that," he told the Congressional Progressive Caucus today. "I expected for from high-ranking officers in a line unit. I expected a lot more."

Tall Afar and Detainees

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:05:15 GMT

Ewing began talking on detainees. He said 3rd ACR's commander, Col. H.R. McMaster, "went through great lengths, it seems, to ensure that detainees were not abused the way they had been [by] previous units." But that's "little consolation to those Iraqis whose relatives have been detained without good reason."

In one case, he and his fellow soldiers detained three men because "they had been running." Another Iraqi was injured in the foot by a gunshot wound. Ewing's soldiers questioned and detained four of the man's friends. The JAG attorney said there wasn't enough evidence to hold them "but we'll take care of it anyway." Ewing said that when he read the fine print of an incident report he was asked to sign, a staff sergeant who took the men in had falsely stated the men had confessed to attacking a U.S.-aligned tribe.

Et Tu, Tall Afar?

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:49:26 GMT

Scott Ewing is an Army scout who served with the 3rd Amored Cavalry Regiment in 2005 in the city of Tall Afar. To counterinsurgency advocates, 3rd ACR and Tall Afar are legends -- the brigade, commanded by H.R. McMaster and his executive officer Paul Yingling, that provided a template for Gen. Petraeus' population-protection strategy.

Before Congress, Ewing provided a dark counternarrative to 3rd ACR. During a two-house search, Ewing remembered, he entered a house to find soldiers from a mortar platoon holding six Iraqi men against a wall. Out in the driveway, "several middle-aged women" lay on the concrete "covered in blood." An Apache helicopter "had fired several high-explosive rounds into the front yard."

Ewing's comrades provided what medical care to the wounded they could. But, growing emotional, he recalled that some of the women were beyond treatment. "A little boy, about nine, a nine-year old boy," he said, "came up to me and pointed to his chest and there was a blood spot on it." He got the boy and some of the women to an aid station.

"This incident," he said, "illustrates the first serious difference between what I saw in Iraq and what is seen back home. There has been almost no explicit reporting by the mainstream media of civilian casualties caused by U.S. troops in Iraq. Anytime a suicide bomber kills civilians it is highly publicized. But from my personal experience in Tall Afar, the number of Iraqis killed or injured by our forces far outnumbered those killed by insurgents or suicide bombers."

Update: The Washington Post reports today that McMaster will finally receive his long-delayed/awaited promotion to brigadier general.

"Lemieux, I Think Your Views On This War Are Affecting Your Reports."

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:28:02 GMT

Sgt. Lemieux related an incident to Congress that I don't recall him saying at Winter Soldier in March, though my memory could be faulty and I don't have my March notebook on-hand. He said that in one awful early 2006 day in Tamim, U.S. Marines responded to minimal sniper fire with massive amounts of ammunition. A group of Marines received "four rounds of poorly-aimed enemy fire," and returned it with "thousands of rounds" of grenade, machine gun and rocket fire "all into an area of Tamim known to be owned and occupied by local civilians."

Lemieux conducted the after-action investigation. When he showed an account to his chain of command matching the description he just gave to Congress, Lima Company's executive officer told him, "Lemieux, I think your views on this war are affecting your reports." After arguing with the Lemieux, who stood by his investigation, the officer said, "We can't send a report to battalion telling them we expended all this ammunition in response to four rounds." Then the officer falsified the report "at my intelligence computer," Lemieux testified.

Now Congress Hears That Rules Of Engagement Are "Unenforceable" In Iraq

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:16:45 GMT

Marine Sgt. Jason Lemieux got right to the main point of Winter Soldier in his testimony. "Widespread destruction of lives and property in Iraq" are the consequences of an understandable desire for force protection in Iraq, said the three-tour Iraq veteran, and they render the rules of engagement practically "unenforceable." Please understand, he said "what you hear from me is the tip of the iceberg."

He told Congress that commissioned officers told his Marines to shoot any Iraqi who looked suspicious, "with assurances that the chain of command would quote-unquote, 'Take care of us.'" That meant, he said, that "the chain of command was loyal to their Marines before the laws of war," and would "protect them from prosecution, even if it meant providing false information to investigators."

The True Cost Of Bush's War

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:08:31 GMT

In March, Army Sgt. Kelly Dougherty testified at Winter Soldier about not wanting to die for Kellogg Brown & Root. Today, she reminded Congress what it will vote for when it inevitably approves another $160 billion for the war. "Every day that the occupation continues, more men, women and children will be killed, maimed and forced to flee their country as refugees," Dougherty said. "More veterans will return home with lifelong scars, emotional and physical."

Before anyone accuses these brave soldiers and Marines of lying -- like the swine of the right did in the 1970s -- Dougherty said that everyone was prepared to testify under oath, but could not because the Congressional Progressive Caucus is not an actual Congressional committee.

Winter Soldiers Take The Hill

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:48:04 GMT

Iraq Veterans Against The War are on the Hill right now before the Congressional Progressive Caucus, testifying about the horrors they experienced and witnessed as Winter Soldiers. When I first talked to IVAW in January, members were unsure if they'd ever get politicians to listen to their stories from Iraq and Afghanistan. There weren't any politicians at March's Winter Soldier testimony in Silver Spring. "This day is long overdue," Rep. Barbara Lee observed.

IVAW self-consciously styles itself after Vietnam Veterans Against The War. In 1971, a 27-year old sailor named John Kerry eloquently denounced an earlier war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Kerry famously challenged the country. Let's see if anyone from today's Winter Soldiers has a Kerry moment.

Next Thursday, COIN Double Feature

Spencer Ackerman — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:46:45 GMT

That's when David Petraeus and Ray Odierno go before the Senate Armed Services Committee for their confirmation hearings to helm Central Command and Multinational Force Iraq, respectively. The committee just announced it. Mark your calendars. I'll be livebloggin'.

Gates Blasts Pentagon Waste

Matthew Blake — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:00:25 GMT

Two weeks ago the House oversight committee had a hearing where both parties bonded in their disgust over pricey Pentagon weapons systems designed for hypothetical wars. It turns out that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is also upset.

Today's Washington Post reported on a speech by Gates, put on by the conservative Heritage Foundation, where he said the Pentagon was devising future technologies at the expense of today's needs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates juxtaposed the billions spent on weapons like Air Force's F-22 fighter with the crippled Walter Reed medical center and the lack of money for a mine-resistant truck for Iraq. Gates said that the Pentagon was reluctant to spend on the truck, because it wasn't sure it would be used in future wars. Meanwhile, the F-22, designed for advanced aerial battles with countries like China, hasn't been used once in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Gates has publicly disagreed with the president before, most notably over what he sees as the over-concentration of the military in Iraq. But his words may signal that the administration will not fight to keep the most fanciful Pentagon programs if Congress finally tries to cut them.

New Torture Documents

Spencer Ackerman — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:16:30 GMT

The ACLU is a FOIA-wielding national treasure:

The American Civil Liberties Union has obtained previously withheld documents from the Defense Department, including internal investigations into the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody overseas. Uncensored documents released as a result of the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit shed light on the deaths of detainees in Iraq and internal disagreement within the military over harsh interrogation practices used at Guantánamo Bay.
"These documents provide further evidence that the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad was not aberrational, but was widespread and systemic," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "They only underscore the need for an independent investigation into high-level responsibility for prisoner abuse."

One of the documents released to the ACLU is a list of at least four prisoner deaths that were the subject of Navy Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) investigations. The NCIS document contains new information about the deaths of some of these prisoners, including details about Farhad Mohamed, who had contusions under his eyes and the bottom of his chin, a swollen nose, cuts and large bumps on his forehead when he died in Mosul in 2004. The document also includes details about Naem Sadoon Hatab, a 52-year-old Iraqi man who was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment facility in Nasiriyah in June 2003; the shooting death of Hemdan El Gashame in Nasiriyah in March 2003; and the death of Manadel Jamadi during an interrogation after his head was beaten with a stove at Abu Ghraib in November 2003.

They also got new information about Guantanamo:

Another document obtained by the ACLU provides further context to objections raised by the Army's Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) about the use of harsh interrogation methods applied on Guantánamo prisoners. The memo prepared for CITF commander Brittain Mallow appears to have been drafted for September 2002, and identifies "unacceptable methods" involving "threats," "discomfort," and "sensory deprivation," while also providing guidance to CITF agents on permissible interrogation methods for use on detainees. The memo suggests that CITF expressed disapproval of abusive methods used at Guantánamo as far back as September 2002. In December 2002, Mallow instructed his unit not to participate in "any questionable" interrogation techniques at the facility.

Look at that timeline: September 2002. That's before U.S. Army officials asked the Office of the Secretary of Defense for guidance on increasing the brutality of Guantanamo interrogations. There is so much more that has yet to be revealed.

'The President's Pretty Much a Victim of Success'

Spencer Ackerman — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:45:00 GMT

This has to be heard to be believed, and luckily there's an audio clip. Out from the Pentagon document-dump on its media manipulation comes the proceedings of Donald Rumsfeld's valedictory lunch (a liquid one!) with his retired-officer TV surrogates. (Some of them, by the way, like retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, are truly decent people who clearly had too much integrity for Rummy's attempted brainwashing, so don't get it twisted.) On December 12, 2006, this happened -- take the mic, Gillis:

In one of the first substantive comments Rumsfeld makes, the second clip from the top (0:36), he explains carefully that while the USA is involved in asymmetric warfare, we can't lose militarily--but we can't win militarily, either. Oh, gee, THANKS Mr. Rumsfeld! Now you tell us? Somebody owes somebody like Senators Harry Reid and Joe Biden a great big fat apology, since that's exactly what they've been arguing for years now, to sharp rebuke from Administration spokespersons for "defeatism." But it's the end of that clip that's the real kick in the rear. "We aren't going to go around the world for the numbers of years it took Algeria, for example, to subdue an insurgency," he declares. Oh, yeah? Maybe he better tell that to Senator McCain, who seems to have his heart set on a new Hundred Years War.

Also, President Bush is "pretty much a victim of success." No attack at home, right? Hey, it's not like we need to factor in al-Qaeda's long-term planning, and how it might not include constantly hitting the U.S. at home or anything. And it's also not like we need to factor in the rising tide of jihadist attacks overseas, or the futile and provocative and counterproductive Iraq war. Oh, I forgot, those are all reasons to keep doing what Bush already did.

One more excerpt.

Finally, let's get to politics. Pure, unadulterated partisan politics. One of the questioners, I think probably Lt. General Michael DeLong (USMC, Ret)--you can hear Rumsfeld address "Mike" earlier in the question and there's only one Michael in the room--opens a "way, way off the record" question by trashing Senator Carl Levin, the incoming chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Representative Silvestre Reyes, the incoming Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, then tries to goad Rumsfeld into joining in by suggesting the "we have a really rough two years coming." Rumsfeld rambles on about European demographics, Chinese cyberwar and smallpox as a bio-weapon before the questioner prods him back on topic by asking, "Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there [on Capitol Hill]?" which is where I pick up the clip (1:17).

Rumsfeld's answer is nothing short of stunning. No, not the part where he claims Bush is a "Victim of his success." That's just stupid. And no, after hearing his previous insult to the American public, his condemnation of us because "we don't have the maturity" to recognize the threat of terrorism--the further we get from 9/11, the less and less . . . he trails off. But that's not shocking, nor is his doomsday scenario, all things considered.

Civilians Missing From Action

Spencer Ackerman — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:48:11 GMT

During his 2003-2004 tour in Iraq's Anbar Province, a leading Army counterinsurgent officer named John Nagl confronted many frustrations -- from improperly trained Iraqi soldiers to the combat deaths of his own men. But one problem was as acute then as it is chronic now: the inability of civilian government experts to get involved in counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During an interview with The New York Times magazine, in a piece often cited as a touchstone for the counterinsurgency community, Nagl pointed to an empty chair and remarked about the civilians in the Coalition Provisional Authority, ''Where's the guy from C.P.A.? He should be sitting right there.''

Those chairs have essentially remained empty through the five years of war in Iraq and six and a half in Afghanistan. There has been one well-received effort at integrating civilians with the military for counterinsurgency: the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which bring together soldiers, diplomats, aid workers and other experts to provide on-the-ground governance advice. But the consensus within the counterinsurgency community is that the PRTs, as they're known, are ad hoc and understaffed.

That creates a fundamental problem for counterinsurgency, which seeks to draw a civilian population's political and personal allegiance away from a guerrilla force. If a counterinsurgency effort is primarily a military effort, it will probably fail -- as the French counterinsurgency expert David Galula wrote in his seminal 1964 book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice."

"David Galula tells us that counterinsurgency is only 20 percent military -- the rest of it is political, diplomatic, economic and information warfare," said Nagl, now retiring as a lieutenant colonel. "We're getting better at the non-military aspects of counterinsurgency. [The] State [Dept.] is leading the effort to create an interagency counterinsurgency guide, which is a great start. But we still have a long way to go."

As the structure of the nation's wars changes, so, too, must the organization of the U.S. government, argues the new generation of counterinsurgency theorists. They say that diplomats, reconstruction experts, governance advisers, economists, lawyers and even agronomists must be as easily inserted into a theater of battle as troops are -- and must work with the warfighters in the effort to convince a population not to ally with insurgents.

This capability is now largely missing. So some counterinsurgents are trying innovative methods to solve the problem. But it is still unclear if they will be sufficient -- let alone timely enough to reverse the fortunes of both current wars.

There are many reasons why American civilians working for the government have stayed on the sidelines of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. For one thing, the United States still lacks a corps of civilians ready to deploy into conflict zones. That is unlikely to change. "We'll never match boots on the ground with wingtips on the ground," said Eliot A. Cohen, counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, using a shorthand term for diplomats that is common among the counterinsurgency community.

For another, the process of interagency coordination -- particularly on the wars -- has left little reason for confidence in recent years. In the early years of the fighting in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld feuded bitterly over bureaucratic control in managing the occupation. The State Dept.'s year-long, multi-volume report on Iraq reconstruction was famously rejected by Rumsfeld, largely because its authors -- denizens of the dread Foggy Bottom -- were considered suspect. The departures of both men has eased, but not solved, the problem.

With Rice as secretary of state, the lines of communication between State and Defense improved. Yet Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2005 to 2007, advocated a wholesale reorganization of the U.S. government along the lines of the landmark 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, that forced the military services to work together.

"As we look to the next 10, 20, 30 years of combating an enemy that is not going to confront us tank on tank," Pace said in a speech last summer, "we're going to need all the agencies of national power to be responsive inside the enemy’s loop. We do not have a mechanism right now to make that happen."

If a counterinsurgency effort is primarily a military effort, it will probably fail... That's not to say there aren't proposals. The most recent emanates from -- unsurprisingly -- the Pentagon, which is still the primary bureaucracy in control of both wars. Celeste Ward, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, recently began an unconventional initiative for interagency coordination on irregular warfare.

Known as the Consortium for Complex Operations, or CCO, Ward's initiative is a virtual university and online hang-out for the new generation of counterinsurgents to meet, debate, hone their skills and learn how to play nicely with each other. Headed by two rising counterinsurgency wonks, Mac Bollman and Janine Davidson, the consortium operates with a skeleton crew of 12 full-time and part-time employees out of a Crystal City office. But the consortium hosts an online "portal," or website, that is the real value of the effort.

"We like to say that CCO has a portal, it is not a portal," Ward said in a phone interview. "We do have a physical location, in Crystal City, but the portal is the really important aspect of CCO."

The consortium, which launched at a State Department-hosted conference on April 28, offers a variety of educational programs on its password-protected website. There are courses in stability operations and counterinsurgency, naturally -- but also in humanitarian assistance, regional knowledge, multilateral organizations, conflict resolution, the rule of law and "train-the-trainer" courses, among others. These are all derived from lessons gleaned in different government agencies. The curriculum is largely a collection of existing courses contained within civilian and military organizations, or based on research from government-sponsored think tanks

A recent pre-launch study conducted by the U.S. Institute of Peace called it "the most comprehensive collection of courses related to complex operations available to date." "Complex operations" is a hybrid term for various forms of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare.

If someone wants to join the consortium's virtual community, he or she will will apply for a password, Ward explained. Ideal candidates, as described by Ward, are "trainers and educators. A professor at the Army command and general staff college. An NDU [National Defense University] professor. A former [Provincial Reconstruction Team] leader. Someone like me, [with] two tours in Iraq, a DASD [deputy assistant security of defense]."

Ward, who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and then returned to Iraq in 2005 to advise Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who was then the corps commander, said there will probably be consortium blogs, as well. "What I'd say," she explained, "is it provides an intellectual home."

Ward does not see the consortium as able to solve all the government's problems with the civilian end of counterinsurgency, let alone the intractable bureaucratic task of interagency coordination. Many have failed before her. In 2005, for example, an effort in the State Dept. called the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization was created to do the job that the consortium is now attempting. S/CRS, as it is known, is now regarded as having lost momentum since its first director, Amb. Carlos Pascual, left to take a job at the Brookings Institution.

More famously, last year President George W. Bush announced a major search for a "war czar," to orchestrate all the elements of Iraq from the White House. Several people reportedly declined the job before Gen. William Lute stepped up for it.

Meanwhile, the consortium is trying to offer an alternative -- with a staff of four full-time employees and an annual operating budget of only $2.5 million. But Ward does see the job as familiarizing relevant civilian officials with their military counterparts -- and with each other. "When you get [to a war zone], saying 'I know who these people are' -- I can't tell you how instructive it is not to be working with a military organization but inside one," she said. "What CCO can do is facilitate opportunities to communicate with X number of agencies, organizations and, I hope, identify and organize opportunities to do training together, and discuss issues working together."

It would certainly win the approval of one leading counterinsurgent who first called for just this sort of group. "The Consortium for Complex Operations is clearly a step in the right direction," Nagl said.

Time will tell how large a step it will be.

This is the sixth in a series: The Rise of the Counterinsurgents.

Part One: The Colonels and 'The Matrix'

Part Two: A Famous Enigma

Part Three: Petraeus' Ascension

Part Four: The Insurgent as Counterinsurgent

Part Five: King David

Mondo Aggro: Iraq Contractors Edition

Spencer Ackerman — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:55:58 GMT

This is crazy:

The U.S. military on Sunday ordered a court-martial for a civilian contractor charged with aggravated assault while working as an Army interpreter in Iraq -- the first such military prosecution since the Vietnam War.

Alaa "Alex" Mohammad Ali, who holds Iraqi and Canadian citizenship, is accused of stabbing another contractor four times during a fight Feb. 23 on a base near Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad. The victim suffered chest wounds.

I thought it was just American contractors who were full of 'roid rage.

Is Real ID Really Going to Happen?

Matthew Blake — Mon, 12 May 2008 05:54:06 GMT

Yesterday, May 11, was when the Real ID Act, signed into law three years ago to the day, was due to kick in.

The law set national standards for all state driver's licenses and other forms of photo identification. It directs states to store people's drivers license information in a database, along with additional identity information, like a digital copy of each person's birth certificate. The law mandates that all state databases are to be linked. By now, every state should have built this database and issued Real ID-compliant licenses to all residents.

But you don't need to worry about these new ID's. The law has yet to go into effect.

Little about Real ID has gone as planned. All 50 states, and the District of Columbia, were given extensions by the Dept. of Homeland Security to comply with Real ID. This extension was given despite the fact that 17 states passed resolutions saying they have no intention of ever implementing the program.

State governors and legislatures, members of Congress and civil-liberties groups have slammed Real ID. They say the program is an unfunded mandate and that the federal government should not be in the business of directing how states issue identifications in the first place. They also argue that the linked databases, complete with comprehensive identity information on people from every state, creates a "one-stop shop" for identity theft.

Slipped into "must pass" legislation to fund the war in Iraq and help victims from the December 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami, Real ID is now one of Washington's most maligned policy programs. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) is leading a bipartisan effort in the Senate to repeal the law and replace it with recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission. The commission recommended that states and civil-liberties groups negotiate with the federal government in developing minimum ID standards.

So Real ID could be killed, most likely in the next administration. It's still not a sure thing that, if implemented, the more modest and politically popular 9/11 commission guidelines would strike the right balance among state's rights, personal privacy and the need to stop identity theft. The broad post-9/11 support for national ID standards could turn out to be an unworkable policy in any incarnation.

"I don't think that just because the 9/11 commission said it was a good idea necessarily makes its a good idea." said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group opposed to Real ID.

The "Identification Security Enhancement Act," was introduced last year by Akaka, and has since picked up Republican co-sponsors Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.). It would follow suggestions from the 9/11 commission, which concluded that more identification requirements were needed because all but one of the 9/11 hijackers was able to obtain a driver's license. Instead of outlining what information should go on a license or be stored in a database, the 9/11 Commission said it was best to let states, civil-liberties organizations and security experts set up a group to develop ID standards.

These recommendations were actually briefly law, after passage in December 2004 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. In fact, the Dept. of Homeland Security had started to assemble the rule-making coalition.

But they were overwritten when Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, pasted the Real ID Act into a 2005 emergency spending bill for the war in Iraq and the Asian tsunami. With Real ID, the federal government was now setting requirements on state-issued ID's instead of working with states and other stakeholders.

"By bringing everyone together," Akaka said at a Senate oversight hearing last week that garnered bipartisan criticism of Real ID. "I believe that we can address the problems with Real ID and have secured drivers licenses faster than through the time frame proposed by DHS's final rules."

That time frame for Real ID has already been pushed back twice. The original May 11, 2008 deadline has been extended to Dec. 31, 2009. But states can request an extension from DHS, to be compliant by 2011. And states don't need to issue Real ID's for residents over 50 until 2017-- nine years after the original deadline.

Critics of Real ID see the extensions as a sign that the Bush administration doesn't seriously want to deal with implementation problems. "By granting all 50 states waivers, the current administration has handed off the issue to the next administration," said Jim Dempsey, policy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, another group against Real ID.

Tim Sparapani, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that DHS has not seriously addressed the need to develop technology that can safely store personal ID information on a database shared by all 50 states. Sparapani said that the linked databases create an appealing target for terrorists, or any identity thief.

"If I break into a database in Alabama, I don't just get Alabama information." Sparapani said . "I get information from all states." He added that the extra identification requirements will give a hacker the information to commit identity fraud.

To develop secure databases and issue new licenses, homeland security now estimates that Real ID implementation will cost $3.9 billion. Sensenbrunner's original estimate was $100 million, and so far homeland security has issued just $79.8 million in grants. Congress and the administration are reluctant, however, to make up the difference.

Part of the reason is that many state legislatures have made clear to Washington that they reject Real ID on principle. On the basis of state's right and privacy concerns, 17 states have officially announced they won't comply with Real ID, even if the money were available.

DHS, nonetheless, granted compliance extensions even to those states, saying that they are working to meet national security standards. "Whatever their motivations may be, states are taking measures toward the path of Real ID compliance," said Russ Knocke, a spokesman for DHS.

Critics of Real ID pointed out that DHS had little choice. "Being at DHS is not an easy job," said Tien, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Congress has given them a stinky bill that they now have to make look workable."

Repealing Real ID then, through the Akaka bill, has better prospects under a new administration that might give homeland security a clean slate. "It's a political rule that nobody creates controversy during an election year," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato institute, "But we'll probably see it introduced again with a high likelihood of passage in December 2009, when states can apply for an additional extension."

Like Tien, Harper is uncertain whether Akaka's bill with the 9/11 commission recommendations is a good thing. "It's obviously an improvement," he said. But Harper added he prefers "pushing aside Real ID to create a new post-9/11 conversation."

Some proponents of federal ID standards say that civil libertarians would create opposition to any kind of baseline ID requirement. "When Americans think up about national ID cards, it drives them up the wall," said Amitai Etzioni, director at the Institute of Communitarian Studies at George Washington University. "Even after 9/11, they think of it as totalitarian."

Along with never satisfying privacy advocates, Etizioni said that the negotiated rule-making called for by the 9/11 commission is wrong to expect that all 50 states could get on the same page. "If you negotiate with the states," he said, "each will have their own ideas."

But many Real ID critics do see the Akaka bill as a pragmatic solution. "There is a certain amount of national leadership needed to bring all the states up to certain minimum standards," said Dempsey, at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Negotiated rule-making with state and local officials and privacy advocates is the right approach."

The Real ID Act was added onto a bill with no public debate on whether it effectively combated terrorism and identity theft. Almost all sides now talk about wanting Congress and the next administration to discuss the pitfalls of national standards, before killing, keeping or revising Real ID.

"I'm hopeful that Real ID will collapse under the weight of everyone's lack of enthusiasm," said Tien. "The real question is what comes next."

And We Thought Hitchens Was Tough on Kissinger

Mike Lillis — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:20:00 GMT

On a slow, rainy Friday in Washington, when all eyes are on presidential politics, this little gem arrived over the ticker courtesy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Speaking at the Brookings Institution Monday, Gates said:

Washington is also a city of monumental embarrassments. Like the first time that President Nixon met with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir after appointing Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State. Golda Meir had with her her Cambridge-educated foreign minister, Abba Eban. Nixon turned to Golda Meir and said "Just think, Madam Prime Minister, we now both have Jewish foreign ministers." And Golda Meir looked at him and said, "Yes, but mine speaks English."

Ouch.