CHESTER HAS MOVED!

FLASH: THE ADVENTURES OF CHESTER HAS MOVED!

2005-01-16T23:06:00.000-08:00

The Adventures of Chester has moved! The new address is: www.theadventuresofchester.com Please update your bookmarks and links! This is the first in a series of major announcements this week. See the new site for updates.

Scenario Planning at the National Intelligence Council

2005-01-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

A long, long time ago – maybe in November -- an Alert Reader asked for more info about strategic planning and/or jointness. Don't know if that Alert Reader is still out there, but there are some interesting things about this floating around the blogosphere today. The International Futures Model (IFs) website, (ht: danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner via Instapundit), run by the National Intelligence Council, allows anyone in the public to model their own version of what the world will look like in the future.

This powerful tool allows users to generate in-depth, year-by-year projections through 2020 for a large number of variables. Topics covered include demographic, economic, energy, sociopolitical and environmental factors. IFs can be displayed at the country specific level, and results can be aggregated for regions of the world. Users can display forecasts in tables and on maps or graphically. pre-computed forcasts exist foor the Ifs base case and for the four scenarios of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project. users can also easily create their own scenariso. The forecasts of Ifs should be treated as illustrations of possible futures rather than predictions. In addition to enabling its users to look forward, IFs also contains data on 160 countries stretching back more than forty years.

This is fascinating stuff for several reasons. First, just having an online forum for the general public to use this info and this tool is a great way to foster discussion. Second, the existence of a tool like this, geared toward modeling alternative futures and not just predicting the correct one, means that the ideas of "scenario planning" are getting to be in vogue in the National Security Community. These ideas have been "popularized" by Philip C Bobbitt, who holds a PhD in Strategy from Oxford, and a JD in Law from Yale, and teaches Constitutional Law at the University of Texas in Austin. I first discovered Bobbitt when reading this opinion piece he wrote in the New York Times last in 2003:

For nearly 50 years, American decision-makers could rely on forms of "strategic planning" — a method that begins with choosing a desired result and then plotting the decisions that will have to be made to reach that goal. Strategic planning worked well in the two-power world because we were able to extrapolate from a relatively stable and familiar security environment, relying on more or less agreed-upon intelligence estimates. Governments sought the likeliest linear future, and planned accordingly. Unfortunately, in an increasingly decentralized world, in which previously insignificant actors and factors can play a decisive role, strategic planning can leave decision-makers flat-footed. In its unidimensional reliance on a single future, strategic planning hardens the "official future" agencies internalize, and thus prepares them poorly for appreciating rapid changes in circumstance and for making agile adaptations.

Bobbitt then explains "scenario planning" as an alternative:

In this new era of uncertainty, not only must we must accept that simple forecasting is not going to be very useful to us, we must sharpen our skills of forethought. One way will be to augment traditional strategic planning with "scenario planning," a strategy that has long been a staple at the largest multinational corporations. Scenario planning involves the creation of alternative narratives about the future based on different decisions — by many players — as each scenario progresses. As opposed to the classic strategic method of applying the past to the future — coming up with a single, likeliest story about how things will turn out — scenario planning is about applying the future to the present, creating a learning framework for decisions. The idea is not so much to predict the future as to consider the forces that will push the future along different paths, in order to help leaders recognize new possibilities, assess new threats and make decisions that reach much further into the future. Scenario planning can also exploit the changes under way in intelligence collection — especially the greater emphasis on human sources. Unlike strategic planning, which tends to rely on quantitative and technical information like population figures and productivity reports, scenario planning tends to use more qualitative and dynamic data. It depends in large part on studying economic, political and social trends. Scenario planning at Royal Dutch Shell, where I am a senior adviser, helped the corporation become one of the most profitable oil conglomerates. In the early 1970's, its scenario planners worked on hypothetical futures involving an oil boycott against the West; when political events finally brought about the Arab oil crisis, the company not only wasn't taken by surprise, it was in a position to capitalize. In the 1990's Shell analysts were scenario-planning a potential backlash against global companies, long before the antiglobalization movement took off. Thus, while most companies reacted to the new movement with corporate disdain, Shell was courting nongovernmental groups and decentralizing its global operations so that decisions in foreign divisions could be made by people living in and sensitive to the countries affected. Getting the government to emphasize scenario planning will not be easy. To be successful, the approach depends on well-organized dialogue between decision makers at many levels, which would be culture shock for the rigidly hierarchical executive branch. (Indeed, despite the efforts of advocates like Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, to get Washington interested in scenario planning, only one country, Singapore, has made extensive use of the practice.) Our various national security agencies may not be competitive businesses, but they often behave toward each other as if they were. Intelligence is often "stovepiped" — when analysts refuse to share information and sources with interagency rivals working on the same problems — and mutually distrustful cultures abound. Also, scenario planning requires a political culture that is tolerant of uncertainty. Contingencies of uncertain probability tend to be of little interest to politicians, who are confident they know the future. Similarly, competing scenarios are anathema to bureaucrats whose careers are threatened by answering questions like, "What would it take for this estimate to be dramatically wrong?" — which translates to, "What arguments can you give me that undermine your own recommendations?" To change this culture, we need an interagency working group that can organize scenario planning for a new era. It should be headed by the senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council, and should include the director of policy planning at the State Department, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the political-military director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the assistant secretary of Defense for strategic and threat reduction, and a senior representative of the Treasury secretary. This body would be charged with coordinating the work and circulating the results of scenario planning by a team made up of veteran government analysts and, perhaps, experienced people from the private sector.

Being an advocate of "jointness," The Adventures of Chester would like to point out the inherent joint nature of this type of thinking about the future. Bobbitt argues that without a joint commitment to its success from various parts of the federal government, such planning will fail. If any readers use the scenario planning site to model the future, send an email with the results. Remember, it's about creating different scenarios that could be true, not seeing whose is the best prediction. More on "jointness:" here: The Failure of the Intelligence Reform Bills, here: "Jointness" is catching on, here: A Colonial Corps? and here: Colonial Operations and Strategic Communication.

The Story Behind the Story: The Crash of the USS San Francisco

2005-01-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

Back in December, The Adventures of Chester criticized several US Senators and the New York Times for outing the government's plans to build and launch a new series of spy satellites:

Today, the New York Times has outed the program as a spy satellite, meant to add to the existing capabilities of two others launched in the 1990s, under the program name "Misty." The Times then goes on to offer one hundred reasons, via various Democratic observers, why the new satellite is a bad idea.

This is what The Adventures of Chester had to say:

I ask you: is this a useless capability? Only if we believe our enemies are non-state actors hiding in caves, or North Korea, building nukes in underground caverns. Doesn't it seem that of all the various types of imaging and imagery our satellites are capable of producing, that high-resolution photographs are among the most basic and fundamental? Doesn't it seem that it might actually be quite useful to have high-resolution photographs of a particular piece of terrain. The natural contours and makeup of an expected battlefield can be reconnoitered over a long period of time -- say several weeks -- and can be just as useful if gathered at day as at night. I know this for certain -- I have been the recipient myself of such intelligence products. Moreover, a great deal of information can be gleaned, inferred, and deduced from careful examination of such images. The US employs entire legions of experts with PhDs in imagery, topography, geology, etc etc etc to analyze such images. Their collective salaries are miniscule compared to the loss of one American life due to an unprepared battlespace. Moreover, these images are often used to create military maps, which is a fundamental, yet not very sexy part of any successful military operation. And maps have a half-life. Roads can be moved, new buildings put up, bridges added, marshes destroyed, fields burned, forests -- deforested. Having the ability to create an imagery update to an existing map can change entire battle plans. And this update can happen over the course of several weeks before the battle -- when weather will allow, if that is truly a concern.

Well today, we learn that the lack of satellite-based intelligence gathering is one of the principal causes for the recent death of one US sailor. The New York Times reports, Submarine Crash Shows Navy Had Gaps in Mapping System:

But the older navigation charts provided to the Navy were never updated to show the obstruction, they acknowledge, in part because the agency that creates them has never had the resources to use the satellite data systematically.

Now the Times does its best to show that the reason the charts weren't updated is poor human decision-making, not a lack of technical information available:

The officials said the main chart on the submarine, prepared in 1989 and never revised, did not show any potential obstacles within three miles of the crash. They said the incident happened in such a desolate area - 360 miles southeast of Guam - that updating their depiction of the undersea terrain was never considered a priority.

Why might it not be a priority? Perhaps because our satellite-based mapping capabilities are so short that the government is forced to prioritize on other tasks. If that's true, then the New York Times should republish its December article criticizing new satellites right alongside this one. More:

Chris Andreasen, the chief hydrographer for the Office of Global Navigation at the intelligence agency, acknowledged in an interview that on the chart, "there's nothing shown that would be a hazard" at the crash site. But since the accident, Mr. Andreasen said, his office has examined commercially available images taken by a Landsat satellite in 1999, and at least one image indicates that an undersea mountain could rise to within 100 feet of the surface there. Analysts say variations in water color can sometimes indicate a land mass below. Mr. Andreasen said his agency had not normally used satellite imagery to update sea charts, though it recently began using the images to help pinpoint the boundaries of islands and other land masses. He and other officials said that the charting office's staff had shrunk in recent years, and that the Navy never asked it to focus on the area south of Guam, where it began basing submarines in 2002.

The tone of the Times' narrative here is one of government incompetence: The Navy is incompetent for not asking Mr. Andreasen to look at that area of the world. Mr. Andreasen is incompetent for not doing so without being asked. The Bush Administration is incompetent for allowing the mapping office to shrink. But even if any of this is true – and The Adventures of Chester takes issue with all of it – none of these things would have made any difference if there is a shortage in our satellite-based intelligence-gathering or mapping capabilities, the spending for which several Democratic Senators and The New York Times -- their proxy -- were so quick to condemn back in December.

Upstart Saudi Al-Qaeda Leader's Threat Means Navy Supply Ships Don't Use Suez Canal

2005-01-14T14:35:00.000-08:00

As a precautionary measure, the US Navy has diverted at least 12 massive supply ships from the Suez Canal and sent them around the Cape of Good Hope instead.

In the past few months, however, U.S. and British authorities have cautioned of threats to shipping in the Middle East. One U.S. warning in mid-December said significant attacks could take place in the Suez Canal and other "choke points" -- narrow channels where vulnerable ships, if damaged or sunk, would significantly disrupt commerce. Analysts took particular note of the recent rise of Saud Hamud al-Utaibi in al-Qaida's leadership. He is a maritime terror expert believed to have been responsible for the attacks on the USS Cole and the French supertanker MV Limburg. "Al-Utaibi is the new head of al-Qaida on the Arabian peninsula, and that heightens the threat to shipping certainly within that region," Dominic Armstrong, head of intelligence and research for Aegis Defense Services, an international consulting firm, said in a telephone interview from London.

UPDATE: The Close-In Weapons System, sporting two 20mm fully automated heavy machine guns, is an example of the type of self-defense weapon with which the supply ships are not equipped. More:

Phalanx is a point-defense, total-weapon system consisting of two 20mm gun mounts that provide a terminal defense against incoming air targets. CIWS, without assistance from other shipboard systems, will automatically engage incoming anti-ship missiles and high-speed, low-level aircraft that have penetrated the ship primary defense envelope. As a unitized system, CIWS automatically performs search, detecting, tracking, threat evaluation, firing, and kill assessments of targets while providing for manual override. Each gun mount houses a fire control assembly and a gun subsystem. The fire control assembly is composed of a search radar for surveillance and detection of hostile targets and a track radar for aiming the gun while tracking a target. The unique closed-loop fire control system that tracks both the incoming target and the stream of outgoing projectiles gives CIWS the capability to correct its aim to hit fast-moving targets, including ASMs.

Could this system be effective against speedboats as well? A question for you Navy readers out there.

Colonial Operations and Strategic Communication

2005-01-13T23:20:00.000-08:00

[This is yet another post in response to Belmont Club's discussion of the adequacy of the US force structure.] Perhaps the first issue in any plan to reform the strategic communications efforts of the US should begin with the correct definition of what it is that US forces are being tasked to do in the 21st century. One of Wretchard's readers is right that the word "colonial" is so freighted with historical baggage as to render useless any policy using it. Major Mike says:

Additionally, I cringe a bit with talk of re-organization to “colonial” style forces, or a variation thereof. The post World War I explosion of nationalistic movements throughout the world can be attributed directly to the occupation of nations by colonial forces. Fighting an insurgent nationalistic force would be logarithmically more costly than fighting a disgruntled band of malcontents and outsiders . . .

in the interests of heading off the globalization protesters at the pass, a better definition must be identified and put into use. This is not spin. Far from it. Colonialism smacks of zero-sum trade, the "white man's burden" and even slavery. These are vastly different goals than those of the US today. Robert Kaplan says:

"The American military now has the most thankless task of any military in the history of warfare: to provide the security armature for an emerging global civilization that, the more it matures--with its own mass media and governing structures--the less credit and sympathy it will grant to the very troops who have risked and, indeed, given their lives for it."

In a similar vein, Thomas Barnett, the oft-quoted author of "The Pentagon's New Map," who defines the world into the Functioning Core and the Non-integrating Gap, uses the terminology of systems administration to describe the tasks set before the US military:

U.S. national-security strategy would seem to be: 1) Increase the Core’s immune system capabilities for responding to September 11-like system perturbations; 2) Work the seam states to firewall the Core from the Gap’s worst exports, such as terror, drugs, and pandemics; and, most important, 3) Shrink the Gap.

Barnett gives a roundabout reference to the possible force structure of the US military, given this daunting task:

Making this effort means reshaping our military establishment to mirror-image the challenge that we face. Think about it. Global war is not in the offing, primarily because our huge nuclear stockpile renders such war unthinkable—for anyone. Meanwhile, classic state-on-state wars are becoming fairly rare. So if the United States is in the process of “transforming” its military to meet the threats of tomorrow, what should it end up looking like? In my mind, we fight fire with fire. If we live in a world increasingly populated by Super-Empowered Individuals, we field a military of Super-Empowered-Individuals.

Whether you prefer Kaplan's "security armature for an emerging global civilization," or Barnett's theories of the Core and the Gap, both point to US-provided collective security as an international public good – a far cry from the conquests and coffer-enriching schemes of colonialism. Returning to the strategic communications problems of a US military confronted with such a wide-ranging mission . . . Wretchard points to a recent study by the Defense Science Board which states:

Strategic communication -- which encompasses public affairs, public diplomacy, international broadcasting, information operations, and special activities -- is vital to America’s national security and foreign policy. Over the past few decades, the strategic communication environment and requirements have changed considerably as a result of many influences. Some of the most important of these influences are a rise in anti-American attitudes around the world; the use of terrorism as a framework for national security issues; and the volatility of Islamic internal and external struggles over values, identity, and change. ... America needs a revolution in strategic communication rooted in strong leadership from the top and supported by an orchestrated blend of public and private sector components.

Joseph Nye, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has gone a long way to define the strategic communication problem as one of "soft power:"

Soft power is the ability to get what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals. It differs from hard power, the ability to use the carrots and sticks of economic and military might to make others follow your will. Both hard and soft power are important in the war on terrorism, but attraction is much cheaper than coercion, and an asset that needs to be nourished.

Yet Nye's prescriptions for implementing such a soft-power campaign are vague at best and whimsical at worst:

The U.S. government should not try to control exports of popular culture, but State Department cultural and exchange programs help to remind people of the noncommercial aspects of American values and culture. Similarly, government broadcasting to other countries that is evenhanded, open and informative helps to enhance American credibility and soft power in a way that propaganda never can. Yet the billion dollars spent on public diplomacy is only one- quarter of 1 percent of what is spent on defense. Congress should support measures like Representative Henry Hyde's proposal to bolster the State Department's public diplomacy and international broadcasting efforts. The other way the government can make a difference is in the substance and style of foreign policy. With a military budget larger than those of the next dozen countries combined, the United States looms so large that it engenders negative as well as positive reactions. The biggest kid on the block always provokes a mixture of admiration and resentment. To the extent that America defines its national interests in ways congruent with others, and consults with them in formulating policies, it will improve the ratio of admiration to resentment. President George W. Bush

No need to read further. You know where he's going. [Quick aside: Here we witness the Harvard Dean version of hand-wringing over "why they hate us." Nye doesn't seem to understand that the ultimate soft power is when your soft speaking is backed by a big stick. Or perhaps he's forgotten. Hard to tell on the left these days. Has the Rhodes scholarship program ever produced a conservative?] The goal of strategic communication as discussed here is something akin a sense of feel-goodism: that other peoples in the world agree to our actions because they understand our intentions. Even James Fallows is jumping on the bandwagon, raising "strategic communication" in one of the cover stories of the January/February Atlantic, "Success Without Victory," and showing the supposed importance of "intention perception" to our target audience:

An amazing lack of interest in how life looks to those we are trying to persuade, deter, or capture accounts for many of America's difficulties in the past three years. People in the anti-terrorism business talk about our need to wage a decades-long struggle for the future of Islam, in which the United States has a vital stake. But consider the mini war of ideas we have already fought. America's approach to the Muslim world since 9/11 has made sense—to the Americans who designed it. First we would rout the Taliban from Afghanistan and deny al-Qaeda the sanctuaries and training camps that were important to its growth through the 1990s. Then we would take the war to Iraq, solving the immediate problem of Saddam Hussein and whatever weapons he had, and fostering a long-run example of a prosperous, democratic Arab-Islamic state . . . That was the intention. Somehow the results looked different to the people this strategy was supposed to influence . . .

Fallows, a journalist, seems not to think his own profession was complicit in that failure. More:

Instead one can turn to the Pentagon's own Defense Science Board, which submitted a 102-page internal report in November about how America was doing in the global war of ideas.

Fallows mentions studies by RAND, in addition to the Defense Science Board piece itself as having similar themes:

Through these studies runs the idea that the United States could make an authentic and appealing case to the Muslim world—if it took the time to understand which parts of its argument are most likely to register with the person in the street. For instance, in much of today's Muslim world "justice" is a more compelling ideal than individual "liberty." "This really is a war of narratives in a battlefield of interpretation," Marc Sageman says. "We need to promote a positive vision to substitute for the vision of violence. And that vision has to be justice. It is no accident that these groups are always calling themselves 'The Party of Justice' and so on. In the time of the Suez Canal the United States stood for 'justice' against the Brits and French, and we were the toast of the Middle East. We need to be pushing a vision of a fair and just world, with us in harmony with the rest of the world, as opposed to at war with the rest of the world."

This is in a sense, a Hail-Mary all-channel marketing campaign to re-brand the foreign policy of the United States. Does it really help our effort that much to rename the Marine Corps, "The Justice Corps?" Muslims are smarter than that. Moreover, Fallows makes the mistake expected of a mainstream journalist: he thinks in terms of the masses, wants a branding campaign that smacks of mass media, and relies on semantics rather than fundamental considerations of substance to spin his message. The blogosphere teaches that Fallows' top-down method of image control is increasingly impossible. Moreover, what metric can be used to judge positive perception change toward the US; or positive reception to the ideas that the US advocates? And perhaps "individual liberty" doesn't appeal to Muslims in general because they have had such a small taste of it. Perhaps the goal is not to repackage our efforts to appeal to existing ideas in their culture, but instead to introduce radical new ones. The most-cited lesson of the blogosphere is of the segmenting of traditional mass-markets into micromarkets – indeed, the same Atlantic has another story entitled, "The Massless Media." But less mentioned is the idea that whereas traditional media is faceless, monolithic and short on interaction, the blogosphere influences the world through millions of tiny interactions daily in which readers exchange views and create perceptions of each other. While we all sit at our desks reading this alone [and our wives and husbands give us that certain annoyed get-off-the-computer-now look], we are engaged in a dynamic process of figuring out whom we trust and whom we don't. Hugh Hewitt mentions this in his new book, "Blog." These interactions can be controlled from above only with great difficulty and expense. This lesson does not just apply in the world of high-speed broadband. Hundreds of newspapers have sprouted in Iraq, and the post-totalitarian residents of Iraq will be highly skeptical of attempts to influence their opinion from institutional platforms. Such is the nature of the thousands and millions of interactions by US troops with Iraqis, and other folks all over the world daily, as well. These interactions speak for themselves and are difficult to manipulate. In the case of Iraqis, they are on an individual basis largely positive. In a sense, mass media acted as a go-between, handing out legitimacy between strangers via institutional trust. But the institutional go-between is no longer technologically necessary, and people interact like free radicals. Thus, since the military can control its troops' interactions with mission-type orders, centuries-old traditions, and esprit de corps -- in fact, precisely because of the tradition-bound nature of the military and the fact that it instills or brings out similar traits in vastly different people -- these interactions are one of the only mass-influence campaigns left in the world. Consider the 1st Marine Division's use of the slogan of "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy," through the course of its two deployments to Iraq. It takes a military unit to broadcast such a message, and General Mattis, the former commanding general of the division, did so from the get-go, starting with his invasion kick-off message on March 20th, 2003. It is simple to remember and more importantly, easy to translate. Thucydides said it this way:

We have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor; and we have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and our enmity."

Aside from the millions of interactions though, the Pentagon has no idea how to control the media image its troops give off during deployments. Consider this New York Times story of last month, perhaps spawned by the DSB report [link is the abstract: the story is only available for a fee, and who's going to pay for a story with a half-life of 12 hours?]:

THE REACH OF WAR: HEARTS AND MINDS; PENTAGON WEIGHS USE OF DECEPTION IN A BROAD ARENA ABSTRACT - Pentagon said to be engaged in bitter, high-level debates over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad; missions, if approved, could take deceptive techniques endorsed for use on battlefield to confuse adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations; critics say such program would shatter Pentagon's credibility; question is whether Pentagon and military should undertake official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad; efforts under consideration risk blurring traditional lines between public affairs programs in Pentagon--whose charter calls for giving truthful information to media and public--and world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations; critics see proposal as Pentagon's effort to resurrect its Office of Strategic Influence, short-lived operation to provide news items, including false ones, to foreign journalists in effort to influence overseas opinion; office was closed by Defense Sec Donald H Rumsfeld under intense criticism.

Perhaps abstracts are the way to go when reading the Times . . . Before the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force deployed to Iraq for the second time, a retired colonel, and veteran of the Combined Action Program , was invited to speak to a gathering of MEF officers. He asked anyone in a public affairs specialty to stand. He then asked for those in the psychological operations specialty to stand. He then asked them, "You've both been warned in all of your professional training not to have anything to do with each other, haven't you?" Their heads nodded. The Colonel explained that in small wars, integrating the images given off by US forces is a necessity to success. It is this dilemma – how to do so without creating spin, propaganda, or conspiracy theories – that is being debated in the Pentagon. While these debates are ongoing, solutions will sprout organically. The decentralization of media raises the potential that the goal of the big-budget public diplomacy programs can be accomplished on a shoestring: those in other countries can interact with, meet, and debate with Americans at will, and make up their minds for themselves if we are truly free, and if our way of life is better. While this works itself out, the very least the Bush Administration can do is better publicize the atrocities of Saddam, troops decorated for heroism, and the thousands of little victories via interaction that occur every day. *** Parting thoughts on force structure and the occupation 1. Sources inside the Marine Corps tell The Adventures of Chester that one of the MEUs slated to deploy soon will employ an artillery unit as the battalion landing team, instead of an infantry battalion. Sounds alarming, but when extra infantry units are needed, artillery Marines are often the first to be tapped. And the MEU training will be the same for them before they deploy. Moreover, the Marine Corps is about to push up against the 2-year time-limit for activating reservists. 2. Here is a past post comparing the occupations of Japan and Iraq. It does not address troop numbers, just the overall picture and mood of each. 3. Here's the reaction of The Adventures of Chester to James Fallow's last Atlantic article, about Iran. 4. See the US State Department's newly-created Office of Policy, Planning and Resources for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Fallows doesn't seem to know about this . . .

Belmont Club

2005-01-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

Tonight's post will speak to the strategic communication issues recently raised by Belmont Club. The post will hopefully be out before midnight.

US warns Russia on selling missiles to Syria

2005-01-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

More to consider here.

Rummy on Syria Again

2005-01-13T00:16:00.000-08:00

Here's the link to the transcript of Rummy's comments about Syria on Tuesday. Thanks to an Alert Reader. This transcript is absolutely hilarious. Has a who's-on-first quality to it. Provides no help whatsoever on Syria, but made my day to read the account of Rummy and the reporter. Start with this line:

SEC. RUMSFELD: We'll take -- we'll take one last question.

and keep reading. Hilarious.

A Colonial Corps?

2005-01-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

[This post is in response to Wretchard's latest atBelmont Club.] A Colonial Corps? Thoughts: Last fall, an article appeared in the New York Times entitled, "Pentagon Weighs Contentious Peacekeeping Plans," detailing discussions of creating what could be called a "peacekeeping division:" [the article is probably only available for a fee now]

. . . defense officials are quietly examining proposals including a small joint-services unit of a few thousand troops that could be assembled in as little as a year to perform policing, civil affairs, engineering, medical and other duties in hot spots such as Iraq and Afghanistan . . . Defense experts in Washington say proposals for a standing U.S. stabilization force has gained currency mainly among civilians at the Pentagon. Already, opposition has surfaced among U.S. military officers, including some army officers with experience in U.S. peacekeeping operations. The Army has long viewed peacekeeping as a threat to combat readiness and is suspicious of any plan to maintain a standing in-house unit devoted to post-conflict duties. ``No one in the Army is seriously considering establishment of a constabulary unit,'' said one U.S. expert on peacekeeping.

The term "peacekeeping" is incorrect for the type of operations that the above-envisioned force would undertake. "Peacekeeping" implies blue-helmeted conscripts, shackled to the whims of UN committees – troops that arrive late, perform little, and perchance leave things in a worse state than when they started. And it also implies humanitarian missions that have little in the way of national interest to recommend them. "Colonial corps" is much more accurate, though perhaps a tough sell. Understanding how such a colonial corps could be used is key to dissipating the skepticism with which it would be greeted. The mention that the Army has thought peacekeeping a threat to combat readiness betrays both its prejudices against the term "peacekeeping" itself, and the misunderstanding of how such a force of police, engineers, and medical experts could actually be used. As you quote in your post, "To be fully effective the United States will need to have some of its people continuously abroad for years, so they become familiar with the local scene and the indigenous people come to trust them as individuals -- tours of duty that we imagine to be far longer than traditional assignments today." In that sense, "colonial operations" would not be a detractor from combat readiness – instead, troops meant to perform colonial operations would have their necessary skills degraded when they are NOT deployed. Hard to practice civil affairs operations in your own country, where you know the customs and language. Robert Kaplan has written of the operating environment of such a force here, describing it as "Indian country," and taken in the context of a colonial corps concept, these notes from one of his discussions more or less show that a colonial corps already exists in all but name. Rather than being organized as such though, it consists of the outposting of US forces in all corners of the globe, in small pockets, having operational, and sometimes even strategic impact.

That is because the U.S. military as a whole is still organized for fighting an industrial-age war. The deployment constellation of bases around Iraq is better suited for Korea or World War II, while the adversary that we’re fighting has been fighting like the Indians or the Viet Cong. In the future, we’re going to have to operate in the Middle East the way we’ve been operating in the horn of Africa, which is more like Lewis & Clark in the French- Indian Wars than it is like World Wars I and II and Desert Storm combined. You send out small groups of highly trained officers to go into small villages here and there and just explore. Find out what the citizenry wants, needs, and fears, any foreigners who have been taking up residence, you drum up intelligence even as you draw up plans for humanitarian aid projects. The best, most actionable intelligence is generally obtained when some form of humanitarian assistance is involved, Kaplan remarked. People will tell a lot to someone who is treating their children for malaria, scabies, and other diseases and establishing a positive social relationship with them. The main point is that you use small units, forward deployed, making decisions on their own, finding things out, totally immersed in the local environment, because the enemy is no longer ten thousand troops with tanks.

But what the New York Times article above mentions is much greater in scope than what Kaplan has observed – it would be a standing force, ready to undertake such missions. But again, perhaps this is wrong in conception. A standing force? Ready to undertake these missions? Where is it standing? Such a force would seem to be useless if it is always at home. And if it is supposed to undertake such missions in any given locale, how do you decide what language its troops will learn, and what culture they will study? A better answer would be to embed the headquarters -- or multiple headquarters -- for such forces within each combatant command, and surge troops and capabilities to it as seen fit. An excellent example of this technique can be seen in the creation of Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa. "Combined" means it has forces from more than just the US, and "joint" means it employs members of all US forces. This task force has in the past had responsibility for military training and operations, sometimes diplomacy, humanitarian assistance, and intelligence collection in the countries of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Kenya, and Tanzania, though not all of these are currently listed on its website. Its subordinate units are the 1st Provisional Security Company (composed of parts of a Marine tank battalion), an Expeditionary Medical Unit (for humanitarian medical aid), HMH-461 Det B (REIN), which is part of a medium helicopter squadron, the 823rd RED HORSE Squadron, which is a battalion-sized unit of Air Force civil engineers, and Team Alpha, 1-294th Infantry (Light) – a company-sized infantry unit from the US Army. It must be noted that these ad hoc colonial operations efforts incorporate the concept of "jointness" in a much greater way than has been the case in the past. Though jointness is only mandated by law amongst the military services, it has now expanded to include the incorporation of subject-matter experts from a variety of government agencies – the State Dept, the Treasury Dept, the FBI, the CIA, etc. – within military units. Jointness concepts continue to expand – the consultation of foreign military advisors by Central Command has recently been in the news. In this sense, jointness means using existing agencies, personnel, and capabilities in cross-functional and interdisciplinary ways to tackle complex problems (like reconstruction, or colonial operations). The Adventures of Chester has discussed jointness before here, as it relates to intelligence reform. So perhaps the colonial corps conundrum can be solved through some savvy changes to the employment of existing forces – along with some smart changes to their training and incentives and career structures. Take foreign assignments. In the Marine Corps, it is generally viewed favorably for an officer to have a billet in embassy security. But this is a security job and has little to do with interacting with local populations. On the other hand, putting oneself in the running for the Foreign Area Officer program can be the kiss of death to your career as a field-grade officer – and the result of that program is fluency in a strategically significant language, along with a year of travel in one of its native countries – much more useful to future deployments in "Indian country." This must change if the US is to expand its human intelligence and colonial operations capabilities. Also, perhaps billets in other agencies, like the State Department, or the CIA, could be instituted and viewed more favorably in career progression. Another policy that stands in the way is the current compensation structure. Without going into details, pay schedules currently offer economic incentives for enlisted personnel to get married. Marriage is a significant impediment to encouraging young troops to deploy for extended periods, and compensation should be neutral to its existence. Part and parcel of a discussion of colonial forces is the question of whether it is possible to expand special forces without diluting their specialness. This is an interesting debate. Can the US increase the number of Green Berets by a factor of two without lowering the standards of entry? Maybe, maybe not. Green Berets bring several things to the table: extreme physical stamina, linguistic skill, expensive and rigorous training, and the wisdom of members who are older than 25 on average and sport IQ's in the 95th percentile. Can the US pick an entire infantry battalion and give it rudimentary classes in Arabic such that the troops aren't fluent, but can be incredibly effective on a deployment? Yes, absolutely. Slight shifts in training and incentives can create immense efficiencies. Doubling the size of the 10th Special Forces Group is only one way to go about things. On an even bigger scale, (Army folks are going to hate this) consider the Marine Corps as one quasi-special forces unit. Rather than train individuals for multiple and varied colonial operations tasks, the Corps trains entire units – Marine Expeditionary Units (Special Operations Capable). Over time these skills spread throughout the Corps as troops go on multiple MEUs then go on to other units and practice what they've learned. The "thee-block war" concept, developed by the Marine Corps, is really preparation for the "Indian country" environment a la Kaplan, and the colonial operations missions to be undertaken within it. Could the number of Marines be increased quickly? Yes, absolutely. Niall Ferguson supposedly argues in his work "Colossus" not only that the US is already a global empire in fact, if not in name, but also an empire with clay feet given Americans' lack of desire for long-term and large troop deployments abroad. An empire without colonists. Perhaps these sentiments are changing. If so, please, let's not junk our Cold War hardware and technological dominance-seeking completely. . . the Middle Kingdom dragon is waking in Asia . . .

U.S. mulls strikes on Syria - (United Press International)

2005-01-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to an Alert Reader for pointing us to this article. It would be interesting to read the exact transcript from that press briefing in which Rummy denied Syria actions. He might not have said what the reporters would have us think . . .

Bush administration hard-liners have been considering launching selected military strikes at insurgent training camps in Syria and border-crossing points used by Islamist guerrillas to enter Iraq in an effort to bolster security for the upcoming elections, according to former and current administration officials. Pressure for some form of military action is also coming from interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, these sources said. *** Recently, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that senior Baath Party officials from Iraq are operating from Syria where they provide financing and direction to the cells of Iraqi insurgents killing Americans, sparking new discussions within the administration about possible measures against Syria. "There are all sorts of discussions going on, the White House, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs," said former CIA counterterrorism chief, Vince Cannistraro. He felt the talk of strikes "is part of a general plan of intimidation."

Navy Not 'Correctly Balanced' For Future, Clark Says

2005-01-12T05:54:00.000-08:00

Can't give a link cause it's subscriber-only, but check this out:

The Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Adm. Vern Clark, said Jan. 11 that the Navy is not "correctly balanced and optimized for the world of the future," and that it faces a three-decade-long effort to fully reform its forces to accommodate national security needs such as anti-terrorism and homeland security. Reiterating his call for a "new strategic construct" for the Navy, Clark said the days of major naval engagements are past - at least for now - and that concerns such as missile defense and close-shore operations are driving structural changes in Navy force sets. "Building a force set that is designed only to deal with ... major combat operations ... is the incorrect approach," he said in the keynote address to the Surface Navy Association's national symposium in Arlington, Va. *** Where once he believed the country should work toward 375 Navy ships, new methods and technologies such as "sea swapping" crews among ships at sea have led Clark to re-evaluate even that number. "We're not walking around with our heads in the sands," he said.

How can we possibly know what the threat will be in 30 years? And it will take that long just to fix the force for the current mission? Perhaps some effort should be spent on fixing the ways that we fix the force. Ships and subs are capital-intensive and all, but 30 years? Wow.

Abrams Destroyed

2005-01-12T05:49:00.000-08:00

Rather than assuming the bomb was enormous, one might think it was an anti-tank mine, command-detonated. The question is, how old was the mine? Most Iraqi inventories were old stuff. If they are getting their hands on newer generation AT mines, that is not good news.

Marines Disarm to Aid Tsunami Victims -- II

2005-01-12T05:47:00.000-08:00

I'd just like to stress again for the record how incredibly dumb this is. Don't care how good the Indonesian military is. Anyone ever heard of Beirut?

Marines Disarm to Aid Tsunami Victims

2005-01-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

Can't believe this. Just plain dumb. Who cares if they are intimidated while they eat our MREs? Dumb. And now it's in the news. Hello, force protection.

New York Daily News: "Rummy rips Iraq rumors"

2005-01-12T05:34:00.000-08:00

Donald Rumsfeld can't deny incursions into Syria and then announce them later. There will be high dudgeon all around. So either there are none, as he says, or they will be completely covert.

Rumsfeld also dismissed a magazine report that the U.S. was training Iraqi commandos for raids into Syria against terrorist supporters blamed bythe U.S. for financing insurgents. "Somebody has been reading too many spy novels," Rumsfeld said, speaking at a Pentagon news conference with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.

The Debka story is looking fishier by the moment.

Belmont Club Comment

2005-01-11T23:21:00.000-08:00

Belmont Club has a great discussion going on about force structure if anyone has missed it (probably not, knowing this crowd). Just tried to post the below and failed. Thought it might be interesting here, though out of context: Wretchard, Your "Update 2" and its description of "capabilities" vs. numbers is right on the money. When I was a combat engineer, every time I worked supporting other units, the same thing happened. Someone would come into the headquarters and say, "we need a bulldozer" or "I need some plywood" or "can you spare an electrician for a few hours?" Then it was up to us to unravel what the "requirement" was, and what exactly the work was, then to place a "capability" against that -- and the capability is a set: people and their equipment. A squad of engineers is more or less useless without tools (although just listening to enlisted Marines BS in their spare time is highly entertaining). The same logic applies in your description: critics think, "I need three more infantry brigades on the ground -- cough them up!" not "there is an enemy force coalescing in and around the city of xxxx. Please respond as you deem appropriate." It is the same logic writ strategically. As to the excellent question by one commenter about who is going to train spies when universities don't do so -- this is a difficult point. The answer lies somewhere in the fact that Renaissance men are a dying breed. Look at what British lieutenants, or subalterns, would do independently, and with little supervision at all, back during the days of the Great Game: they fought, they dabbled in statecraft, and they spied. What one man used to be able to accomplish with his Victorian-bred wits and an ear for languages, now we have three separate government bureaucracies with different career tracks to do. The ultimate in stovepiping. The Geneva convention prohibits officers from spying as well. Radical changes will be necessary to prevent ossification of these agencies. On my blog, I've referred often to the concept of "jointness" and how it needs to move beyond a mere DoD-internal concept and be mandated into law throughout the national security apparatus. This is one thing I refer to. I'll explore further as my series on Conservative Critiques of the War continues. Cheers, Chester

Asia News Roundup

2005-01-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

A handful of interesting pieces from the other side of the world today: Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan Taipei Times - archives US congressman meets N.Korean leaders From Sparta to Nicaragua, disasters alter political history | csmonitor.com Separatist conflict poses risk to relief effort in Aceh | csmonitor.com

How soon to Syria?

2005-01-11T17:16:00.000-08:00

What is afoot in Syria? [An attempt at aggressive pattern-spotting.] Belmont Club had an interesting post yesterday, examining the status of the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq. Wretchard used several mainstream sources to raise the following (paraphrased) possibilities: 1. A senior State Dept official, who was present in Algeria for their violence-ridden elections in the mid-1990s, which were successful, says the security situation in Iraq is comparable or better. 2. Insurgent attacks against the US have halved since six weeks ago, though the size and ferocity in some cases has increased. 3. A major terror network has been rolled up in Mosul (previously reported by Chester here.) 4. Diplomacy is focusing on Syria as the new center of gravity of the insurgency. 5. Signs indicate a possible shift in US tactics, to include incursions into Syria. Last night, we responded to all of this here, noting especially the advantage of a small force, like a “hit squad,” in gaining strategic surprise (or operational surprise, depending on how it is viewed – note: the US seems to always achieve tactical surprise). Today, the plot thickens: DEBKAfile reports explicitly what Wretchard implied: US action in Syria in imminent. Normally, we take anything from Debka with an entire shaker of salt. But in this case, their coverage seems to be mirroring news reports trickling out of the mainstream press. Debka reports that the recent diplomatic trips to Syria by US officials have given the following demands to the House of Assad:

1. Start repealing Syria’s 40-years old emergency laws. 2. Free all political prisoners from jail. 3. Abolish media censorship. 4. Initiate democratic reform. 5. Speed up economic development 6. Cut down relations with Iran. 7. Announce publicly that the disputed Shebaa Farms at the base of Mt. Hermon are former Syrian territory. This would cut the ground from under the Lebanese terrorist Hizballah’s claim that the land is Lebanese and must be “liberated” from Israeli “occupation.” DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that the Iran-sponsored Hizballah’s attack on an Israeli convoy patrolling the disputed Shebaa Farms sector, killing an Israeli officer, on Palestinian election-day, Sunday, January 9, was addressed as much to President George W. Bush as to the new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as a foretaste of what it has in store. 8. Hand over to US or Iraqi authorities 55 top officials and military officers of the former Saddam regime, who are confirmed by intelligence to be established in Syria and running the guerrilla war in Iraq out of their homes and offices. (An address, telephone number and cell phone number were listed beside each name). But the punchline was in the last demand. 9. Syria had better make sure that none of the Kornet AT-14 anti-tank missiles which it recently purchased in large quantities from East Europe turn up in Iraq. [Chester says: VERY INTERESTING: read this.] US intelligence has recorded their serial numbers to identify their source. DEBKAfile’s military sources add: Because he cannot afford to buy advanced fighter planes and tanks, Assad purchased massive quantities of the “third generation” Kornet AT-14 anti-tank weapons. Just in case any are found in Iraq, General Casey, commander of US forces in Iraq has already received orders from the commander-in-chief in the White House to pursue military action inside Syria according to his best military judgment. Number 9 therefore incorporates a tangible threat. The American general has the authority to launch military action against Syria as he sees fit and without delay if Damascus continues to meddle in Iraq’s affairs.

The first thing to note here is that these demands constitute much more than an attempt to gain some cooperation in stopping the Iraqi insurgency. Just the second and third demands alone seem to indicate that the US is seeking major change in Syria – one might even say – gasp! – regime change! But let's not get hasty. More from Debka:

The Syrian ruler protested to Armitage that he is doing everything he can to hold back the flow of guerrilla fighters and weapons into Iraq. As proof, he ordered Syria’s chief of staff General Ali Habib to establish a forward command center on the Syrian-Iraq border to oversee efforts to control border traffic on the spot. The fact is that General Habib is one of the few Syrian officers which the Americans have trusted. He commanded the Syrian units dispatched to Saudi Arabia in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq and made friends with the US commanders and officials conducting the war, including vice president Dick Cheney and the then head of joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell. However, even Habib’s old American buddies do not rule out the possibility that he was posted to the border not to restrain the traffic but to take command of Syrian units posted there and prepare them for the contingency of an American military offensive. Assad and General Habib are both aware, according to our sources, of the near carte blanche handed down to General Casey to pursue military action against Syria as and when indicated by US military requirements in Iraq.

A wise, but transparent move by Assad isn't it? Sure, let old Dick Cheney think kindly Assad is dispatching Cheney's old Gulf War tea-drinking buddy, Habib, out to the border area to "control border traffic." The fact is that Habib's expertise in the way Americans think and fight would serve Assad well. If any of this is true, Habib's role is at best ambiguous. He could be attempting to control the border as stated, or he could be positioning himself to control the border from US-Iraqi incursions, or he could be setting up a new defense of the border. He could even be readying to assume command of the insurgency if its leadership is neutralized. Fortunately, if this is obvious to us, dear readers, surely it is to the Pentagon. Debka’s analysis, with Chester’s thoughts:

1. It will not take place before President Bush is sworn in for his second term on January 20 or Iraq’s general election ten days later.

We’re not sure we agree that the trigger for Syrian incursions is the inauguration. If Gen Casey has been given free reign, then he will not take the US inauguration into consideration. And if the incursions are to be relatively small and low-key, what is their relation to the inauguration anyway? The inauguration is not a decision point of any kind. It is merely a media event. As to the second part of this point, why would the military wait until after the Iraqi election to act in Syria? Does acting in Syria dissuade Iraqis from voting? Most Iraqis have probably decided at this point whether they will vote or not. Seems as though taking the fight to the command and control or logistics nodes of the insurgency might dismantle some pre-election, or election day attacks to boot . . .

2. The Americans will not start out with a large-scale, orderly military offensive, but rather short in-and-out forays; small US and Iraqi special forces units will cross the border and raid bases housing Iraqi guerrillas or buses carrying them to the border. If these brief raids are ineffective, the Americans will upscale the action.

What Debka is trying to say is that seizure or control of key terrain will not be an objective of the raids. Instead, destruction of enemy forces will be paramount. Aside from US and Iraqi special forces, what other units might partake? Certainly some close air support would be helpful – and a large team of task-organized intelligence specialists could be set up safely within Iraq to exploit any captured documents or personnel – possibly near the border town of Q’aim, the largest city along the Iraqi-Syrian border, and a major thoroughfare, as it sits astride both a highway and the Euphrates. If planes or helicopters are too overt, artillery could be fired from within Iraq into Syrian positions – given specific targeting information. There will be more to this than a small ground contingent. Combined arms will play a part.

3. The Allawi government will formally request the United States to consign joint Iraqi-US forces for action against Syrian targets, so placing the US operation under the Baghdad government’s aegis. In other words, Iraq will be at war with Syria without issuing a formal declaration.

Who’s to say that Iraq even considers a formal declaration against Syria? Or Iran for that matter? Those two certainly have their own meddlesome schemes in Iraq and were not kind enough to forewarn with a declaration of war. Besides, a declaration of war, must by necessity be preceded by a great deal of uneventful diplomacy – completely ineffective in this case – Iraq has little to threaten Syria with, except the good graces of the US.

4. It is fully appreciated in Washington, Baghdad and Jerusalem that intense American military warfare against Syria could provoke a Hizballah backlash against Israel. Damascus may well activate the Lebanese Shiite group to open a second front on Israel’s northern border. The Syrian ruler is expected will tolerate a certain level of American low-intensity, low-profile action. But, because of his reluctance to strike back directly at American or Iraqi targets, he will field the Hizballah – and not just for cross-border attacks but to galvanize the terrorist cells it controls and funds in the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a stepped-up offensive against Israeli targets. These Palestinian cells have proliferated over the years, particularly in the Fatah and its branches, encouraged by Yasser Arafat’s cooperative pact with the Hizballah which remains in force after his death.

Just one question: If this is correct, who’s to say that the Israelis will wait for Hizbollah to start things off? One would think they know one way or another what the US is up to and how it will affect them. If you were Assad, and knew that the US, with minimal force, could completely wallop your own country – think punitive strike or expedition, not even anything akin to what we're attempting in Iraq – how would you react to the 9 demands above if you knew there were American forces operating with impunity within your borders? Perhaps US incursions into Syria are aimed toward the dual goals of defeating the insurgency leadership, and intimidating the Syrian government. Perhaps a kind of "soft" regime change is being sought here . . . While all of this is turning in your mind, consider that according to the World Tribune, Allawi is supposedly asking for a postponement of the elections.

Iraq's interim government has met U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians regarding a postponement of the Jan. 30 elections. Iraqi officials said Prime Minister Iyad Alawi and Defense Minister Hazem Shalaan have determined that insurgents would torpedo Sunni participation in the elections, a move that could split the country. "Alawi sees no point in the elections, but doesn't want to do anything without a consensus that would include the United States," an Iraqi official said. "He has been talking to everybody to ensure that any delay would be limited and agreed by all." *** So far, Alawi has proposed a postponement of the elections for about one month. Officials said coalition and Iraqi forces have made a dent in the violence and over the next few weeks could be utilized for an intensive effort against Saddam loyalists and the Tawhid and Jihad group headed by Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi. One option, they said, was the formation of a joint U.S.-Iraqi squad to hunt down and kill insurgency leaders. Officials said Shi'ite politicians have also been considering a delay in the elections, a proposal urged by European Union and Arab states. They said the United States does not oppose a delay as long as Shi'ite leaders, particularly Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Kurdish politicians, announce their consent and Sunni leaders pledge to participate in rescheduled elections.

Several thoughts here: Maybe Allawi thinks he will lose the election, and knows that US/Iraqi counterinsurgency action in Syria is imminent. Maybe he knows that security conditions will improve after that action and thinks that if the election is held afterwards, he'll have a better chance of winning. Read this article about the growth of Iraq's security forces. It doesn't give the numbers of men per battalion, so it is difficult to gauge. but this line is interesting: "By late February, nine additional military battalions were scheduled to become operational, officials said." That certainly makes for a much more secure election . . . nevertheless, The Adventures of Chester continues to predict that elections will be held on schedule. Another thought: if in fact, the elections are postponed, the US will have surrendered the initiative to the terrorists. A Syrian incursion to regain it and put offensive pressure on them might counteract this . . . Final thought about Syria: a long time ago, when The Adventures of Chester was a wee toddler in the blogosphere, and only about a week old, we thought that the 1000 Arabic-speaking Green Berets that supposedly were deployed in mid-October from the 10th Special Forces Group in Fort Carson, CO, (as reported in the Observer) were not going to be heavily involved in the Battle of Fallujah. From all reports, we were right – only a handful of SOF teams – mainly integrated with Iraqi forces, were in the fight. Does anyone know where the rest of the thousand went? Was this just a routine rotation? We don't know, but suspect not. [Here's the original quote from the Observer:

The 10th Special Forces Group has for years been catapulted into action from its base in the Colorado mountains. Now, according to US reports, more than 1,000 of them are heading for the Middle East, amid official reluctance to discuss where they are going or what they will be doing. Speculation has been mounting, however, that such a large movement of the Green Berets, with their specialist snipers, linguists, civil affairs specialists and military intelligence officers, could only be headed for two places - for Afghanistan and an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden or, more likely, to spearhead the fighting inside Falluja, acting as forward air controllers on the ground for US bombers and strike helicopters, and leading the hunt for al-Zarqawi.]

Conservative Critiques of the War -- Followup

2005-01-11T16:12:00.000-08:00

For those who want more info about the portion oftoday's earlier post dealing with the readiness of the Army Reserves, GlobalSecurity.org has LTG Helmly's memo about the readiness of the Army Reserves posted on their site.

Conservative Critiques of the War, Part I: Introduction

2005-01-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

[This post started out as an update on the feud between Rumsfeld and his generals in the Army, but I've decided to turn it into Part I of what we envision to be a four part series on conservative critiques of the war.] In a recent intelligence report from Strategic Forecasting, the premier private intelligence agency, George Friedman draws attention to a memo by Lt Gen James R. Helmly, the head of the US Army Reserve.

Addressed to the chief of staff of the Army, the memo stated that the Army Reserve was in danger of becoming a "broken force," due to personnel policies adopted by the Army and the Department of Defense. Helmly wrote, "The purpose of this memorandum is to inform you of the Army Reserve's inability . . . to meet mission requirements associated with Iraq and Afghanistan and to reset and regenerate its forces for follow-on and future missions." When a three-star general writes a memo containing these words to the chief of staff, and then leaks the memo to the press (it did not arrive at the Sun through telepathy), what you have is a major revolt by senior Army commanders. Helmly may have been more incautious than others, but he is far from alone in his view that the force in general is broken. More directly, if the Army Reserve is unable to carry out its mission, the same can likely be said for National Guard units. This means that the Army in general, which is heavily dependent on both to carry out its mission, won't be able to do so. What the generals are saying is that the Army itself is unable to carry out its mission.

A little background is necessary here to understand why Friedman concludes that if the Reserves are broken, the Army on a whole is as well. After Viet Nam, the nation's military leadership decided that in the future they did not want to fight another unpopular war. They therefore restructured the US Army such that nearly all of its combat support and combat service support units were transferred to the Reserves. We've heard various figures but for some specialties, close to 90% of the personnel needed for some key support missions are reservists. The thinking on the part of the Army leadership, specifically Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams, was that since any large scale deployment of Army combat forces would require combat service support personnel to be activated, that politicians would be hesitant to commit the Army to a large-scale conflict unless they were sure that it would be supported be an electorate totally fine with watching its citizen soldiers deploy and possibly die. This situation continues today. One reason why such a large number of the Army personnel deployed in iraq are reservists is because there simply are no active-duty troops who do their jobs. These are the unglamorous jobs that do not make headlines, but without which an Army grinds to a halt: bulk fuel operations, motor transport, military police, civil affairs specialists, supply specialists, etc. (Certainly our Army vet readers will correct our mistakes here, but we're pretty sure this is the case.) The second constraint that the military runs up against is that reservists by law can only be activated for two years at a time, after which there is some minimum period when they must return to civilian life. It is these two constraints of force structure to which Lt Gen Helmly refers. Thus, when he speaks of an inability to regenerate his forces, this is what he means. There could be other concerns as well, such as unexpected, unplanned for, and unfixable wear and tear on equipment and such. But the central part is force structure. Friedman continues:

Rumsfeld believes that there is a revolution in warfare under way. As the author of The Future of War , I completely agree with him. However, as I stated in that book, the revolution is just getting under way and will not be mature for generations. It is not ready to carry the warfighting burden of the United States, although it can certainly support it. Until that revolution matures, traditional forces, particularly the Army, will need to be maintained and, in time of war, expanded. Rumsfeld's view is that the revolution is more mature than that and that warfare can now be carried out with minimal Army forces. In some ways, Rumsfeld was right when he focused on the conventional invasion of Iraq. A relatively small force was able to defeat the main Iraqi force. Where he made his mistake, in my opinion, was in not recognizing that the occupation of Iraq required substantial manpower and that much of that manpower was in the reserves. He compounded that mistake enormously when he failed to recognize that an organized insurgency was under way in Iraq. Counterinsurgency operations is one area in which the revolution in warfare has made little progress, and Rumsfeld should have hit the panic button on Army force structure when the insurgency picked up steam. In Iraq, Rumsfeld was going to fight a guerrilla war, and he was going to need a lot of infantry and armor to do it. If, in addition to fighting the guerrilla war, Rumsfeld planned to carry out other operations in the region and maintain a strategic reserve, he needed to expand the Army dramatically. Rumsfeld made three mistakes. First, he overestimated the breadth and depth of the revolution in warfare. Second, he underestimated the challenges posed by counterinsurgency operations, particularly in urban areas. Mistakes are inevitable, but his third mistake was amazing: he could not recognize that he had made the first two mistakes. That meant that he never corrected any of the mistakes. There is another way to look at this. The United States is in a global war. Personnel policies have not been radically restructured to take into account either that the U.S. needs a wartime force structure or that that force structure must be congruent with the type and tempo of operations that will be undertaken. Not only doesn't the force stretch, but the force is not built to stretch. Hence, Helmly's memo.

Friedman's thesis is thus: 1. Rumsfeld is correct about the changing nature of war, but wrong about the tempo of the change. 2. The US needs drastically more troops in Iraq. Friedman even mentions that the US' personnel policies "have not been radically restructured to take into account either that the U.S. needs a wartime force structure or that that force structure must be congruent with the type and tempo of operations that will be undertaken." But he doesn't quite go the whole nine yards and say what is left unsaid: The US cannot commit more troops to Iraq because it has no more troops to commit. Troops must be cycled and rotated on a manageable schedule. We have maxed that out. Any further increase in troop rotations would leave us strategically vulnerable in other theaters. 150,000 or so at a time is the best we can do. That should give one pause. Is that enough to defeat China? We've said this before, here. But Chester's theories on force structure is not quite the purpose of this post and we digress. The questions that all of this raises are numerous. Who is right, Rummy, or his generals? Or could both of them be right? Four documents help us untangle this mystery to get to the heart of what Rumsfeld's thinking is. The first is the book, "Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait," by Midge Decter, who is married to the eminent conservative Norman Podhoretz, and is a personal friend of the Rumsfeld. While she has been charged as being an apologist for Rummy, that certainly means that she knows her stuff as well as anyone else about what he thinks. We read this book last week and found it to be similar to "Rumsfeld's War" which we've previously recommended, but with differing details [links to both in the sidebar]. In Chapter 6 of her book, Decter offers us this view of the Pentagon as it was when Rummy came to rule:

. . . on the other hand, while the military was no longer sunk in the post-Vietnam atmosphere of failure and depression of the 1970s and had long since come to be at ease about presiding over an all-volunteer force, they were still very far from being in as vibrant and feisty a condition as their twenty-first secretary. One of the reasons for this was that little by little over the years, and to a truly marked degree during the Clinton administration, Congress had in effect replaced the executive branch in the job of looking after the Pentagon. There were now hundreds of people working in the building whose only role was to serve members of Congress" answering their inquiries, tending to their interests, and doing them favors. And the favors done for congressmen were only too duly reciprocated: it seemed that virtually every special budgetary request, along with every new weapons system, not to speak of many a no-longer-needed military base, had its advocates in the House and Senate. An inevitable – and for Rumsfeld a most trying – corollary was that there were now many members of Congress who expected that he, too, along with his new appointees, would be offering them his full attention. The way of life of the Pentagon had also been very much influenced by the fact that, again, most particularly during the Clinton administration, a number of appointees in the Department of Defense had themselves once been members of Congress. Legislators being people who are – and who are in the nature of things required to be – dependent for their effectiveness on the building of consensus, they tend to be more forgiving of one another's weaknesses than would, say, most business executives. The result was a notable falling off of something essential to both the makers of war and the keepers of peace: a willingness to give an accounting of onself. Aside from the sheer organizational differences created in such an atmosphere, the serious abdication of authority over the military by Bill Clinton (and inevitably, therefore, also of the secretaries of defense who had served under him) led to certain other problems. I had for one thing, become virtually impossible to keep any military secrets: Legislators who had the run of the Pentagon also often had friendly – and information-hungry – contacts in the press. Then, too, without civilian control the military, especially the staff of the joint chiefs, inevitably became the managers of their own affairs. This came more and more to mean that military promotions were determined on the basis not of ability but of congeniality with one's fellows. And this in turn meant that some of the most capable people, discouraged, in such an atmosphere about what a future with the armed forces might hold for them, were leaving the military for greener pastures. This was the situation into which Rumsfeld now entered . . . Under these circumstances, Bush and Rumsfeld agreed – to what would be the dismay of the Pentagon brass – not to request any increase in the military budget, at least no until the new secretary had completed a full-scale assessment of the country's military doctrine. In addition to military doctrine, Rumsfeld would also be required to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the current state of the country's military capabilities.

Now Midge Decter could be more or less right or wrong about the state of affairs in the DoD upon Rummy's arrival, but the important thing is that she documents the perception of that state among the new Bush administration. This goes a long way toward background in explaining the ease with which Army generals now "rebel" against Rummy. So Rummy thought he would freeze budget (and therefore troop) increases until he had a chance to take a good sizing-up of the place. And he made success in increasing the number of warfighters available from the same pool of personnel. As noted in the National Review, in an article advising readers not to throw out the transformation bathwater with Rumsfeld if and when he goes,

. . .the pressure of transformation Rumsfeld has exerted on the Army has caused it to reorganize so that it can send more soldiers to the field than before. Theoretically there are even more troops available from the same pool than when the secretary took over the Pentagon.

So, while Rummy may be slow in recognizing or asking for increases in the size of the military, he has made the existing force much more effective as a warfighting organization. This still leaves the question unanswered as to who is right bout Iraq, Rummy or the generals? We believe both. In fact, the most cogent part of Friedman's analysis above is that Rumsfeld has misjudged the pace of "transformation." What do we think of transformation? Well . . . that is a big question. Assuming that you mean Rummy's version of it (there are several versions, many contradictory), we agree with him that information technology can make the armed forces dramatically better at killing people and destroying things on the battlefield, and that this will mean a smaller, lighter, faster force can do much the same as the larger forces of yesterday. But at the same time, we can't help but think that we mustn't think that war will become a standoff, sterile activity, conducted by computers, robots, and UAVs. Man makes war and man will alays have an integral role to play not only in its conception, but in its execution as well. A long time ago, in 1994, when maneuver warfare concepts were going mainstream, H.J. Poole, a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant, wrote a book called, "The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO's Contribution to Warfare." In it he notes that the United States has a history of relying upon technology rather than tactical prowess, for its victories. Consider this statement, which Poole quotes, from retired Army General A. Collins:

In my judgment our forces were not as well trained as those of the enemy, especially in the early stages of the fighting. After the buildup of forces, when we went on the offensive, we did not defeat the enemy tactically. We overpowered and overwhelmed our enemies with equipment and firepower.

Maneuver warfare is a doctrine that attempts to out-think the enemy. To the extent that "transformation" enables this – defeat by ruse, strategem, or superior thinking – we wholeheartedly support it. To the extent that "transformation" promises cleaner battles through the use of better and more networked lethal technology – well, we'll take our victories anyway we can get them, but show us where it is written that the US will always be technologically dominant over other countries. Perish the thought, but it just ain't so. And this technological dominance carries within it the seed of its own undoing, excellently described in a letter to the editor to the Weekly Standard, published on Monday, and written by Stuart Koehl, a senior fellow in Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. Mr. Koehl notes the following:

I've written at great length, mainly for internal government consumption, on some of what I see as the logical and strategic fallacies of the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA). From my perspective, the most serious of these can be characterized as follows: First, it is an attempt to reduce war to an engineering problem through the use of information technology to eliminate uncertainty. That one does not know where the enemy is, or what the enemy intends is the source of that uncertainty, and the fact that the enemy is an intelligent and dynamic adversary allows him to exploit that uncertainty to undermine one's plans and objectives. Under RMA theory, now generally called "Network Centric Warfare" (NCW), myriad streams of information are brought together through digital networks to present the commander with a God's eye view of the battlefield: in theory he knows were all of his forces are, and all of the enemy's forces, their status and what they are doing or intending to do. He can then allocate precision strike systems to attack the enemy before he can mass or close to attack friendly forces. However, this reliance on distributed sensor networks creates the seeds of its own undoing, for the enemy can not only attack the networks directly ("cyber-attack"), but can also resort to various deception measures to create a false picture upon which the commander would act. More simple still, he can flood the network with so much spurious data (noise) that the battle command system never manages to catch up; under the torrent of inaccessible information, the enemy can move at will. More insidious still, it creates a "scope dope" mentality in which "reality" is what appears on the situational display screen, not what is actually happening on the battlefield. Second, the RMA is still rooted in the 20th century paradigm of armored-mechanized warfare between sophisticated nation-states. Its origins can be found in the deadlock of the NATO Central Front in the 1980s, when the US was looking for ways of destroying Soviet second echelon forces, and the USSR was exploring ways of breaking through NATO's front lines. The convergence of several technologies--remote sensors, high speed computers and networks, and long-range, precision-guided weapons--allowed in theory for the creation of what the USSR called "reconnaissance strike complexes" that would have the potential to break up or destroy conventional formations of tanks and armored vehicles from hundreds of miles away. This in turn would force the dispersion of forces into small packets, attempting to dominate spaces by fire rather than by physical occupation. In a situation where one has reconnaissance strike complexes and the other does not, any attempt by the enemy to concentrate his forces results in their destruction, while one can concentrate freely against the enemy's weakest points. We saw something very much like this during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where the US actually deployed primitive reconnaissance-strike complexes. Faced with this situation, the enemy has only two choices (other than surrender): to develop his own reconnaissance-strike capability, or to respond asymmetrically. If both sides have reconnaissance-strike capability, then both sides disperse, and war becomes a matter of trying to find and destroy each other's reconnaissance strike systems, after which one side or the other has an insurmountable advantage. However, in reality no country other than the US has the economic wherewithal to develop such a capability. Thus, the US has become effectively invincible in conventional warfare: regardless of the adversary, the result would have been much the same as Iraq (though a few armies might have given us a run for our money). Anyone wishing to oppose the United States militarily must therefore resort to asymmetrical warfare. And therein lies the third flaw of the RMA: for network centric warfare to be relevant, the enemy must employ conventional forces. Guerrillas, terrorists, economic warfare, cyber-warfare--in all of these cases, the enemy does not present the sensor network with the kinds of readily detectable, high-contrast targets that can be engaged by precision strike weapons. Instead, the enemy blends into the background, and gets within close combat range of US forces, where much of the firepower advantage is negated. Having been perfected by the US, our conventional capabilities have bred their own obsolescence, since adversaries will attempt to circumvent rather than engage them head-on. Does this mean, then, that there is no need for defense transformation, or that all of the RMA has been a dead end? By no means. The Army inherited by the Bush Administration in 2000 was not at all suited for the kind of war we find in Iraq and Afghanistan today. It wasn't even suitable for the operations we undertook in Bosnia, Kosovo or Somalia. It was organized, equipped and trained to fight the Warsaw Pact on the plains of central Europe, and not much more. Radical transformation was necessary, and the issue then should have been, What kind of transformation? The enhancement of high-intensity capabilities as was demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq, while not suited for the predominant form of war in the 21st century, does serve a useful purpose: by so overshadowing the capabilities of potential adversaries, it deters them from competition in the conventional arena, and thus reduces the likelihood of high-intensity conventional war (which being the most destructive of all forms of war short of nuclear, should be avoided when possible). On the other hand, that very success increased the probability of asymmetrical responses such as terrorism and guerrilla warfare, and even the development of WMDs, which are the poor man's response to the overwhelming materiel capability of the US. Thus, a second transformational path was also required, one which focused on this "low end" warfare and its unique operational requirements. In contrast to conventional war, this type of warfare requires more emphasis on human factors--training, tactics, psychological warfare--than on high technology. It is a war fought by relatively small numbers of elite troops whose weapons are lighter, and far more discriminating than even the precision guided bombs on which we have come to rely. The enemy is hunted down in his lair, or out-thought in the realm of ideas. It is war where the main weapon might be a dagger, or a water pump, depending on the situation, since much of this kind of war involves civil-military affairs.

[As our series, "Conservative Critiques of the War" continues, readers will please excuse the many and varied topics which are touched upon. We'll make things as clear as possible but this is a tough onion to peel. Here are the future installments, each to come out on Monday of the next three weeks: Part II: Neo-realism Part III: Clash? More Like the Total War of Civilizations Part IV: Whither Fourth-Generation Warfare?]

John J. Tkacik Jr. on China and Taiwan on National Review Online

2005-01-10T22:58:00.000-08:00

This article on China is very much worth your time:

Although the actual text of the draft "law" has yet to be published, it appears to be a watered-down version of a truly fanatical "Unification Law" advocated by at least one Chinese professor, Yu Yuanzhou of Wuhan University, whose proposed legislation requires the Chinese People's Liberation Army to attack Taiwan as soon as it is able. Yu's legislation, which has been circulating on the Internet for over two years, calls for the PLA to immediately start bombarding Quemoy and Matsu — and it "would not be limited to conventional weapons."

Various Updates and Clarifications

2005-01-10T21:35:00.000-08:00

Earlier today, we stated:

We’d like to make a prediction: the United Iraqi Alliance will win the election and ask US troops to speed up their timetable for departure. The US will reduce its presence dramatically, but not its influence, and its involvement in the training of Iraqi security forces will continue apace. Iraq may fail, splitting into three separate “states” but a Shi’ite theocracy will not be one of them.

A quick update, lest this be taken for something we didn't intend. We think that Iraq failing and splitting into three states is a possibility, but a remote one. We are actually optimistic for the long run for the state to hold together. Our main point was that we don't expect a Shi'ite theocracy. The Iraqi Shi'ites believe imams belong in mosques, not government. And as has been pointed out much more eloquently elsewhere, nationalism seems to be a stronger force than religion -- which trumps worries of the Iranians having undue influence in the new state. No, we are optimistic. As to the reader who asked our thoughts on incursions into Syria, discsussed today in Belmont Club: If we're going to do this, small teams would be the way we'd go about it for several reasons: 1. They can operate for weeks independently. 2. With Iraqis joining them, they can blend into the populace, or at least hide themselves more effectively. 3. Why waste time with a long diplomatic gamble to influence the Syrian government to "turn the insurgent leadership over?" Damascus may have little ability to do so anyway. 4. More importantly, loud and public diplomacy gives the bad guys time to move, plot, and counterplot. It absolutely kills any strategic surprise we might have in our attempt to find and kill or capture them. Better if they don't know we're coming. And if we don't want them to know we're coming, best to keep the force that's going small and elite. Toppling Syria's government doesn't seem nearly as important right now as stopping the insurgents that have sanctuary in its borders. Who's to say that we haven't culled a few diehards from the ranks of the fledgling Iraqi security forces and turned them into spies, ready and willing to work with our Green Berets inside Syria? If all is as it is reported, an Iraqi passing himself off inside Syria as a sympathizer with the insurgency does not seem farfetched, or even difficult. *** An Alert Reader has asked about our use of "we" rather than "I." We got tired of using "I" so much, because it seems so self-centric and the imperial, or editorial, or authorial "we" seemed better -- especially after noticing how James Taranto uses it in "Best of the Web" on Opinionjournal. The fact that we must use either pronoun is continued proof of our poor writing skills. If readers request, we'll switch back. *** The planned post on the Army vs. Rummy has morphed into part one of a series. It's not quite done yet, but will be tonight, so if you're on the east coast, check back in the am.

The Rummy - McCain Split

2005-01-10T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Washington Times has an interesting article about the Rummy-McCain differences. Rummy vs. the Army later tonight!

Monday Morning Update

2005-01-10T06:21:00.000-08:00

Mark Steyn’s latest column on tsunami relief is worth a read. ---------- This article mentions every possible reason why Bill and W seem to get along well except one: could it be that W’s Christianity inspires him to try to get along with everyone? ---------- Washington is abuzz with statements by Brent Scowcroft last week in which he indicates that Iraq is on the verge of civil war.

"We may be seeing incipient civil war at this time."

When reading this, we immediately thought, “what access does he have that gives him some inside scoop?” It was only in reading Maureen Dowd’s latest bit of extreme vituperation that we learned that Scowcroft sits on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. We also learned that he has been asked to leave his position there. Hmmm. Might make one a little upset. Scowcroft’s statements must therefore be taken with a grain of salt. The New York Times (same article above) also reports that the corridors of power are considering how best to withdraw from Iraq. The article concludes that the most likely way for a quick withdrawal from Iraq would be if the Iraqis asked us to do so. Note that requesting US troops withdraw from Iraq is one of the main platforms of the United Iraqi Alliance, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of the leading candidates in the election. We also read yesterday that many think the only possible outcome in Iraq is a Shi’ite theocracy. We’d like to make a prediction: the United Iraqi Alliance will win the election and ask US troops to speed up their timetable for departure. The US will reduce its presence dramatically, but not its influence, and its involvement in the training of Iraqi security forces will continue apace. Iraq may fail, splitting into three separate “states” but a Shi’ite theocracy will not be one of them. Later today, the Army vs. Rummy, and more!

Admin Update

2005-01-08T23:53:00.000-08:00

The Major Site Renovations that we announced last week are going swimmingly, but won't be ready for Monday, as we promised. Two reasons: major blogging work on the tsunami effort, and the fact that the renovations are a little more in-depth than we realized. So they'll come soon but not Monday. On another note, we'll keep blogging about the US tsunami relief effort here at The Adventures of Chester, but it will no longer be our primary topic as it was this past week. As things develop we'll continue to cover them though. Since we're renovating the site, feel free to comment or email with recommended changes. We appreciate all feedback and input.

Captain Chester

2005-01-08T23:49:00.000-08:00

Just found out I was promoted to a Captain in the reserves on January 1st. I'll have to get the wife to pin some bars on me.

Cobras and Harriers

2005-01-08T23:42:00.000-08:00

A friend who is a Cobra pilot on the 15th MEU reports thus:

The most action the Cobra and Harrier guys are seeing is the duty desk. They won't let the cobras break skids within 12 miles of the coast.

So we suppose that answers the question of how the Cobras are being used. They're not.

Venezuela to seize aristocrat's cattle ranch

2005-01-08T23:26:00.000-08:00

We're keeping half an eyeball on things afoot in Venezuela here at The Adventures of Chester. Quick update: the place continues to go down the tubes. Wonder how much pull this "aristocrat" has in Britain. Margaret Thatcher would have already taken Caracas with a Royal Commando Brigade by now.

Singapore Tsunami Relief Effort

2005-01-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, we posted an entire story by an Alert Reader about the Singapore tsunami relief effort. Well, since then he sent us several more stories and we encouraged him to start his own blog. It has come to pass. Read in-depth reporting about ths efforts of the Singapore military at: Singapore Tsunami Relief Effort.

More Super Dumb Tsunami Quotes

2005-01-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

Chrenkoff strikes again!

The last 15 years without America?

2005-01-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

Victor Davis Hanson asks us to imaginea world without America in his Friday column:

"Imagine a world in which there was no United States during the last 15 years. Iraq, Iran, and Libya would now have nukes. Afghanistan would remain a seventh-century Islamic terrorist haven sending out the minions of Zarqawi and Bin Laden worldwide. The lieutenants of Noriega, Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Saddam, and Moammar Khaddafi would no doubt be adjudicating human rights at the United Nations. The Ortega Brothers and Fidel Castro, not democracy, would be the exemplars of Latin America. Bosnia and Kosovo would be national graveyards like Pol Pot's Cambodia. Add in Kurdistan as well %u2014 the periodic laboratory for Saddam's latest varieties of gas. Saddam himself, of course, would have statues throughout the Gulf attesting to his control of half the world's oil reservoirs. Europeans would be in two-day mourning that their arms sales to Arab monstrocracies ensured a second holocaust. North Korea would be shooting missiles over Tokyo from its new bases around Seoul and Pusan. For their own survival, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan would all now be nuclear."

Leadership of Mosul Terror Network Has Been Rolled Up

2005-01-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

Centcom reports that three of the top four leaders of the Zarqawi network's branch in Mosul have been captured in the past few days: -on December 23rd, Abu Marwan was captured -on December 22nd, Abdul Aziz Sa'dun Ahmed Hamduni was captured. This information is being released today. -"Security forces also recently captured another senior Talha member whose name cannot be released due to operational security reasons." Perhaps this is what generated the Zarqawi rumors earlier in the week? Interesting bit on the future of these detainees: "The Central Criminal Court of Iraq is committed to providing a fair trial to those allegedly engaging in terrorist activities. Those found guilty will be punished accordingly, and thus lose the ability to provide for the future of their families."

Rummy Gets a "Directed Telescope"

2005-01-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

According to a story in yesterday's New York Times,

The Pentagon is sending a retired four-star Army general to Iraq next week to conduct an unusual "open-ended" review of the military's entire Iraq policy, including troop levels, training programs for Iraqi security forces and the strategy for fighting the insurgency, senior Defense Department officials said Thursday. The extraordinary leeway given to the highly regarded officer, Gen. Gary E. Luck, a former head of American forces in South Korea and currently a senior adviser to the military's Joint Forces Command, underscores the deep concern by senior Pentagon officials and top American commanders over the direction that the operation in Iraq is taking, and its broad ramifications for the military, said some members of Congress and military analysts.

First of all, we think this is an excellent idea. Second, we think it is not unusual, as portrayed by the Times. Retired generals and other officers often play both prominent and behind-the-scenes roles in various Pentagon efforts, from weapons and tactics development, to even heading up part of the Pentagon. When we were in Iraq, our unit was visited by a three-man team of Majors who were traveling to every battalion-sized unit in Iraq to prepare an after-action report for Lt Gen O'Hanlon, who was then the head of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. The Majors were an aviator, a combat engineer officer with extensive experience in ground units, and a reservist who was a historian and was writing the official Marine Corps history of the invasion. They were traveling together with a driver and were operating independently, with a mandate from the General to report on anything and to report directly to him. The term for a mission, and an individual, or team like this is "the directed telescope." In "Command in War," the Bible of command and control, Martin Van Creveld examines the role of the directed telescope at length. Here is an excerpt from his chapter on Napoloeon:

. . . To guard against this danger and to keep subordinates on their toes, a commander needs to have in addition a kind of directed telescope – the metaphor is an apt one – which he can direct, at will, at any part of the enemy's forces, the terrain, or his own army in order to bring in information that is not only less structured than that passed on by the normal channels but also tailored to meet his momentary (and specific) needs. Ideally, the regular reporting system should tell the commander which questions to ask, and the directed telescope should enable him to answer those questions. It was the two systems together, cutting across each other and wielded by Napoleon's masterful hand, which made the revolution in command possible. As organized from 1805 on, Napoleon's system for cutting through established channels and for directly gathering the information he needed consisted of two separate parts. The first was a group of between eight and twelve adjutant generals; these were men selected unsystematically from among colonels who caught the emperor's eye, usually carried the rank of brigadier or major general, and were between ages thirty and forty and thus in the full flower of their mental and physical powers. Their duties varied enormously, from reconnoitering entire countries (Savary in 1805) to negotiating a surrender (Rapp in the same year) to spying out enemy headquarters under the cover of a truce (Rapp again, on the eve of Austerlitz) to commanding the cavalry or the artillery reserve in battle, (Druot, Lauriston) to governing a province and commanding a garrison far from the main theater of operations. Such responsibilities called for practical savoir faire as well as diplomatic ability, the knowledge and talents of a military commander, and, last but not least, sheer physical stamina.

So to sum up, General Luck will be acting as Rummy's directed telescope. He is there to gain insight into that which is not being reported through normal channels, probably inadvertently. And also to offer the opinion of a military expert who has not been heavily involved in the war and can gain a fresh perspective. it will be interesting if his trip results in changes in US policy . . . [We HIGHLY recommend Van Creveld's book, by the way. Link in the sidebar.]

Vote now or later?

2005-01-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

The Washington Times reports: "Bush resolute on Iraqi elections" but also has an opinion piece guessing that the elections may be postponed after all, and that the US is floating rumors of this to gauge the public's reaction. Chester continues with his prediction of some time ago that the elections will be held January 30th as planned.

Pentagon to embed U.S. trainers in Iraqi units

2005-01-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

[The next three posts will deal with Iraq.] This is good news. The World Tribune reports:

Under the proposal, U.S. advisers would serve as mentors to military and police units that proved unreliable in 2004. They included Iraqi forces that have operated in such cities as Faluja, Mosul, Ramadi and Samara in the Sunni Triangle.

And

"Iraqi security forces are increasing their capability [and] their capacity for security operations daily," Lt. Gen. Tom Metz, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 7, said. "They have proven themselves in operations throughout Iraq in recent months in places like Najaf, Samara and Faluja."

This news means that the US trusts the ability of the Iraqis enough to being turning more and more of their security over to them. Take this:

Since Nov. 10, Sunni insurgents have tried 13 times to capture police stations in Mosul, including six attempts last week, Middle East Newsline reported. Iraqi and U.S. forces have repelled all of the attacks.

China to outlaw sex-selective abortions

2005-01-08T12:48:00.000-08:00

We suppose this is good news in some sort of twisted way. Like saying, "I decided to stop beating my wife today." Similar.

India's Brain Drain to US Continues Apace

2005-01-08T12:47:00.000-08:00

Brain drain from the Indian perspective.

Japan may upgrade defence agency to ministry

2005-01-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

[Next few posts will deal with East Asia.] This story is the latest in a long string which show that the Japanese are getting serious about greater contributions to regional security. Perhaps far down the road, a US presence in Okinawa won't be necessary -- or Okinawa will be staffed with a token staff, but have the ability to host a large US force at a moment's notice if a crisis develops, as has been the stated goal of Pentagon troop-positioning reforms. Says the article:

The defence chief hinted that his influence was growing, boasting of his victory over the finance ministry in recent budget negotiations. The ministry had wanted to cut the number of ground troops from 150,000 to 120,000 to help pay for new priorities, including missile defence, but the agency got away with a reduction of just 2,000 men, he said. Takao Toshikawa , a political commentator, said there was a growing momentum to upgrade the defence agency’s power. He said it was possible the ruling Liberal Democartic party would bring the issue to parliament in November in conjunction with proposals for constitutional amendments, a process that will be even more crucial in determining the future role of Japan’s armed forces.

Aggressive pattern-spotting is not necessary to see the future here. Tha days of Japan's Article 9 restrictions are fading, and whether they do so in a de fact or de jure sense, only time will tell, but the result will be the same: a Japan unafraid to flex its muscles. As the Japan-US security arrangement is among the oldest and strongest treaties we have, this is excellent news.

The Diplomad Declares War on the UN

2005-01-08T12:17:00.000-08:00

The Diplomad is single-handedly taking on the UN "aid workers" in tsunami countries. Check it out:

The Chief Diplomad is just back from the office. It's 4 am. Mosquitoes are everywhere. The internet is painfully slow. Your "friendly" Chief Diplomad's plan to move on to another set of duties, for now, has fallen by the roadside. He must remain in the current job for now. The local Guardian correspondent has called the Embassy; he is doing a negative story on the US relief effort based on "information" provided by the UN at a press conference. The Diplomad is in a dark, dark mood. So, of course, just as anyone else would do in such circumstances, The Diplomad writes about the UN.

It's the UN and Guardian vs. the US and the blogosphere. This has potential to be like the Powerline-Minneapolis Star Tribune slugfest. Read how that one started here (and here's the Google Search: Powerline Nick Coleman). The Diplomad already has 153 comments and 27 trackbacks as of this writing, so it seems that he's got the attention he needs for the upcoming battle. We'll see what the Guardian comes up with. UPDATE: We were referring to a figurative war of course, a war of rhetoric. But it appears that someone has tried to shut up a number of bloggers by conducting a "distributed denial of service attack" on the Hosting Matters Website yesterday. Hosting Matters is used by a number of premier bloggers. What does this portend?

Latest Update from Pacific Command (Jan 7th)

2005-01-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

The latest Pacific Command press conference on the tsunami relief effort, Operation Unified Assistance, has been released. Highlights:

GEN. BLACKMAN : We are at a point, I believe, where we are able now to see the top of the crisis curve. And so our priority here over the next, say, 96 hours is to determine what our sustained requirement will be for disaster relief in each of the three countries where we're focusing our effort. And each one of the countries day by day develops unique requirements that we are assessing in the best way to fulfill them in a sustained way, if you will, on the back side of that curve.

More: 1. Insight into the order of battle of the US forces in each country. We mentioned the other day we'd love to see a wire diagram of the organization, so this is pretty good: " . . . And we overcame that by building what we call a starter kit of capability: a rotary-wing aircraft for distribution; water-making, water-production, storage and distribution capability; some general engineering capability to clear roads and facilitate the relief effort by the host nation or other agencies." 2. Considerations of sea-basing are driving the US concept of operations: " It can just -- the Mercy -- I believe that the Mercy was used, for example, after 9/11 in New York. Somebody here corrected me; it was the Comfort, very -- you know, the same class ship. The Comfort was berthed in New York and was used by relief workers as a sanctuary, if you will; where they could get a little bit of rest, a hot shower, a hot meal, and then get back to their duties. It can be uniquely loaded with a variety of supplies and capabilities. And I would also like to add that, as a ship, it allows us to sea base our medical capabilities. It allows us to not put a significant footprint and presence on the ground in, for example, northern Sumatra. There are great benefits associated with sea basing our medical capability." Note: The Marine Corps and Navy are using this opportunity to show their doctrine of sea-basing – and Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare as well. This is a great idea. Few other operating areas or situations represent such a textbook example of "Chaos in the Littorals," [this links to Chapter 1 Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 3, "Expeditionary Operations"] which is one way of describing the driving considerations behind the development of seabasing and expeditionary maneuver warfare. 3. Spontaneous, unorganized, (and note to the UN: uncoordinated too) efforts to assist US personnel have occurred: "We don't necessarily have to focus on pounds and gallons and numbers all the time. They had 14 Marines there today with shovels who were digging a trench on the beach to drain a four-kilometer-long stagnant pool of water that had been captured inland after the tsunami receded. In their efforts to drain that pool with hand shovels, they were joined by Sri Lankans who weighed in and helped them do that. And we have found that just manual labor type cleanup efforts of debris, where we have started those kinds of operations, we have had Sri Lankans in particular just join the effort and begin a teamwork- like effort to begin to recover from this disaster." 4. General Blackman is impressed by speed of strategic lift: " . . . after 34 and a half years wearing this Marine uniform, I have been extraordinarily impressed by the incredible speed with which we have moved capabilities into this region." 5. US relief effort to the Philippines in early December was an excellent dress rehearsal for a disaster like this: "If I can go back and just mention one thing, this kind of operation is not entirely unique. We -- 3MEF, it was Joint Task Force 535 -- conducted a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operation in the Philippines here in the first couple of weeks of December. And certainly not anywhere near on the scale of the operation we're conducting right now, but we gained some -- we learned some very valuable lessons from that . . ."

OpinionJournal - Taste

2005-01-07T05:15:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting story about women who suffer from "phone text stress" in London. Sounds like information overload. Even though the concept of "information management" is already alive and kicking in the corporate and military worlds, it hasn't really hit private life yet. RSS feeds for news aggregators is a small start, but the potential for this technology is enormous. Imagine if you had a custom website, or something else easily accessible, that went out and found the things you normally need and displayed them all in one place -- not just news, as it stands today, but personal finances, your schedule, your contacts -- something which aggregated all of this info into one place. A step further would be if it was smart and could come to customize web search results for you. The final step would be if it had a human-seeming interaction method, like a voice-recognizing digital assistant with a personality of its own. Such ideas are prominent throughout the book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" which we read about 4 years ago. Kurzweill, the author, even goes so far as to say that eventually humans will come to love their human-like information concierges more than they do other humans, since the concierges will be strictly attuned to their needs. Kurzweill's book was interesting and on the whole far too optimistic. But you never know . . . This Opinionjournal article a few weeks ago askis what will become of publishing when all books are online and google-searchable. Very interesting.

Answer to an Alert Reader

2005-01-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

An Alert Reader asks for an exposition on reading and professional development. We'll address that next week -- hope you can wait until then!

January 6th Pacific Command Update

2005-01-06T21:40:00.000-08:00

Today's update has been published on the PACOM site. Highlights: 1. International contributions: "I want to start with international cooperation this morning. The current multinational support efforts are considerable and significant. Currently 12 other countries -- to include Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Germany, New Zealand, France, India, Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, China and the United Kingdom -- are contributing anywhere in the neighborhood of 46 fixed wing aircraft, 56 helicopters, and 36 naval vessels. Additionally, 18 medical teams, one logistic team, and a couple of engineering teams are either en-route or there." 2. Great story: "A hospital in the vicinity of Banda Aceh was without power. That facility's power was provided by a diesel generator. Mechanics from the USS Abraham Lincoln flew ashore and joined with the other mechanics from four to five other countries to make an assessment of the problem and send a repair list, if you will, back to Lincoln. The parts that were needed were in fact built on Lincoln and sent back out to the hospital facility and that diesel generator was up and operating within hours." 3. Some of the Maritime Prepositioning Ships are on station and providing drinking water near the Straits of Malacca. 4. No word yet on the staffing of the USNS Mercy with NGO or other civilian personnel. Planning is continuous. 5. The airspaces above affected areas, much of it primitive from an air traffic control point of view, are being organized and this has increased the capacity for aid flights, especially at night. 6. A logistics conundrum: "There are folks on the ground that are making an assessment to contract aircraft out, to move stuff from some -- I mentioned 12 and 13 countries involved, but some 40 or 50 countries all over the world actually have come forward with some sort of assistance. So how do you move that? Is the U.S. military the best way or is contract the best way, et cetera? Not all of this assistance is military assistance." This is an interesting question of strategic lift vs. speed of contracted lift. Tough decisions to make there, we think.

The world is still skeptical about Burma

2005-01-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

The Asia Times pays further attention to the tsunami effects in Burma. Here's the US State Dept page about Burma for further background info. Excerpt:

Burma (Myanmar) is an underdeveloped, agrarian country ruled by an authoritarian military regime junta. The country's military government suppresses all expression of opposition to its rule.

The Politics of Being an Aid Recipient

2005-01-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

The Christian Science Monitor writes that some countries "don't want the "deserving poor" label - and the associated baggage of colonial paternalism. They prefer a more dynamic, self-reliant image." The article notes that Thailand "is turning down Europe's offers of debt relief for fear it could hurt its credit rating." As far as the donor countries go, Bill Roggio has an excellent post at the fourth rail about the psychology of disaster relief donations.

The Tsunami was a punishment from Allah for _________ (insert reason here)

2005-01-06T18:45:00.000-08:00

The Middle East Media Research Institute has published a roundup of Middle Eastern reactions to the tsunami, entitled, "Conspiracy Theories Surrounding the Tsunami: It was a Punishment from Allah for Celebrating Christmas and Other Sins; It was Caused by the U.S., Israel, India." Here are the headlines for the individual stories:

Palestinian Friday Sermon by Sheik Mudeiris: The Tsunami is Allah's Revenge at Bangkok Corruption Advisor to Saudi Arabia's Justice Minister: The Nations were Destroyed for Lying, Sinning, and being Infidels Saudi Professor Sheikh Fawzan Al-Fawzan: Allah Punishes for Homosexuality and Fornication at Christmas Saudi Cleric Muhammad Al-Munajjid: Allah Finished Off the Richter Scale in Revenge of Infidel Criminals Egyptian Nationalist Weekly: U.S.-Israel-India Nuclear Testing May have Caused Asian Tsunami; The Goal: Testing how to Liquidate Humanity

MEMRI does a great job again.

Tsunami Aftermath and Geopolitical Strategy

2005-01-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

Ralph Peters argues in today's New York Post that "The Indian Ocean and its adjoining seas and gulfs form one crucial, integrated strategic theater. The region has been critical to Western dominance for five centuries. Yet, when our intelligence services or military planners consider this vast, densely populated region at all, they poke at the different parts and miss the whole." We disagree with the majority of his other assertions, but the idea that the Indian Ocean should be seen as one unified theater raises many questions. Currently, military operations in the littorals around the ocean are handled by three separate US combatant commands, European Command (most of Africa) Pacific Command, and Central Command. Mr. Peters does not go so far as to say that there should be an independent Indian Ocean command, but that is perhaps the most intriguing corollary to his thoughts. We've thought for a while that Indonesia and its environs, with its disparate island-based Muslim population and rebellion, mght be a good candidate for a SE Asian version of something like the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa that was created after September 11th in order to:

disrupt and defeat international Terrorist groups posing an imminent threat to the U.S., its allies, or their interests. CJTF-HOA will focus on denying safe havens, external support and material assistance for terrorist activity within The Horn of Africa region. Additionally, CJTF-HOA will be prepared to counter the re-emergence of transnational terrorism in the region by providing security assistance in support of civil-military operations (CMO) and support of international organizations working to enhance long-term stability of the region.

CJTF-HOA has one of the more interesting missions in the War on Terrorism thus far, but receives very little press coverage. After the tsunami, an ad hoc task force for operations in SE Asia is in the news. Could the Combined Support Force morph into something else – a fully staffed and semi-permanent US presence in one small part of the overall Pacific Theater? Surely the task force itself will be there for a long time . . . and working with the Indonesian and other local governments could provide in-roads for US influence . . . As Central Command now has three principal subordinate commands with differing, but complimentary missions (Iraq, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa), the Pacific Command now has at least two (US Forces Korea, Combined Support Force in SE Asia). Moreover, other US agencies account for other similar enterprises. The Pan Sahel Initiative

is a State-led effort to assist Mali, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania in detecting and responding to suspicious movement of people and goods across and within their borders through training, equipment and cooperation. Its goals support two U.S. national security interests in Africa: waging the war on terrorism and enhancing regional peace and security.

As Robert Kaplan has argued in Opinionjournal, developments like these seem to point to the shepherd-like role of the US military in providing the collective good of international security in the coming years:

The American military now has the most thankless task of any military in the history of warfare: to provide the security armature for an emerging global civilization that, the more it matures--with its own mass media and governing structures--the less credit and sympathy it will grant to the very troops who have risked and, indeed, given their lives for it. And as the thunderous roar of a global cosmopolitan press corps gets louder--demanding the application of abstract principles of universal justice that, sadly, are often neither practical nor necessarily synonymous with American national interest--the smaller and more low-key our deployments will become. In the future, military glory will come down to shadowy, page-three skirmishes around the globe, which the armed services will quietly celebrate among their own subculture.

Kaplan also argues that US deployments will get smaller and smaller:

n months of travels with the American military, I have learned that the smaller the American footprint and the less notice it draws from the international media, the more effective is the operation. One good soldier-diplomat in a place like Mongolia can accomplish miracles. A few hundred Green Berets in Colombia and the Philippines can be adequate force multipliers. Ten thousand troops, as in Afghanistan, can tread water. And 130,000, as in Iraq, constitutes a mess that nobody wants to repeat--regardless of one's position on the war. In Indian Country, the smaller the tactical unit, the more forward deployed it is, and the more autonomy it enjoys from the chain of command, the more that can be accomplished. It simply isn't enough for units to be out all day in Iraqi towns and villages engaged in presence patrols and civil-affairs projects: A successful forward operating base is a nearly empty one, in which most units are living beyond the base perimeters among the indigenous population for days or weeks at a time.

Will the Combined Support Force become a permanent organization with different missions? We don't know but would be surprised if it lasted less than 6 months, judging from the extent of the damage and the statements of our leadership . . .

Iran boosting air defenses, aiming missiles at Israel

2005-01-06T04:46:00.000-08:00

This link to the Jerusalem Post story is just an abstract but today's Early Bird carries the whole article. Excerpt:

Concerned that the US or Israel may be planning an air strike against its nuclear facilities, Iran has beefed up its air defenses around various nuclear sites, Israeli security sources have told The Jerusalem Post. Iran is also said to be intermittently pointing its Shihab rockets in the general direction of Israel . . . Ra'anan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, confirmed that Iran is maintaining "a secret program, corroborated also by American intelligence, to produce enriched uranium." This clandestine "fuel-cycle" effort, he said, is the "critical element... the one factor that will determine when the program comes to fruition, when you can build a bomb." If the international community, led by the US, maintains its diplomatic focus on the "fuel-cycle effort,' he said, "then that could... perhaps delay the necessity to use any other option. "At this stage," Gissin stressed, "we don't think that the military option is the option that should be used. There are still sufficient measures that can be taken and must be taken before you come to the conclusion that everything's lost... You still have time," he said, though "not much." And even if all else failed, Gissin added, "we are not going to lead" any resort to military force. Rather than missile delivery of a nuclear warhead, Gissin said the more immediate "nightmare scenario," if Iran did obtain "nuclear-upgraded material,' is that it would be "able to assemble a dirty bomb, strap it to a couple of suicide bombers... and send them."

Another Press Briefing

2005-01-05T23:21:00.000-08:00

Here's another press conference from earlier in the week. When Chester was a Second Lieutenant at the Basic School, the Commanding Officer was Colonel John Allen. The entire staff seemed to be more or less in awe of him. It was said that when he commanded an infantry battalion on a MEU, and the group that tests MEUs before they deploy would test his battalion, it would solve the problems in one-sixth of the time alloted. He's also a civil war aficionado, to say the least, and part of our training was trips to Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Southern Maryland. Also a very engaging public speaker. He pushed professional reading a great deal -- showing us how to pursue a program of personal professional development via reading. He often quoted one of his favorite civil war historians who said, "There is no excuse for not having a 5000-yr-old mind." And he also introduced us to Kipling, specifically his poem, "Tommy," which contrasts how warriors are viewed by a civilian society at peace versus one at war:

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;

Colonel Allen is featured in Tom Clancy's book "Marine," linked in the sidebar. Anyhow, Colonel Allen is now Brigadier General Allen, and is the Principal Director for Asia and Pacific Affairs, and had a hand in planning the current disaster relief:

BGEN ALLEN: Within minutes of our being notified of this crisis, military planners went to work and began to plan how the U.S. military might support the U.S. Government in the process of reducing the suffering and providing relief. Within hours, U.S. military forces were underway and moving to the region.

A Marine Corps officer's world is truly a small one. Folks we know keep turning up all over . . . This is probably not interesting to many others, but thought we'd post anyway.

The 12 Most Stupid Tsunami Quotes

2005-01-05T22:52:00.000-08:00

From Chrenkoff down under.

Blogs of War: The Saudi Connection - To Just About Everything

2005-01-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

The Mosul bomber was the son of a Saudi diplomat.

Nothing But Good News in Iraq

2005-01-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

If you've missed it, the US Central Command web site has about 5 or so new stories per day, under the "Latest Press Releases" category. For the past few days, these have been very positive, detailing attacks foiled, successful raids by Iraqi forces, etc.

Financial Times: Bush quake aid group to be dissolved

2005-01-05T22:32:00.000-08:00

This will probably have little effect on the Combined Support Force and its mission. There will just be a bunch of UN yahoos running around coordinating things. We think this is just a semantic shift. As a frequent poster and Alert Reader has stated, "whose boots are on the ground?"

Today's Pacific Command Brief Highlights

2005-01-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

Here are some highlights from today's Pacific Command brief: 1. The name of the US effort is Operation Unified Assistance. 2. "Regarding the international military cooperation, currently 11 countries -- Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Germany, New Zealand, France, India, Korea, Pakistan, Singapore and the United Kingdom are contributing as many as 26 fixed wing aircraft, 41 helicopters, and 26 naval vessels." Moreover, "there are about 85 U.S. military aircraft working continual daily operations," along with "20 [US] naval vessels -- 13 U.S. Navy ships; six maritime prepositioning ships and one Coast Guard vessel." 3. Here's the chain of command for the Combined Support Force: Commanded by LtGen Blackman Three subordinate Combined Support Groups: one each in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, commanded by Brigadier General Cowdrey, Brigadier General Gluck and Brigadier General Panther. The article does not specify the command relationships with afloat forces, though we suspect that the Lincoln Battle Group and Expeditionary Strike Group 5 (containing the 15th MEU) are operating as adjacent forces to the Combined Support Force, and still probably under the command of the Pacific Command CINC, Admiral Fargo. 4. Some more insight into the nuts and bolts of the logistics: "In both Sri Lanka and Thailand we have transitioned to a pull vice push situation. This means that in those countries we are responding specifically to requests for supplies and personnel rather than just flowing in those and stockpiling them. We have not transitioned quite to that situation in Indonesia, but I anticipate that coming soon." 5. The situation is dynamic and fluid: "this is very dynamic. Even by the time I finish these remarks, those numbers have changed. Helicopters move in and out of the theater, they go above and below the flight deck, they land. Missions may be one sortie to one place and it may be a four or five our sortie executing multiple lifts. So just keep that in mind when you reference our web site and you see this data. Especially if you see some of the numbers not agreeing with each other." 6. More on the logistics details: "As I kind of mentioned earlier, the initial push was to get people to the field and then to find the places to best act as distributing points. That takes time. Then once those people are in the field and flowed to those points it takes time to set up a coordinating mechanism, and an architecture, if you will, inside that country because the intent once again is to support that host nation's effort. So who's in charge there and who can run it? Once you do that you have to figure out a way by which to receive not only aircraft but supplies, and then a way by which to distribute it. So all of those things combined add time to execute." 7. And more on coordination with NGOs: "The answer is, there is a structure where somebody's in charge. These are coordinators, these one star flag officers I mentioned. They're not necessarily commanders because they don't have command authority, if you will, over other government agencies. Once again, the lead is the host nation. Whoever they designate in each place is the lead element. We bring both our military organization capacity and structure and our other government agency capacity and structure to fall in on that requirement. The NGOs then can coordinate through us. The UN shows up, they coordinate through us and with us, so what we provide is that architecture as I talked about, that structure that people can fall in on and we can connect them to the right people at the right places. Not necessarily direct or control what they're trying to do, just providing them with that information." And that's it from the brief. Returning to Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-0, "Marine Corps Operations," that we referenced earlier in the week --Here and here -- we've found another tidbit that illuminates the role that the three Brigadier Generals are playing in the respective countries of Indonesia, Thailand, and Sir Lanka:

CIVIL-MILITARY COORDINATION Military Operations Other Than War [MOOTW] are normally joint and multinational operations set in an interagency environment. In many cases, nongovernmental agencies, media concerns, and other nontraditional influences will affect decisionmaking. Coordination with NGOs, international organizations, and interagency operations allows the MAGTF [Marine Air Ground Task Force] to gain greater situational and cultural awareness. A technique to build unity of effort and conduct liaison with nonmilitary organizations is the establishment of a civil-military operations center (CMOC). Members of CMOC may include representatives of adjacent and allied military commands, US government agencies, other countries' forces involved in the operation, and civilian organizations. Civil affairs units should be the core of the CMOC. Through a CMOC, the MAGTF can gain a greater understanding of the roles of civilian organizations and how they influence mission accomplishment. Although formal agreements are not always necessary, such agreements between military and civilian organizations may improve coordination and effectiveness. MOOTW can involve other US non-Department of Defense departments and agencies. Within the US, the Federal Emergency Management Agency normally leads the response to a natural disaster, while the Departments of Justice or Transportation could be expected to lead in a counterterrorist operation. Effective liaison with the lead agency enables the MAGTF to support thepolitical objectives of the operation. Outside the United States, the lead agency will normally be the Department of State, and the US ambassador will coordinate activities through an established country team with representation from all United States departments and agencies in that country. A non-Department of Defense lead agency does not alter the military chain of command.

Seems that most or all of this is applicable to the tsunami relief mission, Unified Assistance.

Use of Cobras

2005-01-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

Two Alert Readers respond to our query yesterday about the use of the MEU's Cobras. Perhaps they've been flown to a landward site to clear deckspace? And an excellent point about the lack of funding for the MV-22: "I guess those 40 year old CH-46s will have to last a little longer, carrying our most precious assets around in the back..." As every CH-46 pilot will tell you, if the bird isn't leaking somewhere, something's wrong. Many of the CH-46s have patches over old bullet holes from Viet Nam. The V22 is probably way off anyone's radar screen now.

USNS MERCY DEPLOYS FROM SAN DIEGO

2005-01-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

The Mercy has deployed from San Diego. Highlights:

The United States Naval Ship Mercy has deployed to Southeast Asia to provide medical services to victims of the tsunami. USNS Mercy is currently configured with 250 patient beds, but has a capacity to be expanded to 1,000 beds if necessary . . . Although it will take 3 to 4 weeks for the USNS Mercy to arrive, it is expected that the timing of her arrival will aid in the treatment of patients with illness or infections as a result of the tsunami . . . USNS Mercy sailed with a staff of 275 aboard.

Throughput, Breakbulk, and the Iron Mountain in Tsunami Aid

2005-01-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

Via the ESG5/15th MEU Families - Float News site, we learn that U.S. Marines airlift supplies back to ship to take to hard-to-reach areas. An "iron mountain" of supplies, as it were, has built up in certain airfields and it probably hasn't been sorted and is difficult to identify. Anyone who's ever had to search through an offload area for that one special piece of gear -- humvee, quadcon, pallet, etc -- knows exactly what we mean. So this is good news. The logistics specialists in the 15th MEU will be able to sort things out and redirect. The key to fast logistics these days isn't the iron mountain -- vast stockpiles of supplies. Instead, the key is what's known as "throughput" -- how quickly you can move supplies through key nodes. This is a direct result of the "just-in-time" set of ideas that has radically changed the civilian logistics industry. So by carrying supplies out to sea, perhaps the MEU is creating more nodes for throughput. Another consideration is packaging. In the military you have to designate certain logistics nodes as "breakbulk" areas -- this means that when you get, say, 200 truckloads of food and 100 truckloads of water, someone has to break each pallet down, and put them together in the right mix before they can be delivered to the end user. Not rocket science, but little of these details seem to be reported. It's doubtful that the Marines have time to get real pretty with their packaging. Or the breakbulk capability could be right on the ground in the receiving areas on the islands -- but that would mean it is extremely decentralized, and all reports thus far say the majority of US personnel remain afloat. Another consideration for returning to ship is that given the distances in the region, doing so might be the best way to refuel enroute to final drop-points. It would be really neat to see a map of relevant nodes and drop-points . . . Just some random logistics thoughts to keep in mind . . .

North Korea Armed Terrorists in Philippines...MILF Ordered Mini Submarine

2005-01-05T20:17:00.000-08:00

The Word Unheard has found a story that the North Koreans have armed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines over several years.

The EU continues to irk Chester

2005-01-05T18:39:00.000-08:00

As has been much blogged upon, the EU is concerned that the rapid, effective, and enormous US military response to the tsunami is designed to circumvent the United Nations in potentially damaging ways. Javier Solana said as much in meetings with Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley, and Jacques Chirac is "concerned that the U.S. tsunami aid operation had sidestepped traditional UN channels." Let's see here: 1. US military begins planning for relief efforts, literally minutes after tsunami and is working on aid within 48 hours (more on the minutes bit later). 2. Kofi finishes up his ski trip to Jackson Hole while his subordinates call the US stingy. 3. As has been well-covered in The Diplomad, the UN officials have shown themselves to be a group of compassionate thumb-twiddlers, their only true capability being death by coordination, and have issued calls for aid in drive-by press conferences during a TWO-DAY visit to the region. 4. France and Germany: completely out of the game militarily, from what we can tell, though we admittedly haven't looked very hard. Why should we? Let's have an info push on this one, instead of an info pull. 5. An EU humanitarian official is now complaining of the intentions and agendas of those countries who give aid:

The European Union's humanitarian commissioner says the escalating aid offers may become a "beauty contest," where nations compete for the title of biggest donor.

So if we aren't stingy, our intent is suspect. Reminds us of the thousands of "activists" who complained about Saddam's regime, then were and are silent about its removal, or switched gears and now wish for his return -- since we removed it not purely out of compassion but out of self-interest. What moral hypocrisy.

North Koreans Issued Invasion Guidance back in 2003

2005-01-05T18:21:00.000-08:00

Apparently, Kim was pretty scared of "being the next Iraq." This fits in well with one of our personal mottos here at The Adventures of Chester: "I'd rather be feared in Pyongyang than loved in Paris."

Zarqawi?

2005-01-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

Still no follow-up stories on Zarqawi, but several Alert Readers have given examples of why the US might stay mum: 1. To roll up the rest of a network -- basically to exploit his capture. This reader also notes that two senior aides to Zarqawi were reported captured over the weekend -- they could have used them to find him. 2. Out of concern that announcing his capture will trigger new pre-planned attacks. We don't think this is the case: the terrorists don't seem to be the types to plan an attack just right, then sit on it and wait -- unless it is a balls to the wall, Gotterdammerung style final throwdown. UPDATE: There seems to be a delay in the release of capture stories: This article reports the capture of a senior Zarqawi aide on Dec 23rd -- but the article didn't come out until Dec 31st, and The World Tribune seems to have no shyness about publishing stories as soon as possible. It is tempting to go back and examine the chain of events in Saddam's capture -- but there are many different factors in play now. now we have a sovereign Iraqi government, not the CPA. And Zarqawi seems to be much more of an operational commander than Saddam -- who was really a figurehead for the former regime loyalists. We'll continue treating Zarqawi's capture as a rumor until more comes out.

The US is testing Iranian Air Defenses

2005-01-05T16:52:00.000-08:00

Read it here.

The U.S. aircraft said to have entered Iranian air space included F-16 multi-role fighters and F/A-18 attack jets, the reports said. The Iranian media said the aircraft appeared to have been sent on reconnaissance missions over Iran's nuclear sites, particularly in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

Our geography is rusty -- but southwest Iran sounds like close to Bushehr. We welcome comments from those more familiar with US aircraft and their reconnaissance capabilities. We think any US fighter platform can perform in a reconnaissance role, with Forward-Looking Infrared Radar, but could be way off on this. (ht for this story to orbat.com)

Singapore Military Tsunami Relief

2005-01-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

[The below post is entirely the work of an Alert Reader, who used the website of the Singapore military at http://www.mindef.gov.sg/index2.asp?cat=SAFTsunamiReliefEfforts ] As part of Singapore ’s relief efforts in Indonesia following the earthquake and Tsunami of 26 Dec, the Singapore Navy’s LST (Landing Ship, Tank) RSS Endurance sailed for West Sumatra on 31 Dec and arrived off the coast of Meulaboh on 2 Jan. The RSS Endurance was sent with a humanitarian assistance task force on board, comprising a medical team, an engineer team and a logistics support team on board. Two Super Puma helicopters that are part of the same task force left separately for Indonesia on 30 Dec. The LST will serve as a helicopter staging area and co-ordination centre for the task force’s operations. The two Super Pumas will assist with disaster relief operations and the transport of supplies and personnel, while the engineer team will assist with the clearing of roads and debris. The engineers will operate heavy equipment such as excavators and bulldozers. The medical team includes five civilian volunteers, and it will be providing healthcare and medical treatment to victims. The logistics support team will perform general duties, such as setting up shelters and assisting the other components of the task force. There are 472 personnel in the humanitarian assistance task force. Since arriving at Meulaboh, the task force has established two landing sites. This constitutes a major breakthrough as Meulaboh had been cut off since the earthquake a week ago and could only be supplied by helicopters. With the landing sites, heavy engineering equipment and vehicles and significant loads of humanitarian supplies can now be brought from the RSN’s landing ship into Meulaboh. The heavy equipment is urgently needed to clear roads, and possibly prepare landing strips for aircraft. The establishment of the landing site was a difficult operation as the entire shoreline of Meulaboh had changed drastically due to the tsunami and severe flooding. The medical team has also deployed ashore to set up a field hospital and have begun providing medical treatment to the people there. The team has treated about 200 patients so far. The SAF has also assisted the TNI to set up its field hospital in Meulaboh. A second LST, RSS Persistence, with medical and engineer teams on board, set sail for Sumatra the afternoon of 4 Jan and is expected to arrive off Meulaboh on the evening of 6 January. She will serve as another helicopter staging area for the SAF humanitarian assistance task force’s operations. RSS Persistence carries 203 personnel and other heavy equipment such as cranes, and 4 BRONCO All Terrain Track Carriers (ATTC), as well as four container loads of food and medical supplies from the Singapore Red Cross. Note: The Endurance class of LST is a designed and built by Singapore Kinetics Marine; it is 140m; about 8000+ tons full load and is able to take 2 helicoptors.

Operation Garron, the British, the Dutch, and a silly writer at the Guardian

2005-01-04T23:46:00.000-08:00

Here's an overview of the British military effort, which they've dubbed Operation Garron. Excerpt:

Operational Liaison and Reconnaissance Team personnel have been deployed by the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood to Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand, able to provide expert advice across the full range of military assistance likely to be needed. These are working very closely with the local authorities, FCO and DFID officials, and other aid agencies to ensure that UK military assistance is provided where it is most needed. The frigate HMS Chatham and the repair ship Royal Fleet Auxiliary Diligence were directed into the disaster area. Chatham arrived at Colombo in Sri Lanka on 3 January, while Diligence has embarked humanitarian stores in Cochin, south-west India, and is expected to reach Colombo on 5 January. The ships offer a broad range of capabilities - Chatham has two Lynx helicopters embarked, which will provide much needed air mobility, as well as excellent communications, while Diligence has extensive workshops and the ability to provide emergency electrical and fresh water supplies, as well as transport stores and act as a mother-ship to small craft engaged on relief work along the coastline. Royal Air Force air transport have also been heavily involved, including a C-17 heavy airlifter delivering equipment to allow the United Nations to establish relief operations in Aceh, Indonesia.

So the Brits have sent their two ships to the Indian area. Seems like most of the European countries are concentrating on areas of their own former colonies. Already much-blogged upon today, the Dutch are aghast at the absence of European aid in Indonesia, and the abundance of US aid (the Aussies are there too of course) (ht: The Diplomad):

US helicopters fly to places which haven't been reached for the whole week and drop food. The impression it makes on the people is also highly positive; finally something happens in the city of Banda Aceh and finally it seems some people are in control and are doing something. No talking but action. European countries are until now invisible on the ground. IOM staff (note: this is a USAID-funded organization) is very busy briefing the incoming Americans and Australians about the situation.

The European press is reacting to this news by pitching in for the relief effort by doing what they do best -- whining:

Why must the relief of suffering, in this unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on the whims of citizens and the appeals of pop stars and comedians? Why, when extreme poverty could be made history with a minor redeployment of public finances, must the poor world still wait for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets? The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities. And the one that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have promised to the victims of the tsunami still falls far short of the amounts required, it is partly because the contingency fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has been spent on blowing people to bits in Iraq.

Chester has this to say about such paleolithic socialist drivel: (imagine a one-fingered salute inserted here)

Australian Military Contribution Overview

2005-01-04T23:25:00.000-08:00

There is not yet any reporting on the command and control relationships that are tying together the US and its coalition allies in military tsunami relief, but the Australians have a great overview of their own efforts at Operation Tsunami Assist. An excerpt:

ADF personnel and assets contributing to Operation Sumatra Assist include: * Four C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, augmented by a Royal New Zealand Air Force C-130 attached to the ADF task force, transporting equipment, stores and personnel * Two C-130 Hercules and one Boeing 707 transport aircraft, transporting equipment, stores and personnel between Australia and Indonesia. * One Beech King Air 350 light utility aircraft * Four UH-1H Iroquois helicopters * Water purification plant * Engineering personnel * Logistics/loading personnel * Medical teams and aero-medical evacuation specialists * Field hospital, providing * 55 beds * Surgeons * Intensive care * Resuscitation * X-ray facilities * Pathology * About 350 ADF personnel currently assisting with humanitarian relief efforts

And on the way to assist are:

HMAS Kanimbla, scheduled to depart Darwin on 8 January 2005, carrying equipment and capability including: * Two Sea King helicopters * Two large landing craft (LCM8) * Medical facilities and personnel * Engineering personnel and equipment * Accommodation * Communications * Stores * Self-sustaining floating base

Saudis Triple Aid; Canadian Buddhists Sell Their Temple

2005-01-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

The Saudis are mandating a telethon. These folks selling their temple.

India, Nepal and Al Qaeda?

2005-01-04T23:13:00.000-08:00

Something crossed our radar screen in the last 72 hours that the Nepalese insurgency has been co-opted by Al Qaeda. Can't find this tidbit now -- could have been in our internet travels or from an Alert Reader -- but it seems to be even more interesting when put in the perspective of this story about US-Indian relations:

India's defense establishment is sending distress signals to sections of the country's media over what it considers inordinate United States interest in the affairs of India's sensitive, insurgency-infested northeast. Military officials are deeply unhappy over the ever-growing access US diplomats and military personnel are getting to disturbed areas in the region. An Asia Times Online investigation has revealed that the disquiet is almost a decade old, though it has grown exponentially since US ambassador to India Robert Mulford wrote to the chief ministers of Assam and Nagaland directly offering help in counter-insurgency operations in the wake of terrorist violence in October, 2004. He did not bother to go through the proper channels; that is, through the ministry of external affairs. This raised a lot of questions and controversies in the media; the central government, too, was not happy about it. But the matter rests there, and no further explanations have emerged as to why the US ambassador chose to go over the heads of the central government.

Perhaps the Ambassador wasn't just off his cork but had some detailed information from DC explaining our increased interest in Nepal and its rebellion?

Asian Press Coverage Roundup

2005-01-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

More on the situation in Burmafrom the BBC. This is not good: Rapists, kidnappers prey on tsunami survivors- The Times of India. And an update from the Asia Times.

The Tsunami and the Blogs

2005-01-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

This Asia Times Online article examines how bloggers in SE Asia reacted to the tsunami, and blogging in SE Asia in general. Sumankumar is one example of a SE Asian tsunami blogger.

Free Burma Coalition

2005-01-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

This BBC News piece discusses the effects, both stabilizing and not, that disasters and their aftermath can have on affected governments. Interestingly, the article notes the Sri Lankan and Indonesian rebellions and the possible effects there (though we think Sri Lanka is better described as a place of civil war). What's left out is any discussion of Myanmar or Burma, which is supposedly downplaying the damage to its citizens and infrastructure. If Burma is truly in dire straits and the people see the government as turning away aid from the likes of the US et al., then it could have negative affects on the Burmese dictatorship. Some background on Burma's government here.

Oustanding Graphic of US Force Laydown

2005-01-04T22:28:00.000-08:00

This map is worth a very careful viewing. not only does it show the locations of all the US transport helicopters and C-130s, but it also shows the ETA for differing ships as they come on station. Question: The MEU has quite a few Cobras -- maybe a half dozen. Wonder how these are being employed . . . perhaps cargo can be slung under them . . . By the way, not sure if "laydown" is a doctrinal term or not, but it is shorthand for "where are all these troops going to be located." Since Joe Katzman over at Winds of Change.net has thrown down the gauntlet of challenge for us to cover the military efforts of coalition countries as well, we'll attempt to get that started tomorrow. Email links if you've got them.

Press Conference with Admiral Fargo Today

2005-01-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to today's press briefing with Admiral Fargo, the Commander of the US Pacific Command. Highlights: 1. JTF-536 has been renamed the Combined Support Force. In military parlance, a "combined" unit means it consists of troops from more than one country. Utapao Airfield in Thailand is indeed the headquarters for the Commander, LtGen Blackman. 2. The US is considering deploying the hospital ship AH-8 USS Mercy, though perhaps with some sort of creative staffing arrangement -- like crewing it with civilian NGO personnel. If memory serves, this vessel is kept in reserve and does not routinely deploy. Furthermore, it is usually staffed by reserve medical personnel (again, if memory serves). 3. The USS Fort McHenry and USS Niagara Falls are inbound to the area of operations. Both ships will add to the numbers of helicopters deployed in the region – and Admiral Fargo notes that these are a force multiplier. The Niagara Falls is a combat stores ship – aka a supply vessel – and will probably have a great deal of materiel on board for relief operations. 4. Of the 13,000 or so US personnel involved in the operation, 1000 are on the ground in Thailand, and 100-200 are ashore at any one time in each of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. The rest are afloat. Admiral Fargo reports that the number of US forces will increase, but it is important to remember capabilities, not numbers. [Quick thought: what about Burma? The government there has been criticized by residents for playing down the extent of destruction there. Being a dictatorial regime, it is probably none to willing to accept US aid . . . Too bad for the Burmese.] 5. Admiral Fargo says he is confident that we are not creating an unmanageable risk for ourselves in Korea by deploying any of these forces. 6. This operation is the result of standing multinational standard operating procedures that have been developed over years with the cooperation of over 31 different countries. [Quick editorial aside: take that, Kofi.] 7. When asked about the seeming lack of plans to increase US naval forces around Sri Lanka, Admiral Fargo notes that the key in that country is the restoration of infrastructure and that NGO's have taken care of many distribution concerns. He says that Seabees could be a candidate for rebuilding operations on the island. [Thought: Each Naval Mobile Construction Battalioin (NMCB, or Seabees), has a company-sized Air Detachment, that is supposed to be able to deploy within 24 or 48 hours or something like that – but of course that is dependent on strategic lift capabilities, and those are probably at a premium right now, especially given the troop rotation in the Middle East.] 8. When pressed about the need to surge more helicopters to the region given their high value in these operations, Admiral Fargo says that the number of US helos will probably double from the 46 where it currently stands. When pressed further, he notes that more helos are being fielded by other nation's militaries, and that NGOs will probably contract many more in the coming days. 9. Finally, Admiral Fargo acknowledges that the MV Westpac Express, one of two of a new kind of high-speed prepositioning vessel, has been used and will continue to be used throughout this operation. They were testing these when Chester was back in Camp Pendleton. Admiral Fargo notes several times how this operation would not be possible without the investment in the military that the US taxpayers have made, or without the years of cooperative coalition exercises the US has conducted in SE Asia, like the annual Cobra Gold exercise.

15th MEU Operational Planning Change

2005-01-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

An Alert Reader, whose son is in the 15th MEU, has posted in the comments section of a previous post further insight into the 15th MEU's activities. He notes that the USS Pearl Harbor has not deployed this time around, but the USS Rushmore (LSD-47) has instead. Moreover, he has links to every ship in the Expeditionary Strike Group 5 at For ESG5/15th MEU Families - Ship Info. Quick note: What role might the regular surface ships -- the non-amphibs -- play in a mission like this? Certainly the USS Pasadena, the fast-attack sub, could provide a reconnaissance or force protection function. And certainly the USCGC Munro, the Coast Guard Cutter, will be quite busy. But what about the Bunker Hill (cruiser) the Milius (destroyer) and the Thach) (missile frigate). We'd welcome the comments of those with more naval knowledge. Certainly any water-producing capability those ships possess, along with their medical personnel, will come in handy. The Alert Reader goes on to mention that the concept of operations has changed for the MEU:

And they've just changed their plans. Sri Lanka won't take all those Marines because of political concerns. (sheesh) So the BHR and Duluth are going to the sourthen coast of Sumatra (the Lincoln group is on the northern coast). And only the Rushmore is going to Sri Lanka.

More info as it develops . . . [is anyone having browser problems with this site -- like the sidebar appearing in the wrong place? If so, please email us and let us know: terrier_manchester@yahoo.com ]

FLASH: ZARQAWI CAPTURED?

2005-01-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

Drudge is reporting that both a news story out the UAE, and a Kurdish radio station are reporting that Zarqawi has been captured in Iraq. The White House is thus far denying this . . . Thoughts: 1. The news agency in UAE is Russian, Itar-Tass. Interesting . . . 2. The Kurdish radio network also was among the first to report the capture of Saddam in 2003. 3. Could be that the news cycle has beaten the command and control cycle and the White House doesn't know what it knows yet. 4. Could private citizens have captured Zarqawi for the $10m reward? Chester's position: this story looks like a dud. If the White House didn't know, they wouldn't deny, they'd just not say anything yet. You never know though . . . This week, the majority of our posts are about the massive US relief operation in SE Asia under JTF-536, but we'll keep our eye on the Iraqi ball too. While we're on the subject of Iraq, the Middle East Media Research Institute recently released the second part of its series on Arab press coverage of the upcoming Iraqi election. It's worth a read.

Tsunami News Roundup

2005-01-04T05:57:00.000-08:00

US intensifies its role in relief | csmonitor.com Relief Transcends U.S.-Indonesia Divide (washingtonpost.com) The New York Times > South Asia Earthquake & Tsunami Honolulu Star-Bulletin: Hawaii-Based Pacific Command Spearheads Massive Relief Effort

The US has its work cut out

2005-01-03T23:47:00.001-08:00

Here's a photo-essay from Time: TIME: The Drowned World (1).

15th MEU Concept of Operations Insight

2005-01-03T23:47:00.000-08:00

Upon arrival in the Indian Ocean in the next three days or so, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit will begin what is known as "split-ARG operations." ARG stands for Amphibious Ready Group and represents the ships that the MEU is embarked upon. The ARG that the MEU is inhabiting consists of the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6), the USS Duluth (LPD-6), and the USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52). "Split ARG" means that the battle group will split into two parts and conduct separate missions independently of each other. According to this article on the 15th MEU site, the USS Bonhomme Richard will head toward Sri Lanka, while the USS Duluth will stay near Indonesian waters. The article doesn't mention where the Pearl Harbor is headed, but we think it will stay with the Bonhomme Richard. Perhaps the Bonhomme Richard is headed to Sri Lanka because there are few operable airfields on the island and its deck will have to do, or perhaps because it has a greater command and control capability for operating independently. We'll see when things develop. The subordinate elements of the MEU are being split between these two parts of the ARG. The Battalion Landing Team, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, along with the Air Combat Element, HMM-165, and the MEU Service Support Group-15 (MSSG-15), or the combat service support element, are all more or less halving themselves and their equipment and figuring out how to divvy up what they possess. While 2200 Marines in a MEU sounds like a lot, they are spread extremely thin in many areas, like maintenance, supply and engineering. As a combat engineer, I participated in a number of exercises meant to simulate planning for deploying on a MEU with an Engineer Support Detachment, part of the MEU Service Support Group. The entire detachment is only around 35 Marines, and the entire MSSG is only about 250, though headed by a Lieutenant Colonel. The MSSG is by far the most thinly spread of all the embarked commands and figuring out how to accomplish what needs to be done with the assets at hand is one of the trickier aspects of planning. MEU staffs usually become very creative in accomplishing different objectives. Interestingly enough, the Commanding Officer of MSSG-15 this time around, LtCol Hatton, is a veteran of the LA riots and Operation Sea Angel. The CO and XO of 1st Bn, 1st Marines have equally interesting resumes. More on the upcoming operation as it develops . . .

This is why they've picked Utaphao

2005-01-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

Utaphao Air Base in Thailand is centrally located from all of the areas of devastation. Here's a map from the US Pacific Command showing the distances (link not working for some reason, so here's the url): http://www.pacom.mil/special/0412asia/images/tsunami_map-high.jpg

MPSRON Supplies

2005-01-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

An Alert Reader asks in the comments section if the provisions aboard the Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons have been restored since 2003. Here at The Adventures of Chester, we believe the answer is a resounding yes. We are willing to bet: 1. That only one MPSRON worth of equipment is being used currently in Iraq, if any -- though this should be classified, so if you know for sure, don't tell us. 2. That MPSRON-3 out of Guam has probably been completely replenished at this point. After the invasion, the ships were cycled back to Blount Island and all of the gear was completely refitted and the stocks of Class I, III, IV, V, (water, fuel, construction supplies, ammunition) and so forth were regenerated, from what we understand. MPSRONs are a strategic asset: they have the highest priority for such things . . . which brings up another point . . . North Korea had better not get any funny ideas while MPSRON-3 is tied up in Thailand and Indonesia . . . but they probably won't. [Mrs. Chester and I have an understanding about this. If the north invades the south, I'm going. That's for another day though and I digress . . . ]

Humanitarian Assistance III: General Zinni's Rules

2005-01-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

When the 24th MEU deployed and participated in Operation Provide Comfort, the Commanding Officer was then-Colonel James L. Jones, who later became the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and is now serving as the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Then-Brigadier General Anthony Zinni was the Deputy Commanding General of the Task Force for the overall operation. General Zinni went on to be the Commander-in-Chief of Central Command, and became very highly regarded for his experience in military operations other than war, including humanitarian assistance. Here are his rules to keep in mind when participating in these operations, and they, or a version of them, are no doubt being carefully followed on board many ships even as we speak. In a way, this operation is still in the planning stages as forces move into the correct positions . . . 1. Each operation is unique. We must be careful what lessons we learn from a single experience. 2. Each operation has two key aspects: (1) the degree of complexity of the operation, and (2) the degree of consent of the involved parties and the international community for the operation. 3. The earlier the involvement, the better the chance for success. 4. Start planning as early as possible, including everyone in the planning process. 5. Make as thorough an assessment as possible before deployment. 6. Conduct a thorough mission analysis, determining the centers of gravity, end state, commander's intent, measures of effectiveness, exit strategy, and the estimated duration of the operation. 7. Stay focused on the mission. Line up military tasks with political objectives. Avoid mission creep and allow for mission shifts. A mission shift is a conscious decision, made by the political leadership in consultation with the military commander, responding to a changing situation. 8. Centralize planning and decentralize execution of the operation. This allows subordinate commanders to make appropriate adjustments to meet their individual situation or rapidly changing conditions. 9. Coordinate everything with everybody. Establish coordination mechanisms that include political, military, nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, and the interested parties. 10. know the culture and the issues. We must know who the decisionmakers are. We must know how the involved parties think. We cannot impose our cultural values on people with their own culture. 11. Start or restore key institutions as early as possible. 12. Don't lose the initiative or momentum. 13. Don't make unnecessary enemies. If you do, don't treat them gently. Avoid mindsets or use words that might come back to haunt you. 14. Seek unity of effort and unity of command. Create the fewest possible seams between organizations and involved parties. 15. Open a dialogue with everyone. Establish a forum for each of the involved parties. 16. Encourage innovation and non-traditional responses. 17. Personalities often are more important than processes. You need the right people in the right places. 18. Be careful whom you empower. Think carefully about whom you invite to participate, use as a go-between, or enter into contracts with since you are giving them influence in the process. 19. Decide on the image you want to portray and keep focused on it. Whatever the image, humanitarian, or as firm but well-intentioned agent of change, ensure your troops are aware of it so they can conduct themselves accordingly. 20. Centralize information management. Ensure that your public affairs and psychological operations are coordinated, accurate, and consistent. 21. Seek compatibility in all operations; cultural and political compatibility and military interoperability are crucial to success. The interests, cultures, capabilities, and motivations of all the parties may not be uniform, but they cannot be allowed to work against each other. 22. Senior commanders and their staffs need the most education and training in nontraditional roles. The troops need awareness and understanding of their roles. The commander and the staff need to develop and apply new skills, such as negotiating, supporting humanitarian organizations effectively and appropriately, and building coordinating agencies with humanitarian goals.

Humanitarian Assistance II: Further Reading

2005-01-03T20:50:00.000-08:00

We've just added Amazon links in the sidebar to Tom Clancy's fine book "Marine," which not only gives in-depth information on a typical Marine Expeditionary Unit, it also has a great deal more about the Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons (MPSRONS) that we mentioned earlier. Also, we added a link to a Congressional Budget Office study of Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh. Can't vouch for this one. Though Amazon doesn't seem to stock them, you can find some excellent publications in the Marine Corps section of the Government Printing Office homepage. We will vouch for "Humanitarian Operations in Northern Iraq, 1991: With Marines in Operation Provide Comfort," and "Angels From the Sea: Relief Operations in Bangladesh, 1991," both of which give detailed nuts and bolts type info about conducting humanitarian assistance operations. If you are interested in tactical logistics in general, "Combat Service Support in Desert Shield and Desert Storm" is an excellent publication and went with us to the desert. Finally, haven't read it, but "Skillful Show: United States Marines in the Caribbean, 1991-1996, United States Marines in Humanitarian Operations," is probably pretty good.

Humanitarian Assistance Basics I

2005-01-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

Since Operation Golden Vision is just getting started, here are some basics from Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-0, "Marine Corps Operations," to help us interpret the news as it develops. [We predict that this story is going to get bigger, and will be better covered, not the opposite, which is counter-intuitive, given the way disaster coverage usually goes.] From Chapter 10, Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW), here is a very basic overview of Humanitarian Assistance Operations. It is a little dry, but useful tidbits can always be found:

Humanitarian assistance operations relieve or reduce the results of natural or manmade disasters that might present a serious threat to life or result in extensive damage to or loss of property. Humanitarian assistance provided by United States forces is generally limited in scope and duration. The assistance provided is designed to supplement or complement the host-nation civil authorities' efforts. The United States military provides assistance when the relief need is gravely urgent and when the humanitarian emergency overwhelms the ability of normal relief agencies to effectively respond. Humanitarian assistance operations may be directed by the National Command Authorities when a serious international situation threatens the political or military stability of a region considered of interest to the United States or when the humanitarian situation itself may be sufficient to and appropriate for employment of United States forces. The Department of State then requests Department of Defense assistance from the National Command Authorities. Humanitarian assistance operations may cover a broad range of missions. A humanitarian assistance mission could also include securing an environment to allow humanitarian relief efforts. In 1991, 24th MEU provided security, shelter, food, and water to the dissident Kurdish minority in northern Iraq. United States military forces participate in three basic types of humanitarian assistance operations: those coordinated by the United Nations, those where the United States acts in concert with other multinational forces, or those where the United States responds unilaterally. The Marine Corps can respond rapidly to emergencies or disasters and achieve order in austere locations. This response could include providing security, logistics, engineering, medical support, and command and control and communications capabilities. Marine Corps forces can provide sea-based humanitarian assistance. The 5th MEB (Marine Expeditionary Brigade) during Operation Sea Angel in 1991, assisted Bangladesh in the aftermath of a devastating tropical cyclone by distributing food and medical supplies and repairing the country's transportation infrastructure.

We would add that humanitarian assistance is one of the few cases wherein the Combat Service Support element of a given Marine Air-Ground Task Force is usually made the "main effort" of the operation. Usually, the CSS element is supporting the ground combat and air combat elements, but given the logistics command and control, and distribution capabilities of the CSS element, it can often be the main effort in a humanitarian assistance operation.

Utapao Air Base

2005-01-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

Since Utapao Air Base seems to be playing a large role in Operation Golden Vision, here are some useful links: From globalsecurity.org: Utapao Air Base And here, an entire page devoted to the airbase. Looks like Utapao is located about 40 minutes from the city of Pattaya, and it seems to be on the Gulf of Thailand, on the opposite side of that damaged by the tsunami, if our geography is right. Perhaps its proximity to the sea will allow it to be used as what is doctrinally known as an SPODS (surface point of debarkation) for the flow of logistics that will arrive with the MPSRONs and the Expeditionary Strike Group. As an airfield, it has probably already been named as an APODS (aerial port of debarkation). We're a little rusty on these terms, but think they're right.

Mission name nomination!

2005-01-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

Since we just complained that this mission seems to have no publicized name yet, we nominate . . . drumroll . . . OPERATION 'GOLDEN VISION' which should be quite a slap in the face of Mr. Jan Egelund, who criticized the US for its stinginess, then said its helicopters were worth their wight in gold. Loyal Readers and fellow bloggers! Feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts . . .

The Diplomad speaks

2005-01-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

The Diplomad is an excellent blog that we've visited before and happens to be in SE Asia. Quick thought on the death of the old media and the old institutions, like the UN: the Diplomad reports that the primary concern with the staff of the World Food Program was to ensure 24-hour catering is available at the 5-star restaurant where they are staying. Can you imagine how these houses of cards will come tumbling down when photo-blogging really takes off?

US ORDER OF BATTLE: TSUNAMI RELIEF

2005-01-03T19:42:00.000-08:00

Thanks to an alert reader for pointing my attention to this piece from last week. Marine Lieutenant General Conway, the Director of Operations or J-3 for the Joint Staff, sayeth thus:

We have committed at this point six C-130 aircraft for airlift support. They will be operating out of the airbase at Utapao. We have committed nine P-3 aircraft, four of which will operate out of Utapao. The other five will operate out of Diego Garcia. As we speak, there are at least two P-3s in the air, conducting that initial observation and reconnaissance of some of the damage sites to further the assessment. The Lincoln Carrier Strike Group was in Hong Kong. It has been diverted now to the Gulf of Thailand. It has aircraft in the air doing a reconnaissance of the Molucca Straits to check for debris before it would transit. If it's clear, and early reports indicate that it might be, the five ships associated with that carrier strike group will take position off the island of Sumatra. It has embarked aboard 12 helicopters, which we find extremely valuable in these types of scenarios, that will be employed depending upon the results of the assessment team. The Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group was in Guam. It is foregoing port visits there and in Singapore to move rapidly to the Bay of Bengal. It's estimated to be on station sometime on or before 7 January. It has seven ships associated with the strike group, carries 25 helicopters, which will be valuable to us again in disaster relief. There are four additional Cobras that will also be instrumental, we think, in reconnaissance efforts. Twenty-one hundred Marines, 1,400 sailors embarked aboard the Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group and 15th MEU. The commander has also opted to move five of his prepositioned ships out of the squadron located in Guam. These five ships have fresh-water-producing capability. Each ship can produce 90,000 gallons of fresh water a day, and of course that'll be extremely valuable as we have a number of requests already for fresh-water supply. There is a sixth ship that has a field hospital embarked aboard that can be phased ashore, again, dependent upon the results of the assessment teams and the need. Just before I stepped over I discovered or was told that there are two additional ships out of the squadron located at Diego Garcia that Admiral Fargo is also ordering to action. They will embark as soon as possible and get under way, again, for assignment in the affected region. Those two ships also have a 90,000-gallon fresh- water production capability.

Quick thoughts on this: This will be a major test of the Expeditionary Strike Group concept, which is a marriage of seven or so Navy ships and subs, with a full Amphibious Readiness Group, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. This marriage first started in the fall of 2003 with the deployment of the 11th MEU. It is the latest incarnation of the centuries-old Navy-Marine Corps team and we'll see it in action. The 15th MEU was headed in that direction anyway for Iraq. it has just been expedited in its journey [quick aside: wonder what it was like to be on a large ship in open water when the tsunami struck? haven't heard much about this . . .] Next thought: the five prepositioned ships from the squadron located in Guam is Maritime Prepositioning Ship Squadron Three, or MPSRON-3 to those in the know. The US possesses three of these squadrons and they are truly an awesome capability: each squadron carries enough equipment for an entire Marine Expeditionary Brigade – 17,000 personnel, give or take, and can sustain such a force for 30-60 days or so with no follow-on logistics. [Interesting bit of trivia: each MPSRON ship is named after a Medal of Honor recipient. Take the MV 1st LT Baldomero Lopez for example, named after a Korean War hero. 1st Lt Lopez was famously photographed right before he died, leading his Marines in the invasion of Inchon.] Also, while this squadron is based in Guam, it is unlikely that they were all there. The ships usually "go from port to port" to use a gratuitous Austin Powers reference. So while for now the US is making do by flying in supplies on C-130s into Thai airfields and ferrying supplies from the Lincoln battle group with the few helicopters aboard, the real action will start in about three or so days when the Expeditionary Strike Group gets on station and its helicopters, especially its CH-46s and CH-53s are on hand. MEUs are also trained for humanitarian relief before they deploy . . . while the Lincoln can do a little, this is really the bread and butter of an expeditionary force like the Expeditionary Strike Group. Still more to come tonight . . .

U.S. Copters a "Golden Vision"

2005-01-03T19:05:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Daily News carries a story quoting Jan Egeland, the head of the UN's emergency relief coordination:

The U.S. Navy helicopters flying to the rescue of devastated villages in Sumatra, Indonesia, are "worth their weight in gold," a grateful United Nations official gushed yesterday. The fleet of Seahawk choppers flying from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and other ships in the battle group clattered for a second day into Sumatran villages that have not seen any help since the tsunami struck the Indonesian island a week ago. Aid workers had been dismayed over the prospects of getting clean water, food and medicine to the thousands of survivors stranded when the tidal wave wiped out roads and docks throughout the remote region. Without the supplies, they feared another wave of death from starvation and disease. The Abraham Lincoln arrived off the coast Saturday and immediately began launching the Seahawks inland to deliver the goods. "Those helicopters are worth their weight in gold now," said UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland.

Now this is certainly newsworthy. A higher-up in the UN has just paid the US military a compliment – or if not the troops then at least their armaments. Yet today on the way home while listening to NPR, the only mention of Mr. Egelund was from his recent criticism of the US for its stinginess: ". . .$350million dollars, which some critics have said was far too little . . ." But that story is already a full week old. [It is tempting here to begin referring to NPR as Radio Beijing, as a good friend once did, but we'll refrain.] Perhaps Mr. Egelund has changed his mind when faced with the incredible power of American arms, or maybe just had a weak moment when he strayed from the party line in the midst of the chaos wherever he happens to be (note, though, that the story doesn't say he is in SE Asia – remember, as we just witnessed from Kofi, UN leaders can lead from anywhere, even while vacationing in Wyoming.) [Later tonight, some basics of humanitarian and other relief operations . . .]

JTF-536?

2005-01-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

Note to Pentagon: Please, please unlock the basement door and talk to those guys who come up with mission names! JTF-536 is not easy to type, not easy to remember, and not good for PR. We need a "Valiant Rescue" or a "Golden Water" or something for the largest US military relief operation in nearly 30 years. We can do better. Forgive me if it has a name and I just haven't heard it yet -- if that's the case, it's a problem of a different kind . . .

KOFI SKIES WHILE ASIA DROWNS

2005-01-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

[Until these stories get further coverage in the mainstream press, the US/Coalition relief operations in SE Asia will be the main focus of The Adventures of Chester. There will be a handful of other topics as well though.] While the press criticized President Bush for not speaking about the tsunami for two days while finished his vacation, scant attention has been paid to the fact that Kofi Annan spent the next four days after the tsunami continuing his ski-trip in Jackson Hole, hobnobbing with the likes of James Wolfenson, head of the World Bank. From the Telegraph:

UN officials went to great lengths to conceal the whereabouts of Kofi Annan, the organisation's general secretary, who was on holiday when the tsunami struck and did not surface in New York until Thursday. In fact, it was revealled that, Mr Annan spent Christmas at the holiday home of James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank and a critic of the Bush administration, who owns a 160-acre ranch in the resort of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Only a handful of Mr Annan's most trusted advisers were allowed to know his location. One official said: "He did not want to be seen frolicking in the snow. It wouldn't look good." So anxious were UN staff that his first interview, which was with the CNN cable news channel almost three days after the tsunami struck, was conducted by telephone, via the UN's headquarters, and producers of the show were not told where Mr Annan was speaking from.

Newsmax also reported on this story, though the article has been pulled from their page:

"I think a lot of people are asking exactly why you waited three days on vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, before you decided to fly back to New York in the face of this extraordinary crisis," Hunt asked during a Thursday press conference in New York. "Could you give us a full explanation of your thinking on that?" Hunt continued. "Secondly, what kind of signal does that 72-hour delay send to the nations to which you are now appealing for greater help?" Obviously irked by the inquiry, Annan replied: "First of all, there was action. It wasn't inaction. We live in a world where you can operate from wherever you are. ... You don't have to be physically here to be dealing with the leaders and the governments I have been dealing with. You don't have to be physically here to be discussing with some of the agencies; that we have done." The angry secretary-general then barked: "I don't have to be sitting in my office to take action. I think the same goes for you in your profession."

Two thoughts: Wow! the Secretary-General sure does believe in leading from the front. What a prince! i will use this on my boss soon. "I can do my job just fine from the slopes thanks! No need for me to come in to the office." What a moron. First Oil-for-Kojo and now this. It just keeps on coming.

JTF-536 STANDS UP IN ASIA

2005-01-03T05:44:00.000-08:00

The US military has created and staffed Joint Task Force 536 in SE Asia, which includes 600 personnel on shore and 11500 afloat. Their mission will be humanitarain relief in tsunami-affected areas and they will use past such efforts, especially Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh as a template. It appears that there are US Support Groups in place in several countries, and these are shifting from a disaster relief assessment role to one of providing relief. Each USSG is headed by a one-star flag officer. The overall JTF is headed by the Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, LtGen Rusty Blackman. The fact that a 3-star general is in charge means: a. the US participation will be large b. expected coalition participation will also be large. c. the US is placing enormous emphasis on this task. More can be found on the US Pacific Command website. We'll cover this as best we can here at The Adventures of Chester. It looks like the major media is giving it scant attention.

COMING SOON: MAJOR RENOVATIONS

2005-01-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

Loyal Readers, thanks very much for your patience over the recent holidays. We've been visiting the in-laws and had little time for blogging . . . However, we must first ask for your patience for a bit longer. Blogging will be very light until January 10th as we make MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS to The Adventures of Chester which will totally change your reading and commenting experience here for the better. The all-new Adventures of Chester will be revealed on Monday, January 10th -- we've been planning this for over a month and think you'll like what you see! Until then, we've added a donate button in the sidebar for assisting those affected by the South Asian Tsunami. And since we are renovating the site, feel free to comment or email with recommendations. Mark your calendar for January 10th, when Chester will return with a vengeance!

Daily Roundup and Merry Christmas!

2004-12-23T15:49:00.000-08:00

Loyal Readers! Chester will be celebrating the season with his in-laws and blogging will continue, though it will be light. Best wishes to all of you for a joyous Christmas and cheery New Year. We'll probably squeeze in a post or two over the next week, but make no promises. Here's some things that caught our eye today: ----------------- Sunday is the 60th Anniversary ofthe Battle of the Bulge, when Patton's Third Army smashed the 7 German divisions that had been held in check by a surrounded, starving, cold and fearless 101st Airborne. Though many good stories come out of that fight, this is my personal favorite (the 82nd Airborne was in the fight too):

Dec. 23, 1944 - "Battle of the Bulge" - An entire U.S. armored division was retreating from the Germans in the Ardennes forest when a sergeant in a tank destroyer spotted an American digging a foxhole. The GI, PFC Martin, 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, looked up and asked, "Are you looking for a safe place?" "Yeah" answered the tanker. "Well, buddy," he drawled, "just pull your vehicle behind me... I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are going."

Awesome. --------------------- All of iran's military is focused on defending its nuke sites. That means that if we act fast we can get two birds with one stone! --------------------- If any of you dear readers are feeling especially generous, we'd love a subscription to East-Asia-Intel.com. This is one content-rich source that we could then plow right back into analytical posts on the ole blog here. Looks like they always have interesting under-the-radar stories ... [Thus far, all reader donations have been plowed back into the site here in one way or another . . . more on this in the coming weeks.] --------------------- With friends like these . . .MEMRI reports that a Saudi government daily, Al-Watan, Accuses U.S. Army of Harvesting Organs of Iraqis. We suppose this doesn't increase our support in Saudi Arabia. Joseph Nye would certainly call it a failure of our "soft power." But it certainly helps the US the more Muslims are scared to death of our military. If you can't convince them you're a good guy, might as well convince them that you steal organs from dead insurgents . . . --------------------- Lawrence of Irvine Learns Spying and Blogging Don't Mix? We've received this somewhat humorous email from an Alert Reader:

A few weeks ago I sent you a copy of an article posted on The Angry Iranian Weblog. The blogger, Lawrence Reza Ershaghi, is an Iranian who was living in Irvine California, and made no secret of his displeasure with the US. He seemed to eagerly await the rise of the Shia in Iraq, which he felt would result in Iranian hegemony in the Gulf. He had been posting articles once or twice a week until November 24. After that, nothing. This week DEBKAfile posted this: "...Iranian spy teams have been spotted outside Israeli missions in various parts of the world, including one nabbed by the FBI watching Israeli consulates in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston. It was made up of Iranian Americans, Arab and Pakistani students - some of them US citizens, and all activists belonging to Muslim fundamentalist groups." I suspect Lawrence may be spending the holidays as a guest of our government.

A very Merry Christmas to you, Lawrence, and we hope you enjoy the government cheese in whichever federal institution you now reside!

de Atkine | Why Arabs Lose Wars

2004-12-23T05:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to an Alert Reader for posting this in the comments section: de Atkine | Why Arabs Lose Wars. Haven't read yet, but looks promising.

How Did the Blogosphere Get Fooled on Ukraine?

2004-12-23T05:21:00.000-08:00

Transatlantic Intelligencer offers a differeing opinion on Ukraine, which we believe has been expressed in comments on this site as well.

More on Rummy

2004-12-23T05:14:00.000-08:00

Instapundit.com offers more on Rummy.

Blogs of War: Democrats Rip Pat Tillman

2004-12-23T05:11:00.000-08:00

The commenters at Democratic Underground are ripping Pat Tillman to shreds. When the libs are themselves, it's so obvious why they are on the decline.

BLACKFIVE: Note to Harrison Ford

2004-12-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

This is outstanding. General Mattis istruly an amazing individual and Han Solo can't do him justice, regardless of his war views.

Kyiv Post. SBU officer reveals insurrection plans

2004-12-23T04:58:00.000-08:00

An Alert Reader has directed us to this story, wherein a member of Ukraine's State Secret Services spills the beans on Russian and government attempts to monkey with the upcoming new election:

Omelchenko alleged that weapons belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol have been transferred to Donetsk in order to arm groups of men who are to arrive in Kyiv Dec. 27 or 28 to incite violence. Kuchma would then declare a state of emergency, the election results would be cancelled, and the new election would be postponed for as long as half a year, thus allowing Kuchma to stay in power until the recently adopted constitutional amendments come into force. *** According to Omelchenko, 30 groups of 30 men have already been formed and an unnamed Berkut (elite police force) officer will command the group of 900 men, which has been formed using former convicts, sportsmen and other irregulars. They will be armed with 100 rifles, 90 hand grenades and 25 kilograms of the explosive trotyl, Omelchenko said.

Is this true or just deft political propaganda by the opposition?

Iraqi Politicians on Opinionjournal.com

2004-12-22T22:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Opinionjournal featured an article by Ahmed Chalabi, expressing his approval for the elections in January. Today, they carry an article by Ayad Allawi> discussing some of the details of the elections.

We Were Right to Disband Them

2004-12-22T22:10:00.000-08:00

Tom Donnelly argues in the Weekly Standard that Bremer's decision to disband the Irarqi military was the correct one. We agree with his assessment:

Ultimately, it is putting the cart before the horse to believe that there can ever be fully legitimate and effective national military forces prior to the birth of a legitimate national government. Our greatest postwar military mistake in Iraq was thus not that we disbanded the old Iraqi army too quickly but that we moved to create a new Iraqi state too slowly.

We've stated as much in previous posts on this page. The problem in the immediate aftermath of the invasion was a lack of planning to create a new Iraqi government. This created a vacuum that was filled with the insurgency, who thought it had a hope of returning to the old regime. Were our successful invasion to have been more aggressively exploited politically, the insurgency might not have coalesced as strongly as it did. This is all for the history books though. We're still going to win.