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Would President Obama’s new security strategy, a plan for a “leaner” U.S. military, unveiled earlier this month, have prevented the Iraq War were it adopted a decade sooner? Sarwar Kashmeri, a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Foreign Policy Association, makes just this point in his analysis of U.S. defense strategy in the Huffington Post.  Is the history of U.S. intervention since 9/11 necessary to understand President Obama’s decision to refocus military power on small, agile forces rather than large ground troops? Or could the U.S. have implemented this defense doctrine sooner?

Read Kashmeri’s interesting analysis here.

REUTERS/Deborah Gembara – Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay

On New Year’s Eve, President Barack Obama signed into law the post-9/11 practice of detaining terrorist suspects indefinitely without charge. Shock and awe waves rippled through the blogosphere in response to the move, not least because Obama had threatened to veto an earlier version of the bill. Other grumbles included its lack of temporal or geographic limitations, which signaled to some the potential for military detention of anyone, anywhere, anytime.

But despite congressional approval of the well-worn practice, most rights wonks don’t expect any significant change in the frequency or type of indefinite detentions going forward. They do, however, maintain that the practice breaches international humanitarian law and undermines counterterrorism efforts.

One such expert, Martin Sheinin, professor of international law and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism from 2005 to 2011, spoke with me about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its potential to derail US counterterrorism efforts.

The War on Law

To put the controversy in context, Mr. Sheinin explained why Washington supports indefinite detention:

“The NDAA builds upon the well-established rule in international humanitarian law (law of armed conflict) that during an international armed conflict combatants, i.e. soldiers of one of the states involved in the war, can be detained as prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. When there is an international armed conflict and when someone is a combatant, then such detention does not amount to arbitrary detention that would violate international human rights law.”

When the “global war on terror” was waged following 9/11, he said, the possibility of indefinite detention was extended to terrorism, “far beyond genuine situations of international or even non-international armed conflict. And it extends indefinite detention to persons who are not combatants. For instance, persons who are held to have provided substantial support to terrorism would be subject to indefinite detention.”

Against that background, Mr. Sheinan suggested several ways in which violating human rights in the course of countering terrorism can “backfire.” Rights violations can “add to causes of terrorism,” he said, “both by perpetuating ‘root causes’ that involve the alienation of communities and by providing ‘triggering causes’ through which bitter individuals make the morally inexcusable decision to turn to methods of terrorism.”

Further, “these kinds of legal provisions are always open for bad faith copying by repressive governments that will use them for their own political purposes.” Though such copying was found to be less common than expected, “repressive governments may do so for their own political purposes.”

“It is hard to see any practical advantage gained through the NDAA. It is just another form of what I call symbolic legislation, enacted because the legislators want to be seen as being ‘tough’ or as ‘doing something.’ The law is written as just affirming existing powers and practices and hence not providing any meaningful new tools in the combat of terrorism,” he concluded.

With Washington simultaneously fostering democratic transitions across the Middle East and North Africa and gambling on military exits from Iraq and Afghanistan, such “backfires” may well hamper development of the rule of law and respect for human rights when they are needed most.

I think the first thing that jumps out at me is the continuing disconnect between the American public and the 1% of the nation that has and is participating in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If you just look at most of the media reports, one is under the impression the timing of the departure is a sole initiative of the Obama administration. If you look into it you discover the timeline for the departure actually was set up by the Bush administration as part of a Status of Forces agreement. A little background is in order. According to the Council for Foreign Relations, “the status of forces agreement is a legal framework that defines how foreign militaries operate in a host country. Typically established by executive agreement, there is no uniform or standard format for the document, which can vary in length and specificity.”

According to an article in the December 12, 2011 New York Times/International Herald: “On Nov. 27, 2008, the Iraqi Parliament ratified a Status of Forces agreement with the United States that set a course for an end to the United States’ role in the war and marks the beginning of a new relationship between the countries. The pact called for American troops to pull out of most Iraqi cities by the summer of 2009 and set the end of 2011 as the date by which the last American troops must leave the country.”

Why is this important? It is not my intent to down play the considerable achievements of the Obama administration in Iraq, simply to provide some additional information in order to put the event in the right context. Why is this important? One of the questions being asked is what happens after the U.S. troops leave? Can the Iraqi security forces handle the expected levels of violence? In order to understand the question and answer, it’s important to gain a sense of how involved have the Iraqis been in providing their security up to this point. Here is how General Becker replied when asked that question:

“I think the Iraqi security forces are capable of managing the violence from both the violent extremist organizations such as al-Qaida and JRTN as well as some of the Iranian-backed militias such as Asaba al-Haq (ph). Those organizations will still be able to conduct attacks. They’ll be able to conduct high-profile attacks periodically. But the Iraqi security forces have shown all the way back to June 2009 when U.S. forces came out of the cities that they are capable of being able to disrupt these organizations to prevent them from, you know, getting away with major sustained attacks and really enforce these organizations to just be able to conduct high-profile attacks that make — that make the headlines, but they don’t really have any impact on the government, and they have really limited impact on the people. In fact, most of the people have, you know, completely rejected these organizations.
So I think the Iraqi — I think there may be a spike in violence…But the Iraqi security forces have been in the lead since Operation New Dawn and since really out of the cities in 2009. So the Iraqi security forces have already shown that they’re capable. They did it during the elections. They did it, you know, during the Arab Spring when there were protests around the region and small protests within Iraq. But the Iraqi security forces have shown that they’re capable for that type of a threat.”

Concerning the Iraqi Air Force, Major General Handy stated:

“Since the president’s comments last month (October 2011) highlighting our current path to compliance with the security agreement to have all of our military forces out by December 31st, we’ve really seen a renewed interest in these efforts from the States. And I’m proud to be able to talk about where we are in that process… The president’s remarks, though, only punctuated what we are already doing, was already under way, and that is our obligation to living up to our commitment of complying with the security agreement.
From an airman’s perspective, this stage of the operation takes on a particularly unique importance and represents unique challenges. Some of our tasks remain constant. We’re clearly still performing all of those air component missions you’ve become accustomed to hearing of: intelligence; surveillance; reconnaissance and close-air support, to keep overwatch and protect our forces; air mobility, to include air lifts and air refueling; search and rescue and personnel recovery; and operating and securing airfields, to name a few.
What is evolving here is how our airmen continue to do all this while they transition bases back to the authority and control of GOI, and assist U.S. Mission-Iraq in their efforts. And we do continue to do this in a dangerous place. We are, regrettably, reminded here on a regular basis there are still those out there who would seek to do us harm and would seek to do our Iraqi partners harm.
Our plans for what we’re doing now, how we’ve postured our force in this phase, have really been in the works for the better part of a year now. This has taken a tremendous amount of collective effort from our entire joint team to be ready for this, and there is still much to be done. But I will tell you, we are ready; it’s under way. And one thing you can be sure of: Our airmen will be here, overhead, keeping watch, protecting our forces until the last convoy, the last soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman or civilian departs the country from USF-I.”

Time will tell how successful the Iraqi security forces will be but since they’ve been more involved since 2009 it shows they’ve gained some experience. General Becker provided some interesting background summarizing the drawdown stating:

“At the height of coalition operations in 2007 and 2008, we had 505 bases in Iraq and 165,000 service members. As you can imagine, it’s a monumental task to properly account for all of this property, retrograde what has to be moved out of Iraq and transfer it to the Department of State and the government of Iraq properly designated for transfer to them.
What’s truly impressive, at least to me, is that our soldiers have set the conditions to professionally complete this massive drawdown of people and equipment while continuing to partner with Iraqi security forces and to make them better and successfully transition responsibility to the Department of State to ensure their success in the future…In August of 2010, we developed a very detailed and thoughtful plan for how we would execute this mission. We made adjustments to the plan during to and prior to our arrival in December and have continued to improve the plan since we arrived.
So where we are now in November 2011 with seven bases remaining to transfer, only 1700 truckloads of equipment to retrograde and less than 20,000 soldiers still in Iraq, is a result of a really thoughtful and well-executed plan and, of course, the hard work of thousands of great soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.”

Think I’ll end here. As always my views are my own.

I thought I’d start out with the ones covering Afghanistan. There’s been a lot in the media about the differences in what the level of violence between the UN report which has said it’s increased by 39% over last year and the ISAF reports which indicates the situation is not that bad. A recent report written by “60 Minutes” associate producer Jeff Newton who has spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and reflects on covering the war for 10 years stated: “Roads that I used to drive for fun in 2002 and 2003 outside of Kabul are now no-go areas. Seems the Taliban has begun to move back into the provinces around the capital once held safely by American forces. In fact, it is now much more dangerous to leave the city than it was back then”.
There has also been much discussion on whether it has it been a 10 year wasted effort and that the NATO effort to build the Afghan security forces in the image of western organizations is wrong headed and doomed to failure. This was one of several topics covered during the bloggers roundtable I participated in back in September with Major General Peter Fuller, Deputy Commander for Programs, NATO Training Missions Afghanistan (NTM-A). The topic was “Providing Logistical Support to the Afghan Security Forces”.
On the subject of whether we were trying to build a security force in a western image, General Fuller stated the following:
“…we’re trying to be Afghan-right, we’re trying to be Afghan-first, and now, we’re trying to be Afghan-like.

And let me hit the first one: Afghan-right. We recognize that the Afghan army and police force are not going to be something similar to what the U.S. Army might have or some other Western country, so we’re looking at what capabilities they really need to have, meaning do they need to be equipped to be an expeditionary type of army?

And an example would be, in our Army, we have these mobile kitchens so we can go and set up a mobile kitchen until we can have a contractor potentially come in and provide us our food. Well, they operate out of — their corps are really regionally based and they stay in their region and fight in their region, so they go back and forth to their bases. Do we need to give them that type of capability?
Another example is in the infrastructure builds. Initially, when we started doing infrastructure builds for the Afghan army and the Afghan police, we thought of Western standards because we were using our Corps of Engineers with the Air Force and the Army and they have established standards that they follow. So in light of that, they put air-conditioning in all the buildings. They gave us Western-style toilets. They gave us really nice, propane-equipped kitchens, and they gave us really nice bathrooms.

Well, the bathrooms had pedestal, porcelain sinks because that’s, you know, a standard you would see in a U.S. side. But…the Afghans like to wash their feet before they do prayers. So they were trying to perch on the edge of a porcelain sink and it didn’t work out very well, so now we’ve changed it to Afghan-right… don’t give them air-conditioning in all the buildings, give them ceiling fans and the ability to open windows.

And we’ve seen a potential reduction between 100 (million dollars) and $150 million worth of fuel associated with all the generators that had to be powered up before and run to provide all that electricity. We have changed out the latrines. We’ve given them both a wood-burning stove outside because they have a lot of wood that they burn here in this country, and a propane stove inside. So if they don’t have propane, they can still burn — or cook their food on these wood burners.

Afghan-first. We are trying to generate industries here in Afghanistan that will allow them to be sustainable. And an example is we’re going to have 352,000 Afghans in the security force — that’s 195,000 in the army and 157,000 in the police force. Well, in light of that, we’re not buying any of the uniforms from the States anymore.
We’re having an Afghan company — or actually, several Afghan companies — make the uniforms, make the boots, make all the equipment items that they need. It’s a light-industry capability, though it is Afghan-owned, Afghan-operated.

And now we’re getting a much lower price because the price we had to pay for in the United States was one that had a shipping cost associated with it. We have the Berry Amendment requirements in the United States, so we had requirements that it had to be all U.S.-manufactured and the end result was it was almost twice as expensive to have a uniform and boots made in the United States as it was here in Afghanistan. So we’ve gone the other direction and have them built here, or manufactured here.

Afghan-like is trying to have the Afghans understand this is our national treasure — and I’m speaking from an American perspective because we are funding 92 percent of the operation, in terms of the building of the Afghan security forces. So in terms of Afghan-like, we are articulating when we give you a piece of property and you identify the standard in which you’re going to maintain it, if you do not maintain it we are going to take it away from you until you demonstrate you are going to maintain property appropriately.

So one thing on vehicles is if we see they’re not maintaining them appropriately, we withdraw their fuel allocation associated with the vehicles that they’re not maintaining appropriately. Actually, in some cases, they have battle-lost vehicles and we’re trying to incentivize them to turn in the vehicles and we’re saying, I’m not giving you fuel associated with that vehicle because you’re not driving it.

So if you turn the vehicle in, we’ll give you another one. You have to follow your processes to turn it in and then you will get your fuel back. So we’re trying to do several things, as I said, Build what’s appropriate for Afghanistan, use Afghanistan companies as much as possible and then ensure that as they establish standards for accountability and stewardship, that they follow them. And so that’s the first, right and like”.

I asked General Fuller about a U.S. Inspector General July report on Afghanistan that stated: “While U.S. agencies have taken steps to strengthen their oversight over U.S. funds blowing through the Afghan economy, they still have limited visibility over the circulation of these funds, leaving them vulnerable to fraud or diversion to insurgents.”

His response: “I think there’s a couple things. One part of the report was saying we do have a lot of contractors on the battlefield and for a lot of different reasons. They are assisting us in inspecting the police at the police training sites.

We are trying to move away from having contractors do that, and we’ve gone to the international community and we’ve actually had about 500 policemen from the international community come in and support. But what we try to do is we try to train a policeman and then get that policeman out there, and then you have them out into their various stations and districts, et cetera, and we want someone to go out and inspect them.
So we don’t have enough policemen and we can’t use just military policemen, so we use contractors. And these are typically former policemen. So we have the contractors going out there, and one of the parts of the report was saying, you didn’t provide appropriate oversight of these contractors to ensure that they were doing their job. Well, we have changed that and we now are ensuring that the contractors that we have in the battle space have oversight, have an individual that knows what the contract says and knows what they’re supposed to be doing.

The second piece of that goes back to the only cash that we are injecting into — directly into the ministry of finance that goes down to the ministry of defense and the ministry of interior is the money that we are injecting, and we have oversight because we watch every project. We know exactly what the vouchers were for. We track that very carefully. It gets more challenging when, for example, we hire a contractor to go and build a building and then, in the process of getting their materials, they have to make a payoff for a different reason. And we’re trying…to stamp that out wherever we can find it. There’s actually a whole organization within our next-higher headquarters, which is the ISAF headquarters, and they have a whole anti-corruption task force that’s looking at, to move trucks on the road, does a trucking company have to pay a tariff to, you know, go through a particular area, otherwise the trucks are going to be attacked?

So we’re trying to attack this in any way we can. So that’s where, I think, that report — can it happen? Yes. Yes, we can pay a contractor to do something, pay him a fair value, and in the process of them being able to perform that contract, such as moving trucks on the road, they might have to pay money to somebody to ensure that the trucks don’t get damaged coming across the road, and that money could then go back to support the insurgency through the Taliban or whoever.

So we’re trying to manage that and we’re trying to have them come forward when they have that type of challenge, and we’re trying to address it. It’s an interesting culture, here, and we’re trying to address that”.

Think I’ll end here. More to follow. As always, my views and opinions are my own.

In a speech last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated, “At this time the mission was embarked on, there were a lot of critics, about whether it was the right mission, at the right time, with the right force…There were an awful lot of questions about the mission overall and I think the critics have really been proven wrong.” Unlike his predecessor, Robert Gates, Panetta was a strong supporter of U.S. intervention from the start. Gates, on the other hand, argued that Libya’s uprising did not constitute a “vital national interest.” Despite Gates’ apprehensions about the mission, U.S. participation produced results that otherwise would have been difficult—if not impossible—for NATO to achieve.

While NATO is close to fulfilling its mission, it has done so with difficulty. On March 22, 2011, NATO acted on United Nation Security Council Resolution 1973, authorizing member states and regional organizations to take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya. The mission lacked many resources of which the U.S. was obliged to compensate for, including, trainers, targeting specialists, refueling tankers, intelligence and surveillance capabilities and reconnaissance platforms (Global Hawk and Predator drones).

Such dependence on the U.S. proved frustrating, especially in light of President Obama’s statement that the alliance, not the U.S., would take the lead on this mission. The glaring inequalities evidenced in the Libya operations are reminiscent of those seen during NATO’s mission in Kosovo (KFOR). There, the U.S. provided all of NATO’s jamming capabilities, 90 percent of the air-to-ground surveillance and 80 percent of the air refueling tankers. U.S. fighters and bombers delivered 90 percent of the precision-guided munitions as well. In today’s economy, the U.S. cannot afford to shoulder Europe’s load, particularly when those operations take place in Europe’s back yard.

Last summer, Secretary Gates gave his last policy speech to NATO, lamenting its transformation into a two-tiered alliance in which some members sacrifice blood and treasure in combat operations while others sit and watch. Similarly, Secretary Panetta urged NATO members “to share the burden of protecting common interests” and “commit to addressing growing gaps in our military capabilities even as we confront the challenges of fiscal austerity.” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen echoed similar sentiments: “We could not have carried out this operation without the unique and essential assets from the U.S. This is no breaking news that we need help from the U.S… Smart defense can only work if it is done together; it is not an excuse to reduce budgets.”

The alliance has grappled with this very challenge since its inception. Currently, only Albania, France, Greece, the United Kingdom and the United States meet the Alliance’s benchmark to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. Europe is under severe economic pressure to implement austerity measures, and the U.S. defense budget has taken a beating, severely limited U.S. military capacity. Additional cuts being discussed in Washington would further reduce many of the same assets essential to the Libya operation—stealth aircraft, carrier battle groups, amphibious capabilities.

As Secretary Panetta stated, budget cuts “cannot be an excuse for walking away from our national security responsibilities.” Other NATO allies have also expressed exasperation at the lack of commitment on behalf of their fellow members. At the Conservative Party conference last week, Britain’s Defense Secretary, Dr. Liam Fox, scolded NATO members who have failed to meet the 2 percent benchmark, saying, “You cannot expect to have the insurance policy but ask others to pay the premiums.”

NATO allies must acknowledge that despite the tough economic times, they must work together to evenly distribute responsibility for the common defense. The U.S. has proven itself a ready and willing partner in the alliance and has compensated where the alliance has faltered. For NATO to remain the most effective military alliance in modern history, allies must stand by their commitments to transatlantic security.

 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

One hundred years hence, when historians study the factors that led to the economic decline of the United States, it is likely that they will mark the first week of August, 2011 as a crisp break in the line that depicted our 235 year upward trajectory towards sustained superpower status. They will study a dark week when Americans witnessed their country’s credit rating downgraded and the tragic deaths of over 30 of its most elite service members in a single incident in a foreign military campaign. Both events serve as exclamation points written into a dark narrative that covered the period beginning September 11, 2001 and ending at some yet to be determined date.

 

(Source: John Moore/Getty Images)

As our hypothetical historians review millions of megabytes of multi-media content chronicling the challenges of our day, will they sense the deepening angst of an American populace awakened to a reality in which they no longer fully control their collective destiny? Even cursory research for the causal factors of America’s decline will quickly reveal more than a few smoking guns. They will surely judge us harshly for our penchant for exceedingly expensive unilateral cross-generational foreign interventions underwritten by a defense department with a budget that exceeded $700 billion per year — a sum fourteen times greater than our expenditures on diplomacy and foreign aid. As other intellectually curious students mine for additional clues, they will likely find statements that indicate growing cracks in the national defense consensus. Red flag utterances that show deep concerns, such as former Secretary of Defense Gates’s warning that, “The creeping militarization of US foreign policy at the expense of diplomacy and development is ill-advised and will not produce the enduring effect we desire for ourselves and future generations.”

As young American students prepare their term papers on the ‘Great Recession’, they might even find guidance from one of our most controversial Secretary of Defenses, Mr. Robert McNamara. McNamara, shortly before his death, embarked on a personal conscience cleansing campaign sharing his “what we did wrong” reflections with the American public. Best known for his role in escalating the Vietnam War, the former war hawk in his mea culpa conveys to viewers how flawed assumptions in D.C. led to one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in American history — the Vietnam War.

I have embedded above a short video interview of McNamara, taped just before his death in 2009. In it he shares with us how a misunderstanding of the socio-political dynamics, coupled with flawed operational decision-making, cost over 57,000 American and countless Vietnamese lives. After viewing this piece, I think you will agree with Hagel that, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

It is my sincere hope that the people of this great nation will heed the warnings from our statesmen, both living and dead, so we can safely navigate the treacherous waters that lie ahead domestically and abroad.  Should we fail to do so, we will certainly be  bequeathing to our descendants an entirely different America.

Two recent Department of Defense Bloggers Roundtables I participated in provide more insight into these issues.  In my last blog, I wrote a little about the May 27 roundtable with Major General Jeffrey Buchanan on Operation New Dawn and promised to finish up my summary.  On June 22 I also participated in one with Lt. General Frank G. Helmick, U.S. Forces-Iraq deputy commanding general (operations) the man responsible for day to day operations of our forces in Iraq.

Currently there are 47,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq.  Unless something changes they are scheduled to depart by December 31, 2011.  As mentioned in my last blog, starting last September the mission shifted from security to stability operations.  That included three major tasks: 

-         Advise, train, assist and equip the Iraqi security forces

-         Conduct, partner, in counterterrorism operations

-         Support and protect the civilian workers that come from the U.S. Mission-Iraq or the embassy as they work to build civil capacity throughout Iraq

One of the many lessons learned from Vietnam was if you’re going to use the military you have to give it a mission with measurable and specific tasks and goals and a defined end state.  If not, it’s difficult to define what success is.  The intent is that using this methodology forces the decision makers to very carefully think out and consider if indeed the military is the right solution to a particular problem.  If a decision is made to intervene militarily, how do you use them and what parts of the military needs to participate.  A perfect example is Libya which started out as a stated effort to enforce a no fly zone to protect Libyan civilians. There has obviously been “mission creep” but that’s another blog.

This is my long winded way of stating why I begin with listing the major tasks of our forces.  One of the metrics of determining how well U.S. operations are going over there is to look at the levels of violence and how well the Iraqis are handling it.  As mentioned in my last blog and according to General Buchanan, “In 2007, we averaged 145 attacks per day throughout the country; in 2008,  that was down to 49 per day; in 2009, 20 attacks per day; 15 for 2010; and for the first four months of 2011, we’re averaging 13 attacks per day.”  During the June 22^nd roundtable General Helmick provided an update saying that there are now 15 different kinds of attacks a day.  He indicated these attacks are against both U.S. and Iraqi Security forces and consist of terror attacks, rocket attacks, IED, and small arms attacks.  The primary culprits are:  al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, illegal arms and militias, basic criminality.

How are the U.S. and Iraqi Security forces doing against these threats?  General Buchanan says al-Qaida is severely degraded, doesn’t have popular support and can no longer roam around the country as they did in 2005 and 2006 “but are still dangerous.  They have never changed their ideology and they have never come off of their desire to drive a wedge between the government and the people.  And they’re willing to murder as many Iraqis as they can to make…their points known.”

Discussing the militias, he stated:  “…many of them receive support from outside the country, directly or indirectly, through provision of training, financing, provision of equipment and weapons.  And because they frequently represent a foreign agenda, they undermine Iraq’s sovereignty.”  Speaking of crime: “There is a…underlying element of basic criminality throughout the country, and at least some of the armed robberies, kidnappings and assassinations are just tied to people that are…bent on making money…it’s not necessarily always tied to terrorist acts or militias…”

What are the other challenges?  The first one General Helmick mentioned was the continuing lack of an Iraqi Minister of the Interior and Minister of Defense.  The country’s Prime Minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, is filling those roles for now. The New York Times had an excellent article (Titled: Bitter Feud Between Top Iraqi Leaders Stalls Government) today talking about the gridlock in the Iraqi government. How does this relate to the U.S. mission?  According to the General many of the decisions that need to be made at the strategic level in order for the Iraqi forces to move ahead are not being made.

The second challenge General Helmick discussed is the “uptick” in number of daily violent attacks.  My thoughts are just as U.S. learned lessons from Vietnam so have our enemies.  One of them is in play here and that is concern of the U.S. public over the killing and wounding of our troops.  So the mindset of our enemies is the more casualties you can make the more public support for conflicts starts to fall.  There is a lot of posturing going on among the political groups in Iraq concerning the impending U.S. departure.  I believe the increase in attacks is two fold first so some can claim “victory” in making the U.S. leave.   Second to make sure U.S. public support is not there in case the Iraqi government asks the U.S. to delay the departure because of security concerns.

General Helmick also said Iraqi forces have made great progress on internal defense but are a work in progress on external defense.  Here we’re talking about defense of their borders.  For instance right now they apparently can’t defend their air space but U.S. forces are conducting extensive combined arms type training with the Iraqi Air Force as well as Army, Navy, and Marines.  Additionally, according to General Buchanan “the radar capability they have is increasing, in that by the middle of next year they’ll have a very capable air defense radar system that covers the entire county, and they’ll be able to  –with a robust communications system—really be able to provide a complete system of both sensing and warning throughout the country.”

I asked General Helmick how was the training going for Iraqi Intelligence professionals.  Here I was referring to those involved in support to military operations.  He indicated the Iraqis have a very good humint capability but they were lacking in the other intelligence disciplines.  They’ve set up extensive training and have advisors in both the Ministers of Interior and Defense.  He did say there was a problem with the various intelligence agencies sharing information they were working to solve.  That does sound like a familiar problem.

Think I’ll end here.  Now that I’m back home in Colorado I have this intense desire to ride my bike along the river near my home.  As always my views are my own.

“ Our overarching goal remains the same:  to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan.  We must deny al Qaeda a safe haven.  We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government.  And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future. 

We will meet these objectives in three ways.  First, we will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban’s momentum and increase Afghanistan’s capacity over the next 18 months…Second, we will work with our partners, the United Nations, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security…Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.

We’re in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country.  But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan.  That’s why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.”

My first thoughts as I listened were this situation reminded me of friends that are parts of organizations that have down sized because of the economy but kept requirements the same.  The result was the remaining people had the same jobs responsibilities and tasks to carry out but less people and assets to accomplish the job.  Everything I’ve seen indicates that Taliban momentum has been stopped but they are still a force to be reckoned with.  Here are the President’s own words taken from his talk at West Point:  “there are those who acknowledge that we can’t leave Afghanistan in its current state, but suggest that we go forward with the troops that we already have.  But this would simply maintain a status quo in which we muddle through, and permit a slow deterioration of conditions there.  It would ultimately prove more costly and prolong our stay in Afghanistan, because we would never be able to generate the conditions needed to train Afghan security forces and give them the space to take over”.

According to media reports, military leaders have advocated a slower withdrawal.  This is just speculation on my part but if the reports are true, and I believe they are, the concerns probably revolve around maintaining enough military force to keep the Taliban on the run and to complete the training of the Afghanistan security forces.  It would seem to me that the views of the on scene military commander should prevail but apparently this is not the case.  If the administration feels that the goals of reversing the Taliban’s momentum and increasing the security capacity of the Afghans is too costly and will take too long why not just bring all of our troops home?  To keep our men and woman over there without the support their military commanders say they need doesn’t make much sense to me.  To quote Yoda: “Do or Do not.  There is no try.”

As always my thoughts are my own.  As promised, I’ll finish my update on Iraqi Operation New Dawn shortly.

Before I begin I’d like to make a few comments about my recent blogs on Afghanistan.  I understand some are wondering whether the Generals I’ve interviewed during the Department of Defense sponsored forums are being totally forthcoming or are only presenting part of the data.  I’ve done a number of these forums and never have I gotten the sense that any topics were off the table or that the information provided was faulty, made up or incomplete.  The focus has been on the efforts of the military and police forces so not much was discussed about other efforts.  Nor was all of the news they provided good; the military participants have always covered the good, the bad and the ugly and have frequently cited corruption and literacy as major problems to overall success in Afghanistan.

It’s been my experience that the military mindset is not just to focus on problems but also solutions.  In that vein during the interviews, they also discuss what efforts they’re working on to counter these problems. It’s not “bragging” if it’s the truth.  As to some who interpret me as overly optimistic, I would call myself “cautiously optimistic” on the chances of success in Afghanistan.  It can still go south, that’s why I’m not in favor of a military drawdown next month.  I do believe in civilian oversight of the military but also believe if you have someone in charge of the military operations and they are successful why not continue to accept their recommendations?  I believe in General Petraeus, both Presidents Bush and Obama have found their General Grant.  Hopefully his successor can continue the trend.

By way of contrast, after I retired from the military, my midlife crisis was to become a DJ on a Colorado radio station and play some awesome R&B.  Because of that I’ve had the opportunity to do celebrity interviews and during the process have been told by PR folks that certain topics were off limits.  As mentioned that has never happened to me with the Department of Defense interviews.  Participants are never given any restrictions and if any of the bloggers ask a question the DoD can’t answer, they always research it and get back to you. If any reader finds the information in my reports of the Bloggers Roundtables incomplete, I take full responsibility.

 If any reader wants more data than I have provided, ask me and I’ll either track it down or direct you to where you can find it.  The military and intelligence community do classify a lot of information; primarily for operational and security reasons but are a lot more open than some books and Hollywood movies would have you believe.  I like the classic line “You can’t handle the truth” uttered by Jack Nicholas in the movie A Few Good Men.  It’s been my experience as I travel around giving talks that some people don’t believe the truth because it doesn’t match preconceived views and expectations.  I never tell people what to believe only that they make sure they’ve researched their views and not base them only on media sound bites.

To better illustrate this point, it took me seven years to find someone willing to publish my memoir on my military career (A Woman’s War).  I figured with all of the news and talk about intelligence, people would be interested in hearing an insider’s view about how  intelligence support is provided to military operations.  Instead my manuscript was turned down countless times by publishers and agents.  During my career, I had my ups and downs and talk about them in the book but apparently the powers that be thought there was no interest in a book that wasn’t totally negative or filled with sex and/or anti-military stories.  The truth was in spite of some people questioning whether or not woman belonged in the military, most of the guys I worked for and with accepted me.  That was not a truth most publishers thought the public was interested in.  I knew it wasn’t true because I was out on the speaking circuit telling stories from the book to a highly interested public.

That said, on to the task at hand.  On May 27, 2011, I participated in a Bloggers roundtable with Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, USA.  The topic was an update on Operation New Dawn.  General Buchanan opened up by saying the “security environment is complex and there’s still a lot of work to be done” but significant progress has been made but the Iraqi Security Forces “have had the lead for security since last summer”. 

Since September 2010 when the operation changed from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn the mission for U.S. Forces switched from security to stability operations.  The General explained that the military side of the operations there were “three major tasks for stability operations.  The first one is to advise, train, assist and equip the Iraqi Security forces; our second task is to conduct, partner, in counterterrorism operations, and our third task is to support and protect the civilian workers that come from the U.S. Mission Iraq or the embassy as they work to build civil capacity throughout the country.”

General Buchanan spoke about the threats they still faced:  al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, illegal arms and militias, basic criminality.  I’ll go more in depth on what he said about these threats in my next blog but will conclude with this statement he made: “I’d like to take these threats and talk about them in a little broader context.  First of all, we do still have violent actions or violent activities through the country, and sometimes they’re very heinous.  But overall, when you look at them in the context of where we’ve been in recent years, the trends are very, very positive.  In 2007, we averaged 145 attacks per day throughout the country; in 2008,  that was down to 49 per day; in 2009, 20 attacks per day; 15 for 2010; and for the first four months of 2011, we’re averaging 13 attacks per day.”    

Curious I checked out crime statistics in the U.S.  According to 2009 stats from the FBI there were an estimated 1,318, 398 violent crimes in the U.S.  According to the CIA Factbook, Iraq has a population of 30,399,572.  I decided to look at California, which has a population of about 36 million.  The FBI stats for violent crime in that state for 2009 were 174,459.  That breaks down to about an average of 478 a day.  Think I’ll end here. As always my views are my own.  Will finish Major General Buchanan’s interview on Monday.

He stated, “Highlights of our time over there…were the culmination of the battle of Marja, the battle of Sangin and several other fights that took place along the Helmand River…”  He was so inspirational if it wasn’t for my gimpy knees and iffy back, I’d dye my hair, lie about my age and attempt to reup but…probably wouldn’t make either the Navy or the Marine Corp weight standards.  By saying I found him inspirational, I’m not implying he tried to smooth over or focus only on the success of what has been a very challenging operation.  In light of the debate over timing of removal of coalition forces, I thought his experiences would provide some valuable insights into a very complex issue.

General Mills began by providing an overview of his year in Afghanistan:  “The year that we were there I think we saw a remarkable change in the situation on the ground.  I inherited a situation that was improving every day.  The…about 10,000 Marines that had been there before I was there, had done a good job of laying the groundwork as had the British forces who had been fighting there for several years.  During the year we were there, I saw a remarkable increase in the capability and confidence of the Afghan security forces, both the police and the army, and when we left the Afghan army forces that were in the…area were about three brigades, all of whom were capable of semi-independent operations and doing those operations out in the field.  We saw…several of our districts were in such a good security posture that they were prepared –at least the conditions were set for transitions to Afghan security control, and I think the Afghan security forces that were there were ready to take on those responsibilities.”

When asked to elaborate on what type of support coalition forces were still providing, he indicated: “By the time we left, they were conducting independent –semi-independent operations supported by us with some logistics.  Things like…air support; they don’t have at this point.  We would give them some communications capability.  Initially, we provided them with fire support, but they have brought artillery capability online and they use it, and we found them very, very capable of getting to the field, planning an operation, conducting that operation up to 96 hours and beyond and then withdrawing the forces in a very timely manner…”

The General also gave some metrics to help put the situation in perspective: “I think some of the metrics we saw, some of the indicators, I think, that these gains would be long lasting was the commitment by the Helmand population to the government of Afghanistan as exemplified, I think by their support of the education initiatives.  A hundred and twenty-five thousand students that went to school or are going to school there right now, about 20,000 of those students are now females.  I think that indicated areal investment by the …population in the future…of the province as those students were threatened, as were their parents about being sent to school and about supporting the education initiatives…as far as development went, we also saw some significant gains there, improvement of roads, …phone systems and several economic areas…Probably most important was reduction in poppy growth”.  General Mills pointed out that poppy was not only a “poison” to the world but also was a resource the enemy was using to fund its efforts.

One of the bloggers mentioned he had been in Marja last summer and things hadn’t been going that well, he asked how had things gotten turned around?  General Mills pointed out, “…Marja centered a large drug area, and he (Taliban) was using that to fuel the insurgency…So…to Marja to him was absolutely critical ground, and he was fighting hard to maintain it.  When we took a look at it, we really felt that the battle of Marja was not going to be won in the streets of Marja, that it was really a commuter’s fight on his behalf.  He had placed his IEDs I place, he put his minefields in place.  What he was doing, I think, was commuting to the war from other places.  So we took the fight—we freed up some forces, thinned out some places, closed down a couple of bases and freed up some maneuver force and went after him in the places we felt that he was using as assembly areas…I think by taking the fight out there we regained the momentum…made him fight on ground he didn’t want to fight on…He rolled back to the defensive…”

The General said the other thing “we did is we worked with the local elders to give them some confidence in the Afghan security forces…The national police did a good job, then we worked with the elders to raise a local police force…”

I asked the General if the intelligence support for the Afghanistan operations had improved.  I referenced an article that had been published by the former senior U.S. Military Intelligence Officer in Afghanistan that had been critical of the intelligence community efforts in the region saying efforts were too focused on traditional military intelligence targets and not enough effort was being spent supporting on providing information needed to succeed in counterinsurgency operations.  General Mills passed on: “…I think what we saw was a growth in the intelligence community to encompass a lot more than what your traditional military intelligence…used to focus on…there was a growth…encompassing an awful lot of organizations, both military and civilian, that allowed you to really open that aperture up quite wide and take a look at the entire situation…The cultural piece was absolutely critical…”

General Mills provided a lot more great information.  I’ve included the hyperlink and would recommend checking out the entire transcript of the roundtable.  Before I close I would like to make a couple of comments on those who would like to bring home a significant number of troops from Afghanistan next month.  I understand that the U.S. is broke and heavily in debt.  I understand that the conflict in Afghanistan is costing us $10 Billion a month; but I also understand that the situation in Afghanistan can still go wrong if the coalition leaves too soon.  I believe the views that should carry the most weight are the current people running the war.  They’ve reversed the situation in Iraq when all was considered lost and have stopped the momentum of the Taliban when many thought that situation was also lost. 

If the lawmakers want to make cuts in the defense  budget have they considered things like the 47,000 troops we have in Japan?  What about all those forces and bases we have in Europe?  Do we really still need large numbers of troops in Germany and Italy?  Last time I checked they were no longer our enemies.  Our relationship with Russia has also come a long, long way.  I understand the need for forward deployment.  Is it necessary to forward deploy troops or could we have basing agreements in place to forward deploy when needed?  Yes I understand there could be a situation were because of politics one of our allies might not allow us to forward deploy to use military force in a situation they don’t agree with but we have that situation now.  Witness Italy’s initial reluctance to allow operations against Libya from bases on their soil.  I’m not saying we should do any of these things but wonder if the politicians have looked at any of these solutions.  I know the military has, they’re always working issues like this.  The point I’m trying to make is simply this, IF it’s necessary to make major cuts in the Department of Defense WHILE we are still in a war does it make sense to cut those forces and assets needed to fight the war? There are a number of other things that could be cut and/or modified.  Think I’ll end here.  As always my views are my own.

General Beare began by reminding the Bloggers what the overall mission was for NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan (NTM-A):  “…the NTM-A mission is about assisting the ministry to build itself.  It’s about creating the national institutions that connect the ministry to the fielded forces…and it’s about providing the support to the training effort that brings in the new recruits, officer and patrolman, gives them the basic skills they need to join the forces, and provide the professional training inside that training system, so that the patrolmen can become leaders and the officers can become senior leaders in the national police force.”

The General stated, “Kabul has been effectively…secured by and solely by Afghan security forces…The Afghan national election was completely secured by Afghan security forces.  The Kabul Conference was completely secured by Afghan national security forces.  And it wasn’t just the cop on the street that was doing its job.  It was also their command and control systems, up to the national level, where the police and the army work together in their coordination centers.”

The General didn’t sugar coat his remarks and pointed out, “…there’s places which are still significantly challenged by the Taliban and others, which prohibits them from taking full responsibility for security on their own.”   General Beare said there was still a lot of work that remained to be done but seemed confident that the Afghan forces were on track to eventually take over security of the country.

I don’t disagree but still have in my mind the U.S. example of reconstruction efforts in the south after the Civil War and what happened after the Union troops left…major ugly ops that were not solved until 100 years later.  Some would say when many Americans still refuse to believe the slavery issue had a major role in the cause of the Civil War and current and key U.S. officials publically state the Jim Crow era wasn’t so bad, that the U.S. still hasn’t solved the problem…but that’s another blog.  I will say this, much of the world looked away from the atrocities that were the norm in the U.S. south in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, I don’t believe the world will cease watching what happens in Afghanistan after the coalition forces depart…at least not right away.  Additionally, as I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs on this topic, the coalition trainers are doing a lot of training in literacy, ethics, and leadership in an effort to get rid of the corruption problems and other issues.

General Beare provided some metrics to illustrate some of the positive changes.  He said during the same period of the surge of 30,000 coalition troops, “…the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police together grew by about 85,000…in the same time frame…And in this country of 34 provinces and 30 million people, that’s making a huge difference, and so those quantities are having a hugely positive impact.”

I asked how the effort to train women for the police force was going.  General Beare indicated the Ministry of the Interior had a goal of 5,000 women and currently numbered about 1,200.  Out of that total 182 were officers and there were an additional 260 civilian women working for the police in the ministry.

When asked if the Afghans were now able to train their own forces, General Beare said this was another area where vast improvements had been made.  “I’ll just flip the clock back very quickly to the situation back in ’09, when we stood up the command.  Back then there was about 35 training centers around this country, all of them being run as a bilateral effort with the government of Afghanistan, not necessarily connected as one training system…one of the common denominators…was that the majority of the instruction…was being done by a contractor…working through an interpreter…we’ve now codified what it means to be qualified to be an instructor.  And that standard…is five weeks of very high end training…that…program has already delivered about 450 (Afghan) what we call ‘train the trainers’ who are now – have deployed in the last month to those 37 training centers.  And by the end of the year, there will be 900.  And by the end of 2012, there will be over 1,600.”

The General also indicated they continued to solve the problem of police personnel getting paid. About 85% receive their pay electronically ensuring the money gets to them and not someone else.  Think I’ll end here.  Will finish up this series of blogs tomorrow.  As always my views are my own.

On April 19, 2011, I participated in a round table with Major General Gary Patton, Deputy Commander General NATO Training Mission Afghanistan (NTM-A).  The topic was Experience and Progress in Training the Afghan National Army.  On April 21, 2011 I participated in one with Major General Stuart Beare, Deputy Commander-Police NTM-A.  The topic was Growth and Professionalization of the Afghan National Police Force.  On May 3, 2011 I participated in a roundtable with Major General Richard Mills, former Commander, Regional Command Southwest.  The topic was The Evolving Security Situation in Afghanistan.  All three roundtables were very informative and as it has been with all of these events, no topic was off the table.

For this first blog I’ll cover Major General Patton’s roundtable.  He began by saying he had just spent time with a Congressional delegation led by House Speaker Boehner and answered the question:  “How is the Afghan Army doing?”  He wanted to pass on his answer to us and said he had broken it down into two parts: “quantity and quality”.  Looking first at quantity the General indicated they were making their goals.  This year’s goal for the Army was 171,600.  Currently the total is 159,363 indicating the Army was on track.  It is expected that about 90% of the goals for the officer and NCO corps will be met by October 2012. 

On the topic of retention, General Patton stated:  “…the army continues to make its retention goals.  The Afghans have set a goal of between 60% to 70% as success for a month’s worth of recontracting or retention.  This past month, … — exceeded that goal, … at 77 percent and on the — for the year, their year, solar year, which ended in the end of March, I’m able to give you the solar year retention rate, which was 69 percent for the year. So it fell squarely within their 60 (percent) to 70 percent goal … for recontracting. Those of course are soldiers and NCOs who have chosen to re-enlist and remain in service. So they’re making their retention goals…Over the course of the year, the solar year, again, which runs from March to March, the army met its recruiting goals by 104 percent, a total of 75,000 Afghans recruited into the Army, and again, meeting recruiting goals for every month of the — of the solar year.  So growth, retention and recruiting are on pace and on track and making good progress.”

In terms of quality, General Patton talked about the continued success of the literacy training program, stating teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic as part of basic training continues and is now paying off.  The General elaborated stating:  “Literacy is the process of educating soldiers that come in the army and prepare them, taking them from illiterate status to initially the first grade level and continuing education to a third grade level and then continuing education while they serve in the army to elevate them to whatever level they can reach.”

General Patton also said, “We are bringing Afghan NCOs and officers into a specialty program where we certify them as instructors and then take them through a series of levels of certification by which they attain essentially the distinction as premier trainers in the army. Today we have about 136 who have been through our premier trainer program equal — equivalent to what we would know as our drill sergeant program in the United States Army. And … — infusing them back into the training base, and they are training Afghans to train themselves. They have Afghans taking the lead more and more in both the individual training base, the leader training base, the collective unit training base across all of Afghanistan — today 23,000 soldiers in training, and that’s part of the overall growth program.”

When asked about whether reported incidents of Afghan soldiers turning and attacking fellow Afghans and coalition members and whether they were actually soldiers or impersonators, General Patton made several interesting points.

“I think what you see is really a combination. And the Afghans investigate into these situations very seriously. And I have sat down with the chief of the general staff of the army and the minister of defense — minister of defense of his ministry. And we’ve had very serious discussions and conversations about this problem. They take it very seriously. And they look at each incident on its own merits, and you see a combination of the situations you described, both impersonators, people who find a uniform, an army

or police uniform, and then launch their attack. And these are insurgents bent on, you know, violence, but impersonating — using the impersonation as a means of entry and so forth. And then you have the other cases of …– soldiers or policemen for whatever reason may be choosing to turn on their fellow comrades there.”

General Patton indicated to combat this the Ministry of Defense had issued a directive to soldiers emphasizing that “every soldier is a sensor” and must remain vigilant and “be able to sense surroundings…surrounding people, are able to detect those that might have an inkling or a motivation to turn on their fellow soldier.”  The General also talked about the complex vetting program they have such as the requirement for “every soldier coming in the army has to have two guarantor letters from village elders, educators, mullahs and that sort of thing from their home village.”  The vetting process also includes other things like identify and medical screening and drug testing.  He admits the system is not foolproof but the Afghans are working to improve it.

I asked the General, in his opinion, what was the biggest misperception the American public has about the training effort over there?  He replied:

“The misperception maybe is that the coalition is performing all of the training That was the case about a year ago. But since then, by virtue of the program the Afghans are training themselves…the Afghans are squarely in the lead in leading basic training; same for NCO training and same for officer training.  The branch schools, where we do special training, you see a mix of coalition still in the lead in some cases, especially in some of the specialty `courses like engineering, explosive ordnance and so forth.”

Think I’ll end here.  Still have some packing to do.  Will be traveling over the weekend and will continue the Afghanistan update next week.

     …if I’m understanding and hearing correctly, there was historical precedence as well as proof as we continued on with these enhanced interrogation techniques that they weren’t working, and in fact, were counterproductive. I was wondering how and why did the government make that decision? Did they not – were there any dissenting voices, or did they choose to ignore them?

Ken Gude said the government chose to ignore them stating:  “I think that the lessons of history are quite clear, and especially when you identify where the techniques that were used at the CIA black sites were derived from, which was the training of U.S. special forces soldiers, special forces operatives that was based on interrogation practices that were used against them in Korea that were developed by the Chinese and the Soviets largely to extract false confessions.  This, as Glenn mentioned before, the CIA’s KUBARK manual basically describes what not to do as an interrogator if you want to produce reliable and valuable intelligence information.  But in the wake of September 11th, just in those few, first months caught up in that moment, all of that history was cast aside. And unfortunately we had to re-learn it at great pain and great cost to the United States.”

Glenn Carle said there was a great deal of debate among various government agencies on it.  He gave insight into the issue by sharing his personal experience.

  “I was just one person among an infinite number. I was brought into a case that was considered to be – presented to me as a critical success and very important; it possibly could lead us to bin Laden, so this is a high honor. And I’m very excited; and they said, you will do whatever it takes to obtain the information that we need. Do you understand? To which I responded, we don’t do that. And the answer was, we do now. And I said, well, we would need at least a presidential finding, direct authorization from the president if something is of grave national security concern, signed off and approved by the relevant agencies and parties in the government.  And the answer was, well, we have it. The “it” was the infamous torture memo written by John Yoo, which when I finally saw the thing – I’m not a lawyer, but I studied Constitutional law, and I know my oath – it was a bit of hack work – I mean, clearly not in concert with the history of the United States, of habeas corpus, the Magna Carta, the whole thing that founds America and gives meaning to our flag.  And so then I was confronted with a situation of, OK, the president, the attorney general, the Department of Justice, the director of the CIA, the head of the Counterterrorism Center and the head of the unit that I was reporting to have all formally authorized this. And who are you, Glenn Carle, having been readied on this case for five minutes, to challenge the full, legal, authorized weight and orders of the United States government? Do you execute your orders or not? It’s a very acute dilemma.”

In the May 6^th edition of the Wall Street Journal, Michael Mukasey, attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009, wrote an oped called The Waterboarding Trail to bin Laden.  He seems to feel the program provided valuable intelligence and makes the point of saying intelligence that led to bin Laden had came about because of these practices and “… began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed …Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has said that, as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations. The Bush administration put these techniques in place only after rigorous analysis by the Justice Department, which concluded that they were lawful. Regrettably, that same administration gave them a name—‘enhanced interrogation techniques’—so absurdly antiseptic as to imply that it must conceal something unlawful.”

Mukasey also says the techniques were used on a small number of people.  He doesn’t give the exact number but says out of the thousands captured only 100 were questioned in the CIA run program and “fewer than one-third were subjected to these techniques.”

There is one fact that I seldom see mentioned in the press; and that is a lot of these techniques, to include waterboarding, have been used on U.S. troops as part of overall training.  I don’t know if they are still done but it was common place during my time in the service.  If you were going to certain assignments where you might go in harms way you were sent to survival training. Part of that included being locked up and treated like a prisoner of war.  I have to disclose I have no first hand experience with the training and the knowledge I have is based on stories co-workers told me over the years.  My first assignment in the navy required the training but because I was a female and the navy’s test case for assigning women to that particular job I was told I would not be allowed to go to that part of the training program.  I was eager to show they didn’t have to treat me different because of my sex.  Outraged I asked why and was told the school was not set up to handle women.  I asked if the Navy could guarantee if I was ever taken prisoner the “enemy” would return me because they had no facilities for women prisoners…but that’s another blog.

Back to the topic at hand, friends and peers over the years told of being slapped and subjected to waterboarding among many other things during the training.  I often wondered if U.S. officials who came up with the enhanced interrogation policy thought it wasn’t a draconian procedure since we subjected our own troops to it as part of their training.  The major difference is U.S. troops undergoing training knew they were being trained and could endure it because they knew it would end at a specific point in time.  I wonder if that made it easier for the policy makers to decide to use these techniques on the prisoners?  I don’t know.

As to what intelligence was used to find and kill Bin Laden.  To quote Oprah, what I know for sure is that when looking at problems the intelligence community uses information from many different sources.  As I’ve blogged many times, intelligence analysts screen millions of pieces of intelligence and out of all of that; it is rare to get a complete enough picture that would stand up in a court.  All of that information is screened, with relevant data fused together to form as complete a picture as possible.  In a 4 May article in Foreign Policy, Matthew Alexander stated: “…the information about the existence of a courier working for bin Laden was provided by several detainees, not just waterboarded al Qaeda operatives…The key pieces of information…were the courier’s real name and location.  His family name was first uncovered by CIA assets in Pakistan through other sources.  The NSA (National Security Agency) subsequently figured out his full name and location…”  As has been reported, even with all of information the intelligence community was able to provide, the Seals had only a little over 50% certainty that Bin Laden was in that compound.  This was a success for ALL of the intelligence community.

As for using enhanced interrogation techniques, I haven’t conducted an extensive investigation nor do I have the time or access to all of the information.  If in fact the majority of the people involved in the program felt it didn’t work and that other intelligence tactics, techniques and procedures were more productive…I don’t know why their input would be ignored by the higher ups.  I leave you with one cautionary statement.  Those of us sitting on the sidelines without access to all of the information should be very careful with condemning one side or the other.  This is too important a topic to discuss using only media sound bites as the primary source of information.  Again as always my views are my own.

Participating in the call were Major General (Retired) Paul Eaton, National Security Network Senior Advisor, Ken Gude, Managing Director for National Security at CAP, Matthew Alexander, Air Force Officer and interrogator who led the interrogation team that tracked down the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, and Glenn L. Carle, former CIA Clandestine Service officer and Deputy National Intelligence officer for Transnational Threats.

Before continuing on, it’s probably useful to better define what the discussion revolved around. What are enhanced interrogation techniques?  According to Glenn Carle it’s a “euphemism for torture”. While participants in the press call didn’t specify details of what types of torture was and/or is still being used, my underlying assumption going in was they were primarily referring to water boarding.  According to a 2005 ABC news report by Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, enhanced interrogation techniques consist of the following:

“1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.”

Of all of these techniques, water boarding is the most controversial.  The ABC report provided some more insight on the procedure: “According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda’s toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.”

Without exception all of the participants on the press call said these techniques did not work.  Glenn Carle stated:  “They do not work; they are – they cause retrograde motion from what you’re seeking to accomplish. They increase resentment, not cooperation. They increase the difficulty in assessing what information you do hear is valid.  They increase the likelihood that you will be given disinformation and have opposition from the person that you’re interrogating, across the board. Not a good thing.”

Matthew Alexander stated:

 “I never saw enhanced interrogation techniques work in Iraq; I never saw even harsh techniques work in Iraq. In every case I saw them slow us down, and they were always counterproductive to trying to get people to cooperate.  In going back to the definition of ‘works,’ any time we talk about enhanced interrogation techniques, we need to talk about the long-term negative consequences, such as the fact – that I witnessed in Iraq – which was it was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers…I’ll be the person to go on record and say that we do know that other interrogation techniques would have worked and produced more info definitively. And why do I say that? Because we have Saddam Hussein, who was captured without using them, and we have Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who my team tracked down and killed, without using them. We have an entire generation of interrogators from World War II, Vietnam, Panama, first Gulf War – all who did their jobs without enhanced interrogation techniques. So there’s no doubt in my mind that we could have done more without enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Glenn Carl commenting on his experience while a CIA clandestine officer stated:

“I refused directly, out of hand, that I – myself – using any physical measures at the time.  But I had been trained from the get-go – I’d been trained that psychological measures worked.  This is disorienting someone’s diurnal – disrupting diurnal rhythms, things of that nature. I found, however, that the guidance manual that goes back to the famous KUBARK or KUBARK Manual that goes back to the Korean War in the early ’60s was quite prescient. I found it, actually, very, very good, and it says these measures will increase resentment and will not increase a willingness of the person or the likelihood that the person will share information.  That was exactly my experience, and I just found it appalling, frankly, that we would use them. And then I did a little research, and the origin of the program – the American techniques – come from two sources: the GI experience in the Korean War with the North Koreans and the Soviets’ intelligence service, the NKVD, in the 1930s with the show trials. The objectives of each of those times was to extract a confession, to break a person to sign a piece of paper, not to obtain intelligence. And through a strange transformation somehow our government decided that, or some experts decided that these were effective means of obtaining information.  Nothing could be further from the truth. It didn’t work, it had the opposite effect, and my personal experience of making a person more likely to cooperate, all it did was increase resentment and misery, but not make someone more likely to share information.

Major General (Retired) Eaton stated: 

“When I get in arguments with those who endorse enhanced interrogation techniques, they say, I’ll do anything I need to do to achieve a tactical gain, while dismissing the strategic problem associated with dehumanizing – which is what happens when we use these EITs; you’re dehumanizing the subject that you’re detaining.  When we look at WWII and the hundreds of thousands of Germans and Italian prisoners who gave up to American military power to the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis who gave up, who surrendered during Gulf War I, these are men that we did not have to kill. They knew that

they would be better treated by the American soldier than their own forces would treat prisoners.  So they surrendered.”

Think I’ll end here for now.  Don’t like to make these blogs too long.  Will continue tomorrow with highlights from the press call.  Will also cover the views of those who don’t agree.  Michael Mukasey, the Attorney General from 2007 to 2009 wrote an excellent oped in the Wall Street Journel on May 6^th.  I’ll also throw in my thoughts on the topic.  As always  my views are my own.

Thought I’d pass on my thoughts.  First it emphasizes to me that those of us sitting on the sidelines should be very careful with criticisms of the intelligence community and national security officials to include of course the President.  I’ve blogged about this before but it bears repeating.  We simply do not have access to all of the information that the President and his team are receiving.  The intelligence community collects a huge amount of information.  Consider this, on March 2^nd of this year the Navy sponsored its second Navy Information Day.  The Navy pointed out it took two centuries to fill the Library of Congress with:

-         29 million books and periodicals

-         2.4 million recording

-         29 million photographs

-         2.4 million maps

-         29 million manuscripts

In today’s intelligence environment that much information is generated every 5 minutes.  Because the terrorists heavily depend on the internet and social media that stuff has to be looked at as well.  Testifying before Congress on February 16^th, CIA Director Leon Panetta says there are 600 million Facebook accounts, 190 million twitter, and 35,000 hours of You Tube that is upgraded everyday.  It is not impossible to provide the decision makers with “actionable” intelligence but it is always a challenge.  According to news report when President Obama gave the go ahead for the attack, the intelligence community could not say for certain that Bin Laden was in the building.

The challenge of the intelligence community is to sift through all of this and put together the pieces of a puzzle.  Then you have to get the information into the hands of the decision makers in the time and format they need to make their decisions.  Seldom will you have enough information to be 100% certain.  Which brings me to my next point; President Obama made a very gutsy call.  According to news reports, one of the plans under considering was using B-2 aircraft to bomb the building.  Apparently that was rejected because it would be hard to verify the strike had killed Bin Laden.  To decide instead to use Special Forces who had to fly into the heart of Pakistan and enter a building that they didn’t know if Bin Laden was still there and if he was where was he in the building….gutsy.  Remember what happened when the U.S. tried a similar mission to rescue Americans being held hostage by the Iranians during President Carter’s administration.

I’m not saying the media should never criticize, simply make sure you do your research and stick to what you know.  If you’re making an educated guess or have incomplete information, you need to say so. I remember General Colin Powell said what he wanted from an intelligence professional was to tell him what you knew, tell him what you don’t know and then tell him what was the significance of what you didn’t know.  I was taught similar guidelines during my time in the military as an intelligence professional.

The last point I’d like to make is that this was an effort of the entire intelligence community which includes many in their late teens and early 20’s.  The media spends a lot of time saying the intelligence community does not share information.  I’ve said before and will probably say again there is actually quite a lot of information that is shared.  That is part of the problem I mentioned earlier when discussing the large amounts of data the intelligence community collects.  Check the web sites of the 16 intelligences agencies (17 if you count the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) and you’ll get a good idea of who collects what types of information.  For a really good read on how all of this works, I suggest Jeffrey T. Richelson’s book The US Intelligence Community.  It’s the best book I’ve read on the topic.

Bin Laden’s death does not end the war on terror.  There is still a considerable threat out there.  Testifying before Congress this past March, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Ronal Burgess stated: 

“Before moving on from the discussion of Afghanistan, it is fitting that I discuss al- Qaida’s senior leadership. On Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) safe havens continue to enable militant groups targeting Pakistan and Afghanistan, including the Taliban and al-Qaida.  Sustained counterterrorism pressure since 2008 has resulted in the deaths of dozens of al-Qaida and other militant leaders although the networks continue to operate, exploiting unpopular actions by Islamabad through targeted propaganda…Despite setbacks, al-Qaida persistently shows it can recruit, train, and deploy operatives and stay in contact with external networks. It exports its terrorist agenda, and plans, supports, and directs attacks against the United States and Europe, in addition to broader Western interests.”

One final point.  I live in a very liberal Colorado town.  Many folks who voted for President Obama have complained to me because he didn’t immediately bring home the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I always point out no matter what a candidate says before he or she assumes office, they do not have a complete picture of all the national security mind fields out there. War can break out in may locations on any given day.  Once the new folks assume office and get briefed up on all of the threats, I suspect it’s a real eye opener.  The issue then is how they want to approach the various problems.  Do they want to continue down the path of their predecessor?  Do they come up with a new plane?  Do they wash their hands and walk away?  Much has bee written about President Obama’s decision to heavily use armed drones going after terrorist leaders.

Think I’ll end for now. As always my views are my own.