Why Not Send 30,000 Troops to Somalia?

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Spencer focused on a really important part of the Afghanistan debate today–the struggle the Administration is having to claim that al Qaeda and its affiliates in Af-Pak pose a direct threat to the US.

“Syndicate of terror” was how Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the relationship between al-Qaeda and the various insurgent and terrorist networks across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a position eagerly endorsed by her colleagues Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen. Anticipating the argument that the syndicate does not substantially threaten the United States at home, Clinton said that “at the head of the table,” like a “Mafia family,” sat al-Qaeda. And that means, she continued during her testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that al-Qaeda retains a capability to export terrorism to “Yemen, Somalia or, indeed, Denver” that is “unmatched” — a reference to the recently arrested Najibullah Zazi. Zazi’s case, which has yet to go to trial, shows a plot that traces “back to al-Qaeda-originated training camps and [a] training program” in Pakistan.

This is going to be one of the most controversial and disputed elements of the Obama administration’s strategy: the scope of the threat and the directness of the links between al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas; its strategic depth through the “syndicate” on each side of the Afghanistan and Pakistan border; and that syndicate’s capabilities to export destruction.

[snip]

I am told by senior administration officials that the autumn Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy was informed by 30 intelligence products, many of which were directly produced for the review, and several of which focused on the question of al-Qaeda’s global reach from the Pakistani tribal areas. I’m also told that the military is increasingly looking at the nexus between al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani network in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and a rising extremist ally, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. But the link between that nexus and its present capability to reach the United States at home, to put it as neutrally as I can, has not been publicly demonstrated, and requires much further and deeper exposition — and, frankly, proof — than the administration has provided.

Now, Spencer is focusing on whether Najibullah Zazi will end up having been directly tied to Afghanistan or Pakistan. That’s the case Hillary was making. But it’s not clear the case is as strong as she suggested.

But I think there’s another way to make the same point–the argument Russ Feingold has been making. Rather than focusing on whether Afghanistan is the headquarters of al Qaeda, Feingold focuses on all the other places where al Qaeda is active where we’re not sending 30,000 troops (Feingold admits that Pakistan is important to al Qaeda right now, which raises the question of whether we’re sending these 30,000 for Afghanistan or Pakistan).

BLITZER: OK.

Let’s talk a little bit about why you oppose what the president is doing. What’s wrong with his logic?

FEINGOLD: Well, it just doesn’t add up for me.

The president says, we’re doing this. We’re adding 30,000, 35,000 troops to finish the job. And I ask the question, “What job?” because the president has been so eloquent in pointing out our issue is fighting al Qaeda.

The argument falls apart when you realize that al Qaeda does not have its headquarters in Afghanistan anymore. It is headquartered in Pakistan. It is active in Somalia, and Yemen, North Africa, affiliates of it in Southeast Asia.

Why does it make sense to have a huge ground presence in Afghanistan to deal with a small al Qaeda contingent, when we don’t do that in so many other countries where we’re actually having some success without invading the country and attacking those that are part of al Qaeda? It doesn’t make sense.

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Politico’s VandeHei and Allen Join the “Judy Miller Club for Cheney Stenographers”

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graphic: ImageChef.com

graphic: ImageChef.com

Suppose you had a 90-minute interview with Dick Cheney just after a Senate report came out concluding–among other things–that,

After bin Laden’s escape, some military and intelligence analysts and the press criticized the Pentagon’s failure to mount a full-scale attack despite the tough rhetoric by President Bush. Franks, Vice President Dick Cheney and others defended the decision, arguing that the intelligence was inconclusive about the Al Qaeda leader’s location. But the review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.

Don’t you think you’d ask him, explicitly, why he had defended the decision not to send US troops after Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora when it was clear that the decision had allowed bin Laden to escape? “Mr. Cheney,” you might ask, “it has been shown pretty irrefutably that you let OBL get away. Why’d you defend your decision allowing him to escape when you knew it had led to his escape? Why did you ignore Henry Crumpton’s warning–briefed to you and President Bush personally at the end of November 2001–that an escape route to Pakistan was wide open and Afghan troops wouldn’t prevent OBL form escaping through it?”

But this is as close as Jim “Pool Boy” VandeHei and Mike Allen got in an interview with Cheney:

But Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

I guess a follow-up question would have been too much to ask for from Pool Boy and his sidekick?

After apparently not asking such an obvious question, after getting stiffed on their more general question about Cheney and Bush’s diversion of resources to the Iraq War (I don’t suppose Pool Boy and friend have been watching the Iraq Inquiry in the UK, either, and I’m quite certain it’d be too much for them to ask about Cheney’s personal role fucking up our Pakistan policy in more recent years), they then serve as stenographers for yet another Cheney attack on Obama.

Somehow, VandeHei and Allen managed amazing feats of hunting mastery last week, but they couldn’t manage to ask glaringly obvious questions before then turning around and writing down every little thing Cheney told them to say.

And here’s another question.

It is just a remarkable coincidence that the day after John Harris invented this complaint,

Politicians of both parties have embraced the idea that this country — because of its power and/or the hand of Providence — should be a singular force in the world. It would be hugely unwelcome for Obama if the perception took root that he is comfortable with a relative decline in U.S. influence or position in the world.

On this score, the reviews of Obama’s recent Asia trip were harsh.

His peculiar bow to the emperor of Japan was symbolic. But his lots-of-velvet, not-much-iron approach to China had substantive implications.

On the left, the budding storyline is that Obama has retreated from human rights in the name of cynical realism. On the right, it is that he is more interested in being President of the World than President of the United States, a critique that will be heard more in December as he stops in Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize and then in Copenhagen for an international summit on curbing greenhouse gases.

Cheney voiced precisely that complaint?

During the campaign, Cheney recalled, he saw Obama as “sort of a mainline, traditional Democrat — liberal, from the liberal wing of the party.” But Cheney said he is increasingly persuaded by the notion that Obama “doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism — the idea that the United States is a special nation, that we are the greatest, freest nation mankind has ever known.”

“When I see the way he operates, I am increasingly convinced that he’s not as committed to or as wedded to that concept as most of the presidents I’ve known, Republican or Democrat,” he said. “I am worried. And I find as I get out around the country, a lot of other people are worried, too.”

What a remarkable coinkydink, that the Pool Boy’s editor is the only other person in the country worried about Obama and exceptionalism.

The Irony of Tora Bora

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Picture 160Understand that–for better or worse–the new report released by John Kerry on how Osama bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora is a designed to be a political document. It offers the following “irony” to the chattering classes the weekend before Obama announces his new Afghanistan strategy,

Ironically, one of the guiding principles of the Afghan model was to avoid immersing the United States in a protracted insurgency by sending in too many troops and stirring up anti-American sentiment. In the end, the unwillingness to bend the operational plan to deploy the troops required to take advantage of solid intelligence and unique circumstances to kill or capture bin Laden paved the way for exactly what we had hoped to avoid—a protracted insurgency that has cost more lives than anyone estimates would have been lost in a full-blown assault on Tora Bora. Further, the dangerous contagion of rising violence and instability in Afghanistan has spread to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally of the United States which is now wracked by deadly terrorist bombings as it conducts its own costly military campaign against a domestic, Taliban-related insurgency.

The report relies on just a few interviews, but mostly on existing histories (including a Special Ops Command history included as an appendix) and even an extended column from Michael O’Hanlon (also included as an appendix)–not exactly the kind of guy I’m thrilled to see at the center of a taxpayer funded report. I view the report as the logical endpoint of Kerry’s decision to hire journalist Douglas Frantz (whose biography of AQ Khan is cited once) to head investigations.

Which is not to say the research isn’t valid. Rather, that the timing and format of the report seems designed to emphasize the irony, noted above, and other little ironies such as the way our desire to get the corrupt Hamid Karzai installed as leader of Afghanistan affected our willingness to commit troops at Tora Bora.

[Franks’ second-in-command during the war, General Michael DeLong] amplified the reasons for not sending American troops after bin Laden. ‘‘The real reason we didn’t go in with U.S. troops was that we hadn’t had the election yet,’’ he said in the staff interview, a reference to the installation of Hamid Karzai as the interim leader of Afghanistan. ‘‘We didn’t want to have U.S. forces fighting before Karzai was in power. We wanted to create a stable country and that was more important than going after bin Laden at the time.’’

And the conclusion (less well supported by the facts presented in the report) that the same unwillingness to commit troops to Afghanistan in 2001 led to Mullah Omar’s escape.

The same shortage of U.S. troops allowed Mullah Mohammed Omar and other Taliban leaders to escape. A semi-literate leader who fled Kandahar on a motorbike, Mullah Omar has re-emerged at the helm of the Taliban-led insurgency, which has grown more sophisticated and lethal in recent years and now controls swaths of Afghanistan. The Taliban, which is aligned with a loose network of other militant groups and maintains ties to Al Qaeda, has established shadow governments in many of Afghanistan’s provinces and is capable of mounting increasingly complex attacks on American and NATO forces. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who helped develop the Obama administration’s Afghan policy, recently referred to the mullah’s return to power ‘‘one of the most remarkable military comebacks in modern history.’’

All these ironies, delivered just in time to play into the debate that will intensify next week.

The Iraq War Files

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A number of people have been linking to the Guardian and now the AP story on the British Iraq War files that show that preparation of British forces was “appalling,” largely because Tony Blair kept the decision to go into Iraq–which he made as early as February 2002–on such a close hold.

But I wanted to point to the Telegraph version of this story for two reasons.

On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph has obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports on “lessons learnt” which shed new light on “significant shortcomings” at all levels.

[snip]

The reports disclose that:

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, misled MPs and the public throughout 2002 when he claimed that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change” and that there had been no planning for military action. In fact, British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002.

The need to conceal this from Parliament and all but “very small numbers” of officials “constrained” the planning process. The result was a “rushed”operation “lacking in coherence and resources” which caused “significant risk” to troops and “critical failure” in the post-war period.

Operations were so under-resourced that some troops went into action with only five bullets each. Others had to deploy to war on civilian airlines, taking their equipment as hand luggage. Some troops had weapons confiscated by airport security.

Commanders reported that the Army’s main radio system “tended to drop out at around noon each day because of the heat”. One described the supply chain as “absolutely appalling”, saying: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”

First, note the reporter: Andrew Gilligan. He’s the guy who reported that the case for war against Iraq had been “sexed up” to justify war when no real cause existed. In other words, there is some continuity between that story and this one.

Also, the Telegraph posted many of these documents on its website, including the full report.

Gilligan seems poised to get some well-earned vindication as the Iraq War inquiry begins this week. So it probably pays to keep an eye on the Telegraph’s coverage.

Hasan and War Crimes and Congressional Briefings

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At first, I didn’t make too much over this report that Nidal Hasan may have gone on a killing spree because his requests that his patients be investigated for war crimes was denied.

Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan sought to have some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes based on statements they made during psychiatric sessions with him, a captain who served on the base said Monday.

Other psychiatrists complained to superiors that Hasan’s actions violated doctor-patient confidentiality, Capt. Shannon Meehan told The Dallas Morning News.

[snip]

It wasn’t clear Monday what information Hasan received from patients and what became of his requests for prosecution. ABC News, citing anonymous sources, reported that his superiors rejected the requests, and that investigators suspect this triggered the shootings.

But then I got interested that the same article reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the killing was postponed yesterday.

That’s because the House Intelligence Committee has just given Chair Silvestre Reyes’ explanation for the postponement.

Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings. The NSC has directed that the leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking minority members of the relevant congressional committees receive briefings first.

I have been told that the Director of National Intelligence is still committed to providing the full membership a briefing on the activities within the jurisdiction of this Committee. I believe that this will occur, and I will push to schedule a briefing before the end of this week. [my emphasis]

As Spencer reported last week, John Brennan got put in charge of reviewing what the IC knew of Hasan last week.

On November 6, 2009, I directed that an immediate inventory be conducted of all intelligence in U.S. Government files that existed prior to November 6, 2009, relevant to the tragic shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, especially anything having to do with the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, U.S. Army. In addition, I directed an immediate review be initiated to determine how any such intelligence was handled, shared, and acted upon within individual departments and agencies and what intelligence was shared with others. This inventory and review shall be conducted in a manner that does not interfere with the ongoing criminal investigations of the Fort Hood shooting.

The results of this inventory and review, as well as any recommendations for improvements to procedures and practices, shall be provided to John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who will serve as the principal point of contact on this matter for the White House. Preliminary results of this review shall be provided by November 30, 2009.

But back when Obama made that decision, it did not object to the many briefings scheduled. Only now it’s NSC–presumably Brennan–dictating what briefings the various committees will get, and making the decision to postpone the general committee briefings.

The NSC has just basically made this a Gang of Eight type of briefing (though they seem to be including other Chairs besides Intelligence)–if only for the moment. It may be they’re hiding more extensive known ties to al Qaeda than has been reported (by everyone except Crazy Pete Hoekstra). Or it may be they’re trying to keep something else quiet.

The Cyber-Surge

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Shane Harris has a long article detailing the state of the US cyberwarfare capability. The hook for the story, though, is a claim that cyberwarfare championed by Michael McConnell and David Petraeus in Iraq in 2007 was as critical to turning the war around as the conventional surge.

In May 2007, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency, based at Fort Meade, Md., to launch a sophisticated attack on an enemy thousands of miles away without firing a bullet or dropping a bomb.

At the request of his national intelligence director, Bush ordered an NSA cyberattack on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings. The devices allowed the fighters to coordinate their strikes and, later, post videos of the attacks on the Internet to recruit followers. According to a former senior administration official who was present at an Oval Office meeting when the president authorized the attack, the operation helped U.S. forces to commandeer the Iraqi fighters communications system. With this capability, the Americans could deceive their adversaries with false information, including messages to lead unwitting insurgents into the fire of waiting U.S. soldiers.

Now, I hope the tech wonks read the whole article and let us know what they think of the overall article (Harris is well-sourced in the vicinity of Ft. Meade).

But for the moment I’d like to focus on the timing and the personalities: It was Petraeus and McConnell, with cyberwarfare, in Iraq, in 2007. That is, David Petraeus, currently in charge of both our wars. And McConnell, who in 2007 was busy pushing for expanded electronic surveillance authority, and has long been a champion of outsourcing intelligence, precisely this kind of thing (he’s currently back at Booz Allen).

No wonder there has been so much concern about putting NSA in charge of the nation’s cyber-defense.

Priming the Pump

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Picture 142Some years ago when Paul Wolfowitz was asked why we went to war in Iraq but not North Korea, he noted that Iraq “swims on a sea of oil.” [Update: Note worldwidehappieness‘ comment that the Guardian’s reporting on this–and therefore this syntax–took Wolfowitz’ quote out of context.]  And while less obviously a war for oil, our presence in Afghanistan promises to keep the US in the “Great Game” in central asia fighting for oil. More recently, former US officials Zal Khalilzad and Jay Garner are cashing in on their Iraq experience to win oil contracts there.

Yet, as a Deloitte report lays out, our giant war machine requires more and more oil every year to go to war to control these oil resources. (h/t Danger Room)

Deloitte conducted a study of energy use in wartime from World War II (WWII) through the current Middle East wars, and found that there has been a 175% increase in gallons of fuel consumed per U.S. soldier per day since the Vietnam conflict. In today’s conflicts, fuel consumption is 22 gallons used, per soldier, per day, for an average annual increase of 2.6% in the last 40 years, with an expected 1.5% annual growth rate through 2017. This has been driven by several factors: the increasing mechanization of technologies used in wartime, the expeditionary nature of conflict requiring mobility over long distances, and the rugged terrain and the irregular warfare nature of operations.

The increase has occurred despite the significant increase in fuel efficiency in internal combustion and jet engines used with armored vehicles, tanks, ships and jet aircraft, and the use of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. However, these significant improvements in efficiency are vastly overshadowed by the higher number of vehicles and increasing rate of use. Furthermore, the increasing number of convoys required to transport an every increasing requirement for fossil fuels is itself a root cause of casualties, both wounded and killed in action.

There is, hopefully, an ironic teleology here: the military is being forced to use more and more alternative fuels. But the use of those alternative fuels will, to a large degree, make this giant oil-sucking war machine less critical.

Anyway, perhaps we can use this stat to put more federal money into alternative fuels.

More Insane Rantings from the Crazy Man in the Attic

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Someone let Dick “PapaDick” Cheney out of his undisclosed location last night–they even gave him an award for being a “keeper of the flame.” In spite of the fact that the press is covering it as another serious attack from Cheney, I find it pretty laughable.

How else to treat a speech, for example, in which PapaDick boasts that Rummy got this “flame-keeper” award before him?

I’m told that among those you’ve recognized before me was my friend Don Rumsfeld. I don’t mind that a bit. It fits something of a pattern. In a career that includes being chief of staff, congressman, and secretary of defense, I haven’t had much that Don didn’t get first. But truth be told, any award once conferred on Donald Rumsfeld carries extra luster, and I am very proud to see my name added to such a distinguished list.

From that auspicious start, Cheney launches into a screed against Obama for shutting down missile defense in Czech Republic and Poland–he complains that Obama did not stand by the agreements that Cheney and Bush made.

Most anyone who is given responsibility in matters of national security quickly comes to appreciate the commitments and structures put in place by others who came before. You deploy a military force that was planned and funded by your predecessors. You inherit relationships with partners and obligations to allies that were first undertaken years and even generations earlier. With the authority you hold for a little while, you have great freedom of action. And whatever course you follow, the essential thing is always to keep commitments, and to leave no doubts about the credibility of your country’s word.So among my other concerns about the drift of events under the present administration, I consider the abandonment of missile defense in Eastern Europe to be a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith.

It is certainly not a model of diplomacy when the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic are informed of such a decision at the last minute in midnight phone calls. It took a long time and lot of political courage in those countries to arrange for our interceptor system in Poland and the radar system in the Czech Republic. Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved, just like that – with apparently little, if any, consultation.

But he moves directly from that complaint to complaining that Obama is honoring the commitment Bush made to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

Next door in Iraq, it is vitally important that President Obama, in his rush to withdraw troops, not undermine the progress we’ve made in recent years. Read more →

The Sexing-Up Sickness

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One of the British flacks who helped us lie our way through the Iraq war is now trying to claim disability from the stress of telling those lies. (h/t Tom Ricks)

A Ministry of Defence press officer has claimed that being forced to tell lies about the war in Iraq has left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

John Salisbury-Baker, 62, who spoke for the Armed Forces in the North East, said that he had struggled to cope with a stress-related condition for the past two years. He is based at the Imphal Barracks in York.

He is pursuing a claim for disability discrimination on the grounds that the stress of the job has effectively left him physically disabled.

Mr Salisbury-Baker is expected to tell a tribunal panel later this year that he had to defend the “morally indefensible” when telling the media that army vehicles such as Snatch Land Rovers were capable of withstanding roadside bombs.

I’m sure this guy feels terrible. He should. But he has a really bizarre sense of obligation. I’m sure he was ordered to lie. But that’s slightly different from "having to." It’s just a pretty way of saying "choosing to avoid the repercussions of a moral act." 

A moral act that would have left him far healthier, mentally, I’m guessing.

Honoring Service Rather than Trumping Up War

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Seven years ago, Dick Cheney addressed the Veterans of Foreign War national convention (George Bush was otherwise occupied in Crawford, clearing brush). In a speech he did not have vetted by the Intelligence Community (as was normal), Cheney made the claims about Iraq having nukes that served as a foundation for the Iraq War campaign rolled out just a few weeks later (remember, you don’t introduce a new product in August).

The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid appraisal of the facts. After his defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam agreed under to U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 to cease all development of weapons of mass destruction. He agreed to end his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to destroy his chemical and his biological weapons. He further agreed to admit U.N. inspection teams into his country to ensure that he was in fact complying with these terms.

In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each of these agreements. The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.

On the nuclear question, many of you will recall that Saddam’s nuclear ambitions suffered a severe setback in 1981 when the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor. They suffered another major blow in Desert Storm and its aftermath.

But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors — including Saddam’s own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam’s direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.

Today, Obama is the one addressing the VFW. While he’s describing his stance in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is, at the same time, repeating his promise to America’s service men and women.

That is why I have made this pledge to our armed forces: I will only send you into harm’s way when it is absolutely necessary. Read more →