http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/ 15 Phillip Carter on national security and the military. en Copyright 2008 Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:07:53 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss This month's Military Review -- the in-house journal for the Army's leadership and staff college at Fort Leavenworth -- contains a bunch of great stuff. One of the best articles comes from Andrew Birtle, a senior military historian who has authored two of the better books on the subject of counterinsurgency. In his article, titled "Persuasion and Coercion in Counterinsurgency Warfare," Birtle examines the role that force plays in "winning hearts and minds," and comes to some interesting and important conclusions about the need to balance hard and soft power during these endeavors. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/force_and_counterinsurgency.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/force_and_counterinsurgency.html Counterinsurgency Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:07:53 -0400 Photo: Warren Zinn Combat sears the mind and body in ways we can only begin to understand. Everyone comes home from war changed. Tragically, many troops have come home from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from chronic combat stress, and many have gone on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder. Army Spec. Joe Dwyer was one of those soldiers. He went to war as a combat medic with the 3rd Infantry Division, serving with 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, during its headlong rush to Baghdad in 2003. Immortalized by a Military Times photograph depicting him carrying a young Iraqi child, he went on to see a great deal of suffering on all sides during his tour, and he brought many ghosts home with him. Dwyer tried mightily to beat these demons, but eventually succumbed to the struggle. On June 28, he died from the effects of various chemicals he ingested to kill http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/he_was_a_very_good_and_caring.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/he_was_a_very_good_and_caring.html Iraq Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Yesterday's Post featured a really interesting story about how many detainees captured abroad in the war on terrorism have a forensic trail that leads to criminal activity inside the United States. There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint in Tikrit who claimed to be a dirt farmer but had 11 felony charges in the United States, including assault with a deadly weapon. The records suggest that potential enemies abroad know a great deal about the United States because many of them have lived here, officials said. The matches also reflect the power of sharing data across agencies and even countries, data that links an identity to a distinguishing human characteristic such as a fingerprint.... The fingerprinting of detainees overseas began as ad-hoc FBI and U.S. military efforts shortly after the Sept. 11, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/csi_iraq.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/csi_iraq.html Counterterrorism Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:00:00 -0400 Marie Colvin reported in the Times of London this weekend about the intense fighting in Mosul between an amalgam of U.S. and Iraqi forces and al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia fighters. The assault appears to be unfolding similarly to other initiatives: cordon of the city, followed by the establishment of movement control measures like checkpoints, followed by raids on insurgent strongholds and targeted individuals. Colvin reported the tactics are working and that the U.S.-Iraqi coalition has scored a number of important successes in the past 10 days, such as the killing of an Al Qaeda leader who called himself the "Emir of Mosul." Momentum appears to be on the U.S. side. But Mosul is a large city, and it will be difficult to clear it entirely -- and to follow this initiative with successful efforts in the political, economic and reconstruction areas. As one of Iraq's three largest cities, Mosul's fate matters a great http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/the_battle_for_mosul.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/the_battle_for_mosul.html Iraq Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400 Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is no shrinking violet. Like his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he has worked hard over the past several months to demonstrate that he takes an independent, fact-based approach to the problems of the day, whether the issue is Iraq force levels or dissent within the force. Yesterday, Mullen continued that tradition with comments at a Pentagon press conference spelling out the tradeoffs between keeping troops in Iraq and deploying them to Afghanistan. Here's what he had to say: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/getting_realistic_about_iraq.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/getting_realistic_about_iraq.html Iraq Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:45:25 -0400 Columnist Christopher Hitchens decided to try out for a Darwin Award (or whatever the equivalent honor is when you survive an incredibly dumb act) by recruiting a team of special operations troops to waterboard him. He then wrote an article about what it felt like for Vanity Fair. Hitch's verdict? "If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture." Honestly, I thought we learned in grade school to be a little smarter than this -- that it wasn't necessary to stick a metal fork in the electrical socket to know there was electricity there. Unfortunately, for some people personal experience trumps all other forms of learning, and they must learn at the school of hard knocks. Or, in this case, the school of hard torture. What next? Will we wake up to read this headline in Vanity Fair? Hitchens Loses Legs to Munition in Southern http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/stupid_is_as_hitchens_does.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/stupid_is_as_hitchens_does.html Torture Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:30:02 -0400 In an important Guantanamo Bay habeas corpus case last week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a stunning blow to the federal government, ordering it to release, transfer or hold a new hearing for a detainee whose case had been percolating through the courts for years. Huzaifa Parhat, a Chinese Uighur detainee, had been held by the Pentagon as an enemy combatant, and his detention had been reviewed by the Pentagon's administrative tribunals. But after reviewing the evidence, three judges on the D.C. Circuit (including David Sentelle, one of its most conservative) decided otherwise, sternly rebuking the government for its flimsy case in a just-declassified opinion. According to today's Post: At issue was whether a military tribunal fairly weighed evidence that the government alleged linked Parhat to a group with purported ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Parhat, a member of the Muslim Uighur movement that is seeking a http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/the_law_and_the_war.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/07/the_law_and_the_war.html Law Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:20:04 -0400 I was saddened yesterday to read a press release from the Pentagon announcing the death of Chief Warrant Officer Robert Hammett, who was killed in action on Tuesday in Sadr City along with Maj. Dwayne Kelley of the 432nd Civil Affairs Battalion. I knew Chief Hammett and served with him in Baqubah, Iraq, during my tour in 2005-06. He was the air defense chief for the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, at FOB Warhorse. I spent several nights inside the brigade's command center or out at the helipad talking with him while waiting for helicopters. He was a superbly brilliant officer who had a gift for relating to people. We will all miss him greatly, and keep his family in our thoughts and prayers. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/taps_for_chief_hammett.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/taps_for_chief_hammett.html Iraq Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:00:07 -0400 "Democracy dies behind closed doors," Judge Damon Keith wrote in an opinion for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding media and public access to terrorism cases. Our theory of government also dies in hearings like this one, featuring David Addington and John Yoo -- memorably described by Dana Milbank and Emily Bazelon in a pair of columns. Calling Addington and Yoo hostile witnesses doesn't begin to describe the level of their contempt for Congress, the hearing and the democratic processes that brought them to testify by way of a subpoena. Check out this exchange: Could the president ever be justified in breaking the law? "I'm not going to answer a legal opinion on every imaginable set of facts any human being could think of," Addington growled. Did he consult Congress when interpreting torture laws? "That's irrelevant," he barked. Would it be legal to torture a detainee's child? "I'm not http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/hostile_witness.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/hostile_witness.html Law Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:00:00 -0400 In today's Post, Al Kamen rightly fires a few shots of moral approbation at the senior leaders of the National Guard for holding their annual conference in the Virgin Islands. No doubt so they could conduct a feasibility study of snorkeling for the new Army physical fitness test. Kamen writes: Hundreds of their top state and national leaders were also away from home this week, deployed to protect the Eastern Caribbean from infiltration by our enemies. Yes, it's the Adjutants General Association of the United States Spring Conference on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, aptly titled "Guarding Paradise With Culture and Spice." The week-long gathering of the top brass -- with a separate agenda for spouses that includes much touring, boating and shopping -- is being held at the spectacular Frenchman's Reef & Morning Star Marriott Beach Resort, with great golfing opportunities and other luxury amenities for the http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/boondoggle_in_paradise.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/boondoggle_in_paradise.html Civil-Military Relations Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:13:47 -0400 Big news from the Supreme Court today. A 5-4 majority decided to strike down the D.C. gun control law as an unconstitutional violation of Dick Heller's right to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment. I'm going through Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion now, and one thing that leaps out at me is the careful way he limits the scope of the court's decision. He carves out two very important limitations on the 2nd Amendment's firearms right -- exceptions so big that they encompass nearly all gun control in existence today, save those most extreme bans like that in D.C.: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/not_a_bang_but_a_whimper.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/not_a_bang_but_a_whimper.html Law Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:28:46 -0400 President Bush announced today that he was lifting certain trade sanctions against North Korea in exchange for its delivery of a report on its nuclear weapons program. In addition, according to The Post and other reports, North Korea is expected demolish the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant -- while being taped by U.S. television networks -- and take other concrete steps towards ending its nuclear weapons program and suspected efforts to sell those weapons abroad. It's hard to find words to describe the significance of this diplomatic breakthrough -- and the irony that one of the Bush administration's greatest foreign policy successes would come via diplomacy, and not force. Since the Agreed Framework broke down in 2003, relations with North Korea have run hot and cold. For much of this time, the six-party talks appeared unlikely to produce any meaningful results, particularly as North Korea continued weapons testing, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/sticks_and_carrots.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/sticks_and_carrots.html Foreign Policy Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:21:35 -0400 AP Photo On Sunday, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest attacked a group of mostly Iraqi civilians outside the provincial Governance Center complex in downtown Baqubah, the volatile capital of Iraq's Diyala province. I know the site well -- I lived there, or 500 meters down the street at the police headquarters, for the duration of my tour in Iraq from 2005 to 2006. Plus ca change. . . such attacks were much more common back then; they are increasingly rare now. It is dangerous to generalize too much from one attack and impossible to discern any trends. At most, singular incidents can demonstrate a particular capability, like the use of a truck bomb to take down a bridge or the use of a female suicide bomber. In this instance, the Baquabah attack demonstrated that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia retains a few key capabilities: a pool of recruits http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/diyala_explodes.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/diyala_explodes.html Iraq Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:38:16 -0400 Via The Post and the military's press shop in Baghdad, it appears that the first military prosecution of a civilian contractor in Iraq has ended in a guilty plea. According to today's news story: [T]he U.S. military announced that a Canadian man working as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Iraq was sentenced to five months of confinement after pleading guilty in the stabbing of a colleague in February. The contractor, Alaa "Alex" Mohammad Ali, was the first civilian prosecuted since a 2006 amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Justice allowed the military to court-martial civilian contractors. According to the military, Ali stabbed another contractor with a knife at a military facility on Feb. 23 near Hit, in western Iraq. A judge dropped the most serious charge filed against him, aggravated assault, after Ali agreed to plead guilty to obtaining a knife without permission, disposing of the weapon http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/first_contractor_prosecution_i.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/first_contractor_prosecution_i.html Iraq Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:00:00 -0400 Today's papers (NYT, WP, and LAT) all report the findings of a new GAO study evaluating strategic planning and progress in Iraq. Quite correctly, the GAO cites improvements in security and the advent of a thoughtful, practical, viable campaign plan. But those aren't enough -- what's missing from our Iraq policy is a clear strategy, something that links improved security and other operational goals to the national security of the United States and its interests in the world. The GAO concludes: Weaknesses in "the way forward" and the Joint Campaign Plan are symptomatic of recurring weaknesses in past U.S. strategic planning efforts. Our prior reports assessing (1) the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, (2) U.S. efforts to develop the capacity of Iraq's ministries, and (3) U.S. and Iraqi efforts to rebuild Iraq's energy sector found strategies that lacked clear purpose, scope, roles and responsibilities, and performance measures. For example, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/no_end_in_sight.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/inteldump/2008/06/no_end_in_sight.html Iraq Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:37:58 -0400