drumming up the war against iran

Preparing the Battlefield

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The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.

by Seymour M. Hersh July 7, 2008

Operations outside the knowledge and control of commanders have eroded “the coherence of military strategy,” one general says.

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Audio: Seymour M. Hersh talks about the White House and Iran.

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003. The Administration downplayed the significance of the N.I.E., and, while saying that it was committed to diplomacy, continued to emphasize that urgent action was essential to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. President Bush questioned the N.I.E.’s conclusions, and senior national-security officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made similar statements. (So did Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee.) Meanwhile, the Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq: both directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that “significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.”)

Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—“have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”

Admiral Fallon acknowledged, when I spoke to him in June, that he had heard that there were people in the White House who were upset by his public statements. “Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”

When it came to the Iraq war, Fallon said, “Did I bitch about some of the things that were being proposed? You bet. Some of them were very stupid.”

The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace—it’s been coöpted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”

Senior Democrats in Congress told me that they had concerns about the possibility that their understanding of what the new operations entail differs from the White House’s. One issue has to do with a reference in the Finding, the person familiar with it recalled, to potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran. (In early May, the journalist Andrew Cockburn published elements of the Finding in Counterpunch, a newsletter and online magazine.)

The language was inserted into the Finding at the urging of the C.I.A., a former senior intelligence official said. The covert operations set forth in the Finding essentially run parallel to those of a secret military task force, now operating in Iran, that is under the control of JSOC. Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference. But the borders between operations are not always clear: in Iran, C.I.A. agents and regional assets have the language skills and the local knowledge to make contacts for the JSOC operatives, and have been working with them to direct personnel, matériel, and money into Iran from an obscure base in western Afghanistan. As a result, Congress has been given only a partial view of how the money it authorized may be used. One of JSOC’s task-force missions, the pursuit of “high-value targets,” was not directly addressed in the Finding. There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.

“This is a big deal,” the person familiar with the Finding said. “The C.I.A. needed the Finding to do its traditional stuff, but the Finding does not apply to JSOC. The President signed an Executive Order after September 11th giving the Pentagon license to do things that it had never been able to do before without notifying Congress. The claim was that the military was ‘preparing the battle space,’ and by using that term they were able to circumvent congressional oversight. Everything is justified in terms of fighting the global war on terror.” He added, “The Administration has been fuzzing the lines; there used to be a shade of gray”—between operations that had to be briefed to the senior congressional leadership and those which did not—“but now it’s a shade of mush.”

“The agency says we’re not going to get in the position of helping to kill people without a Finding,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the legal threat confronting some agency operatives for their involvement in the rendition and alleged torture of suspects in the war on terror. “This drove the military people up the wall,” he said. As far as the C.I.A. was concerned, the former senior intelligence official said, “the over-all authorization includes killing, but it’s not as though that’s what they’re setting out to do. It’s about gathering information, enlisting support.” The Finding sent to Congress was a compromise, providing legal cover for the C.I.A. while referring to the use of lethal force in ambiguous terms.

The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm.

The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer.

Members of Congress have expressed skepticism in the past about the information provided by the White House. On March 15, 2005, David Obey, then the ranking Democrat on the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee, announced that he was putting aside an amendment that he had intended to offer that day, and that would have cut off all funding for national-intelligence programs unless the President agreed to keep Congress fully informed about clandestine military activities undertaken in the war on terror. He had changed his mind, he said, because the White House promised better coöperation. “The Executive Branch understands that we are not trying to dictate what they do,” he said in a floor speech at the time. “We are simply trying to see to it that what they do is consistent with American values and will not get the country in trouble.”

Obey declined to comment on the specifics of the operations in Iran, but he did tell me that the White House reneged on its promise to consult more fully with Congress. He said, “I suspect there’s something going on, but I don’t know what to believe. Cheney has always wanted to go after Iran, and if he had more time he’d find a way to do it. We still don’t get enough information from the agencies, and I have very little confidence that they give us information on the edge.”

None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes—would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified. An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process. The notification of a Finding, the aide said, “is just that—notification, and not a sign-off on activities. Proper oversight of ongoing intelligence activities is done by fully briefing the members of the intelligence committee.” However, Congress does have the means to challenge the White House once it has been sent a Finding. It has the power to withhold funding for any government operation. The members of the House and Senate Democratic leadership who have access to the Finding can also, if they choose to do so, and if they have shared concerns, come up with ways to exert their influence on Administration policy. (A spokesman for the C.I.A. said, “As a rule, we don’t comment one way or the other on allegations of covert activities or purported findings.” The White House also declined to comment.)

A member of the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged that, even with a Democratic victory in November, “it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control.” He went on, “We control the money and they can’t do anything without the money. Money is what it’s all about. But I’m very leery of this Administration.” He added, “This Administration has been so secretive.”

One irony of Admiral Fallon’s departure is that he was, in many areas, in agreement with President Bush on the threat posed by Iran. They had a good working relationship, Fallon told me, and, when he ran CENTCOM, were in regular communication. On March 4th, a week before his resignation, Fallon testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying that he was “encouraged” about the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the role played by Iran’s leaders, he said, “They’ve been absolutely unhelpful, very damaging, and I absolutely don’t condone any of their activities. And I have yet to see anything since I’ve been in this job in the way of a public action by Iran that’s been at all helpful in this region.”

Fallon made it clear in our conversations that he considered it inappropriate to comment publicly about the President, the Vice-President, or Special Operations. But he said he had heard that people in the White House had been “struggling” with his views on Iran. “When I arrived at CENTCOM, the Iranians were funding every entity inside Iraq. It was in their interest to get us out, and so they decided to kill as many Americans as they could. And why not? They didn’t know who’d come out ahead, but they wanted us out. I decided that I couldn’t resolve the situation in Iraq without the neighborhood. To get this problem in Iraq solved, we had to somehow involve Iran and Syria. I had to work the neighborhood.”

Fallon told me that his focus had been not on the Iranian nuclear issue, or on regime change there, but on “putting out the fires in Iraq.” There were constant discussions in Washington and in the field about how to engage Iran and, on the subject of the bombing option, Fallon said, he believed that “it would happen only if the Iranians did something stupid.”

Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon’s defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President’s “czar” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he’s known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific,” Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) “He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.”—area of operations. “That was not happening,” Sheehan said. “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”

The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

battlemind training needed…

      Military Director Underscores Need for ‘Battlemind Training’ at Smith College Conference

       NORTHAMPTON, Mass., June 26 (AScribe Newswire) — A U.S. Army director whose research documented the psychological effects of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan on more than 6,200 members of the military recently offered lessons for mental health workers now treating veterans of those wars.

       Lt. Col. Carl Castro, director of military operations in the medical research program at Fort Detrick, Md., addressed a capacity crowd at Smith College on June 26, the start of a three-day national conference about treating combat stress.

       “Mental health training [for soldiers] works,” said Castro, referring to the preparation known in the military as battlemind training. “This is where I think mental health workers can do the most in advance.”

       Three months after their return from deployment, soldiers who had received battlemind training reported fewer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and fewer sleep problems than those who received standard stress education, said Castro, who conducted the research with a team at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

       According to recent reports, more than 300,000 members of the U.S. military are now experiencing PTSD, and another 320,000 have most likely experienced a traumatic brain injury. Earlier this year, the Army reported that the suicide rate among the enlisted is at a 26-year high.

       None of the military branches had any standardized battlemind training at the start of the U.S. action in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Castro, noting that has since changed.

       Castro’s research also indicated that the military needs to provide training on responding to the moral and ethical challenges that service members will undoubtedly face in regard to the treatment of noncombatants. Training for mid-level military leaders is another necessity because service members’ confidence in those leaders – the people from whom they receive orders on a daily basis – can reduce the impact of combat stress.

       During his talk, Castro touched upon the widely reported issue surrounding ongoing military efforts: repeated redeployments. The mental health adjustment that takes place in a solider returning from battle takes longer than 12 months, he said, which means it does not occur by the time many soldiers are redeployed.

       Further, the longer the duration of multiple deployments, the more likely they are to lead to mental health problems. “You are not going to harden soldiers by exposing them to the horrors of combat,” he said.

       Castro’s remarks resonated both personally and professionally with many of those wearing their military uniforms in the audience.

       “I think one of the biggest issues is getting people to accept care,” said Capt. Robert Williams, a social worker in the Air Force in Spokane, Wash., who has twice been deployed in recent years. “The persona of the military is ‘I take care of other people.’ We are not good at taking care of ourselves.”

       It seems particularly appropriate that the combat stress conference was organized by the Smith College School for Social Work since it was founded to train mental health workers to address the “shell shock” experienced by World War I soldiers. The wrought-iron gate that leads onto campus also recognizes an effort by college alumnae to rebuild a village in France after that war.

       “I came for new insight into some of the issues I’m dealing with,” said Anna Cognetto, a social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Hudson Valley, N.Y. “What’s taught in basic training is survival skills, and when they come home, those skills are hindrances.”

       Smith College educates women of promise for lives of distinction. Smith is the largest undergraduate women’s college in the country, enrolling 2,800 students from nearly every state and 61 other countries. By linking the power of the liberal arts to excellence in research and scholarship, Smith is developing leaders for society’s challenges.

i smell a rat

Israel Prodding U.S. To Attack Iran

White House Weighs Striking Iran’s Nuclear Complex, Which Could Trigger 3rd War In Region

Comments 1862

June 24, 2008

 

Israel has made it clear it intends to end Iran’s nuclear program with or without U.S. support ? and before President Bush leaves office. David Martin reports on mounting tensions in Mideast. |

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen leaves Tuesday night on an overseas trip that will take him to Israel, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. The trip has been scheduled for some time but U.S. officials say it comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran’s nuclear complex.

CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn’t want to wait for a new administration.

“The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize,” Oren said. “Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next administration vis-à-vis Iran.”

Israel’s message is simple: If you don’t, we will. Israel held a dress rehearsal for a strike earlier this month, but military analysts say Israel can not do it alone.

“Keep in mind that Israel does not have strategic bombers,” Oren said. “The Israeli Air Force is not the American Air Force. Israel can not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.”

The U.S. with its stealth bombers and cruise missiles has a much greater capability. Vice President Cheney is said to favor a strike, but both Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates are opposed to an attack which could touch off a third war in the region.

U.S. intelligence estimates Iran won’t be able to build a weapon until sometime early in the next decade. But Israel is operating on a much shorter timetable.

“The Iranians, according to Israeli security sources, will have an operable nuclear weapon by 2009. That’s not a very long time,” Oren said.

For now, the Bush administration is counting on new economic sanctions which took effect Tuesday to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program. But nobody’s counting on it.

u.n. chief fears igniting of nuclear war: warns u.s.

UN atom watchdog chief says to quit if Iran attacked Associated Press
Published: Saturday June 21, 2008

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief warned in comments aired Saturday that any military strike on Iran could turn the Mideast to a “ball of fire” and lead Iran to a more-aggressive stance on its controversial nuclear program.

The comments by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came in an interview with an Arab television station aired Saturday, a day after U.S. officials said they believed recent large Israeli military exercises may have been meant to show Israel’s ability to hit Iran’s nuclear sites.

“In my opinion, a military strike will be the worst… it will turn the Middle East to a ball of fire,” ElBaradei said on Al-Arabiya television. It also could prompt Iran to press even harder to seek a nuclear program, and force him to resign, he said.

Iran on Saturday also criticized the Israeli exercises. The official IRNA news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying that the exercises demonstrate Israel “jeopardizes global peace and security.”

Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, U.S. military officials said Friday.

Israel’s military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran, saying only that it regularly trains for various missions to counter threats to the country.

But the exercise the first week of June may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record on the matter.

More than 100 jets The New York Times quoted officials on Friday as saying that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged the maneuver, flying more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, and that the exercise included refueling tankers and helicopters capable of rescuing downed pilots.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he prefers that Iran’s nuclear ambitions be halted by diplomatic means, but has pointedly declined to rule out military action.

The United States also says it is seeking a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to the threat the West sees from Iran’s nuclear program, although U.S. officials also have refused to take the threat of military action off the table.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to comment on the Israeli maneuvers in an interview with National Public Radio aired Saturday but said: “We are committed to a diplomatic course.”

Russia’s foreign minister warned Friday against the use of force on Iran, saying there is no proof it is trying to build nuclear weapons with the a program, which Tehran says is for generating power.

Caution urged One Israeli lawmaker on Saturday urged caution, saying that the world should first do more to toughen and broaden the sanctions against Iran to persuade its leaders to halt the nuclear program.

Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Israel’s parliament, suggested steps including banning Iranian planes, ships and sports delegations from entering Western countries.

“There’s a long way to go before diplomatic efforts are exhausted,” Hanegbi said. “The sanctions aren’t very strong, they are very shallow, there’s a lot of room for enhancing them.”

In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published Wednesday, Olmert said the current international sanctions against Iran would probably not succeed alone, saying there were “many things that can be done economically, politically, diplomatically and militarily.”

Asked if Israel was capable of taking military action against Iran, Olmert said, “Israel always has to be in a position to defend itself against any adversary and against any threat of any kind.”

foreign firms obtain oil contracts from iraq

Iraq to award oil contracts to foreign firms

Iraq will award contracts to 41 foreign oil firms in a bid to boost production that could give multinationals a potentially lucrative foothold in huge but underdeveloped oil fields, an official said on Sunday.

“We chose 35 companies of international standard, according to their finances, environment and experience, and we granted them permission to extract oil,” oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told AFP.

Six other state-owned oil firms from Algeria, Angola, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam will also be awarded extraction deals, Jihad said.

The agreements, to be signed on June 30, are expected to be short-term arrangements although the ministry has yet to provide a timeframe.

The deal paves the way for global energy giants to return to Iraq 36 years after late dictator Saddam Hussein chased them out, and is seen as a first step to access the earth’s third largest proven crude reserves.

“They will have the first right to develop the fields,” said Jihad, adding that competitive bidding would come later once the nation’s long-delayed hydrocarbon law is passed by parliament.

Iraq wants to ramp up production by 500,000 barrels per day from the current average production of 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd), a level about equal to before the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Monthly exports of 2.11 million bpd currently form the bulk of the war-torn nation’s revenues, and the oil ministry is keen to raise capacity over the next five years to 4.5 million barrels per day.

Iraq’s crude reserves are estimated at about 115 billion barrels, but it is sorely lacking in infrastructure and the latest technology to which it was denied access under years of international sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War.

Before major investment is injected, the Baghdad parliament would also first have to finalise a controversial oil law considered by Washington as a key step towards national reconciliation.

The proposed law stipulates a fair distribution of oil revenues between Iraq’s 18 provinces, a sensitive matter in a country wracked by inter-ethnic violence.

Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said in February that he hoped an oil law would be finalised this year, but officials have said little progress has been made.

One major concern is whether the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq will share revenues.

The Kurdish regional government has signed 15 exploration and export contracts with 20 international companies since passing its own oil law last August, infuriating the Baghdad government.

Stipulating how foreign investment will be governed is also critical amid concerns that Iraqi oil revenues will be squeezed by large oil firms granted special treatment with the help of the US government.

Multinationals involved in the current deals will be focused on fields in the north and the south where wells already exist, thus requiring minimal additional investment, and skirting around the national oil law.

These agreements will be announced alongside technical support agreements (TSAs) with five foreign oil majors.

They cover Kirkuk field (Shell), Rumaila (BP), Al-Zubair (ExxonMobil), West Qurna Phase I (Chevron and Total), Maysan province development (Shell and BHP Billiton) and the Subba and Luhais fields (Anadarko, Vitol and the UAE’s Dome), according to a previous media report.

“The execution will be carried out by Iraqi staff while companies will provide expertise and the machinery,” said Jihad, who stressed that these were not investment contracts.

mega-bases in iraq

The Greatest Story Never Told

Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News
By Tom Engelhardt

 

It’s just a $5,812,353 contract — chump change for the Pentagon — and not even one of those notorious “no-bid” contracts either. Ninety-eight bids were solicited by the Army Corps of Engineers and 12 were received before the contract was awarded this May 28th to Wintara, Inc. of Fort Washington, Maryland, for “replacement facilities for Forward Operating Base Speicher, Iraq.” According to a Department of Defense press release, the work on those “facilities” to be replaced at the base near Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, is expected to be completed by January 31, 2009, a mere 11 days after a new president enters the Oval Office. It is but one modest reminder that, when the next administration hits Washington, American bases in Iraq, large and small, will still be undergoing the sort of repair and upgrading that has been ongoing for years.

In fact, in the last five-plus years, untold billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction and upgrading of those bases. When asked back in the fall of 2003, only months after Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer then “tasked with facilities development” in Iraq, proudly indicated that “several billion dollars” had already been invested in those fast-rising bases. Even then, he was suitably amazed, commenting that “the numbers are staggering.” Imagine what he might have said, barely two and a half years later, when the U.S. reportedly had 106 bases, mega to micro, all across the country.

By now, billions have evidently gone into single massive mega-bases like the U.S. air base at Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. It’s a “16-square-mile fortress,” housing perhaps 40,000 U.S. troops, contractors, special ops types, and Defense Department employees. As the Washington Post’s Tom Ricks, who visited Balad back in 2006, pointed out — in a rare piece on one of our mega-bases — it’s essentially “a small American town smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq.” Back then, air traffic at the base was already being compared to Chicago’s O’Hare International or London’s Heathrow — and keep in mind that Balad has been steadily upgraded ever since to support an “air surge” that, unlike the President’s 2007 “surge” of 30,000 ground troops, has yet to end.

Building Ziggurats

While American reporters seldom think these bases — the most essential U.S. facts on the ground in Iraq — are important to report on, the military press regularly writes about them with pride.  Such pieces offer a tiny window into just how busily the Pentagon is working to upgrade and improve what are already state-of-the-art garrisons. Here’s just a taste of what’s been going on recently at Balad, one of the largest bases on foreign soil on the planet, and but one of perhaps five mega-bases in that country:

Consider, for instance, this description of an air-field upgrade from official U.S. Air Force news coverage, headlined: “‘Dirt Boyz’ pave way for aircraft, Airmen”:

 

“In less than four months, Balad Air Base Dirt Boyz have placed and finished more than 12,460 feet of concrete and added approximately 90,000 square feet of pavement to the airfield… Without the extra pavement courtesy of the Dirt Boyz, fewer aircraft would be able to be positioned and maintained at Balad AB. Having fewer aircraft at the base would directly affect the Air Force’s ability to place surveillance assets in the air and to drop munitions on targets… The ongoing flightline projects at Balad AB consist of concrete pad extensions that will provide occupation surfaces for multiple aircraft of various types.”

 

Or here’s a proud description of what Detachment 6 of the 732nd Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron did on its recent tour in Balad:

 

“‘We constructed more than 25,000 square feet of living, dining and operations buildings from the ground up,’ said Staff Sgt. John Wernegreen… ‘This project gave the [U.S.] Army’s [3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment] and Iraqi army [soldiers] a place to carry out their mission of controlling the battlespace around the Eastern Diyala Province.’”

 

And here’s a caption, accompanying an Air Force photo of work at Balad: “Airmen of the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron pavement and equipment team repair utility cuts here June 11. The team replaced approximately 30 cubic meters of concrete over newly installed power line cables.” And another: “Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron heavy equipment operator, contours a new sidewalk here, June 10. Sidewalk repair is being accomplished throughout the base housing area to eliminate tripping hazards.” (The sidewalks on such bases go with bus routes, traffic lights, and speeding tickets — in a country parts of which the U.S. has helped turn into little more than a giant pothole.)

Or how about this caption for a photo of military men on upgrade duty working on copper cable as “part of the new tents to trailers project.” It’s little wonder that, in another rare piece, NPR’s defense correspondent Guy Raz reported, in October 2007, that Balad was “one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up… all with an eye toward the next few decades.”

Think of this as the greatest American story of these years never told — or more accurately, since there have been a few reports on a couple of these mega-bases — never shown. After all, what an epic of construction this has been, as the Pentagon built a series of fortified American towns, each some 15 to 20 miles around, with many of the amenities of home, including big name fast-food franchises, PXes, and the like, in a hostile land in the midst of war and occupation. In terms of troops, the President may only have put his “surge” strategy into play in January 2007, but his Pentagon has been “surging” on base construction since April 2003.

Now, imagine as well that hundreds of thousands of Americans have passed through these mega-bases, including the enormous al-Asad Air Base (sardonically nicknamed “Camp Cupcake” for its amenities) in the Western desert of Iraq, and the ill-named (or never renamed) Camp Victory on the edge of Baghdad. Troops have surged through these bases, of course. Private contractors galore. Hired guns. Pentagon officials. Military commanders. Top administration figures. Visiting Congressional delegations. Presidential candidates. And, of course, the journalists.

It has been, for instance, a commonplace of these years to see a TV correspondent reporting on the situation in Iraq, or what the American military had to say about Iraq, from Baghdad’s enormous Camp Victory. And yet, if you think about it, that camera, photographing ABC’s fine reporter Martha Raddatz or other reporters on similar stop-overs, never pans across the base itself. You don’t even get a glimpse, unless you have access to homemade G.I. videos or Pentagon-produced propaganda.

Similarly, last year, the President landed at Camp Cupcake for a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with reporters in tow. You could see shots of him getting off the plane (just as he does everywhere), goofing around with troops, or shaking hands with the Iraqi prime minister but, as far as I know, none of the reporters with him stayed on to give us a view of the base itself.

Imagine if just about no one knew that the pyramids had been built. Ditto the Great Wall of China. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Coliseum. The Eiffel Tower. The Statue of Liberty. Or any other architectural wonder of the world you’d care to mention.

After all, these giant bases, rising from the smashed birthplace of Western civilization, were not only built on (and sometimes out of bits of) the ancient ruins of that land, but are functionally modern ziggurats. They are the cherished monuments of the Bush administration. Even though its spokespeople have regularly refused to use the word “permanent” in relation to them — in fact, in relation to any U.S. base on the planet — they have been built to long outlast the Bush administration itself. They were, in fact, clearly meant to be key garrisons of a Pax Americana in the Middle East for generations to come. And, not surprisingly, they reek of permanency. They are the unavoidable essence — unless, like most Americans, you don’t know they’re there — of Bush administration planning in Iraq. Without them, no discussion of Iraq policy in this country really makes sense.

And that, of course, is what makes their missing-in-action quality on the American landscape so striking. Yes, a couple of good American reporters have written pieces about one or two of them, but most Americans, as we know, get their news from television and — though no one can watch all the news that flows, 24/7, into American living rooms, it’s a reasonable bet that a staggering percentage of Americans have never had the opportunity to see the remarkable structures their tax dollars have paid for, and continue to pay for, in occupied Iraq.

This is the sort of thing you might expect of Bush-style offshore prisons, or gulags, or concentration camps. And yet Americans have regularly and repeatedly seen what Guantanamo looks like. They have seen something of what Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq looks like. But not the bases. Perhaps one explanation lies in this: On rare occasions when Americans are asked by pollsters whether they want “permanent bases” in Iraq, significant majorities answer in the negative. You can only assume that, as on many other subjects, the Bush administration preferred to fly under the radar screen on this one — and the media generally concurred.

And let’s remember one more base, though it’s never called that: the massive imperial embassy, perhaps the biggest on the planet, being built, for nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars, on a nearly Vatican-sized 104-acre plot of land inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. It will be home to 1,000 “diplomats.” It will cost an estimated $1.2 billion a year just to operate. With its own electricity and water systems, its anti-missile defenses, recreation, “retail and shopping” areas, and “blast-resistant” work spaces, it is essentially a fortified citadel, a base inside the fortified American heart of the Iraq capital. Like the mega-bases, it emits an aura of American, not Iraqi, “sovereignty.” It, too, is being built “for the ages.”

A Land Grab, American-style

The issue of the mega-bases in Iraq first surfaced barely days after Baghdad had fallen. It was on April 20, 2003, to be exact, and on the front-page of the New York Times in a piece headlined, “Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Key Iraq Bases.” Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt wrote: “American military officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future,” including what became Camp Victory. The story, and the very idea of “permanent” bases, was promptly denied by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — then essentially disappeared from the news for years. (To this day, again as far as I know, the New York Times has never written another significant front-page story on the subject.)

Now, however, the bases are, suddenly and startlingly, in the news (and, of course, being written about and discussed on TV as if they had long been part of everyday media analysis). This week, in fact, they hit the front page of the Washington Post, due to protests by Iraqi leaders close to the Bush administration. They were angered by, and leaking like mad about, American strong-arm tactics in negotiations for a long-term Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that would officially embed American-controlled bases in Iraq for the long-term, potentially tie the hands of a future American president on Iraq policy, and represent a sovereignty grab of the first order. (A typical comment from a pro-Maliki Iraqi politician in that Post piece: “The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq…”)

The growing Iraqi protests — in the streets, in parliament, and among the negotiators — certainly helped spark coverage in this country. A persistent and intrepid British reporter, Patrick Cockburn of The Independent, helpfully broke the story of Bush administration demands days before it became significant news here.

But most of the credit should really go to the Bush administration itself, which, despite the long-term flow of events in Iraq, still wanted it all. Greed, coupled with desperation, seems to have done the trick. In all the years of the occupation, the officials of this administration have had a tin ear for the post-colonial era they inhabit. It’s never penetrated their consciousness that the greatest story of the twentieth century was the way previously subjected and colonized peoples had gained (or regained) their sovereignty.

The administration indicated this, back in 2003, with its very dream of garrisoning a major, potentially hostile, intensely nationalistic Arab nation in the heart of the oil lands of the planet. That the building of enormous American bases and the basing of troops in relatively peaceful Saudi Arabia after the First Gulf War led to disaster — think: Osama bin Laden — mattered not a whit to top administration officials.

It couldn’t have been clearer just how little they cared for Iraqi sovereignty or pride when L. Paul Bremer III, George W. Bush’s personal representative and viceroy in Baghdad, before officially “returning sovereignty” to the Iraqis in June 2004, signed the infamous (though, in this country, little noted) Order 17. As the law of the land in Iraq, among other things, it ensured that all foreigners involved in the occupation project would be granted “freedom of movement without delay throughout Iraq,” and neither their vessels, nor their vehicles, nor their aircraft would be “subject to registration, licensing or inspection by the [Iraqi] Government.” Nor in traveling would foreign diplomats, soldiers, consultants, security guards, or any of their vehicles, vessels, or planes be subject to “dues, tolls, or charges, including landing and parking fees,” and so on.

When it came to imports, including “controlled substances,” there were to be no customs fees or inspections, taxes, or much of anything else; nor was there to be the slightest charge for the use of Iraqi “headquarters, camps, and other premises” occupied, nor for the use of electricity, water, or other utilities. And all private contractors were to have total immunity from prosecution anywhere in the country. This was, of course, freedom as theft. Order 17 would have seemed familiar to any nineteenth century European colonialist. It granted what used to be termed “extraterritoriality” to Americans. Think of it as a giant get-out-of-jail-free card for an occupying nation.

Now, imagine, that, even after years of disaster, even in a state of discontrol, with unsecured global oil supplies surging toward $140 a barrel, the Bush administration remained in the same Order 17 frame of mind. They began their negotiations with the Iraqis accordingly. Cockburn (and other journalists subsequently) would report that they were asking for Order 17-style immunity for the U.S. military and all private contractors in the country, as well as the use of up to 58 bases, even though they evidently “only” had 30 major ones in the country. (A leading politician of the Badr Organization claimed that American negotiators were actually pushing for the use of a startling 200 facilities across the country.)

They also evidently insisted on control over Iraqi air space up to 29,000 feet, the right to bring troops in and out of the country without informing the Iraqis, and the right to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security,” again without notification to the Iraqis, no less approval of any sort. They may even have insisted on the freedom to strike other countries from their Iraqi bases, again without consultation or approval. In addition, reported Cockburn, they were attempting to force their Iraqi counterparts to agree to such a deal by threatening to deny them at least $20 billion in Iraqi oil funds on deposit in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Gulf News reported as well that, under the American version of the agreement, “Iraqi security institutions such as Defense, Interior and National Security ministries, as well as armament contracts, will be under American supervision for ten years.” This was partially confirmed by the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, who reported on a multi-year contract just awarded to a private contractor by the Pentagon to supply “mentors to officials with Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries… [ who] would ‘advise, train [and] assist… particular Iraqi officials.’”

Had the Bush administration exhibited the slightest constraint, they might have constructed a far more cosmetic version of the permanent garrisoning of Iraq. They might have officially turned the mega-bases over to the Iraqis and leased them back for next to nothing. They could have let the stunning facts they had built on the ground speak for themselves. They could have offered “joint commands” and other palliative remedies (as they are now evidently considering doing) that would have made their long-term sovereignty grab look far less significant — without necessarily being so. But their ability to strategize outside the (Bush) box has long been limited.

Think of them as “the me generation” on steroids, going global and imperial. Or give them credit for consistency. They’re mad dreamers who still can’t wake up, even when they find themselves in a roomful of smelling salts.

Instead, with their secret SOFA negotiations, they’ve attempted to fly under the radar screens of both the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi people. They wanted to embed permanent bases and a long-term policy of occupation in Iraq in perpetuity without letting the matter rise to the level of a treaty. (Hence, no advice and consent from the U.S. Senate.)

Not surprisingly, this episode, too, is threatening to end in debacle. The Iraqi leadership is in virtual revolt. Across the political spectrum, as Tony Karon of the Rootless Cosmopolitan blog has written, the negotiations have forced upon the Iraqis “a kind of snap survey or straw poll… on the long-term U.S. presence, and goals for Iraq” from which the Americans are likely to emerge the losers.

The idea of timetables for American departure is again being floated in Iraq. According to Reuters, “A majority of the Iraqi parliament has written to Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that U.S. forces leave,” and unnamed American officials are now beginning to mutter about no SOFA deal being achieved before the Bush administration leaves office.

The administration’s man in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki, has declared the initial U.S. proposal at a “dead end” and has even begun threatening to ask American forces to leave when their UN mandate expires at year’s end. (Though much of this may be bluff on his part, what choice does he have? Given Iraqi attitudes toward being garrisoned forever by the U.S. military, no Iraqi leader could remain in a position of even passing power and agree to such terms. It would be like stamping and sealing your own execution order.)

The Sadrists are in the streets protesting the American presence and their leader has just called for a “new militia offensive” against U.S. forces. The pro-Iranian, but American-backed, Badrists are outraged. (“Is there sovereignty for Iraq — or isn’t there? If it is left to [the Bush administration], they would ask for immunity even for the American dogs.”) The Iranians are vehemently voting no. Opinion in the region, whether Shiite or Sunni, seems to be following suit. The U.S. Congress is up in arms, demanding more information and possibly heading for hearings on the SOFA agreement and the bases. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has insisted that any deal be submitted to Congress, the very thing the Bush administration has organized for more than a year to avoid.

And miracle of all miracles, the mainstream media is finally writing about the bases as if they mattered. Someday, before this is over, all of us may actually see what was built in our names with our dollars. That will be a shock, especially when you consider what the Bush administration has proved incapable of building, or rebuilding, in New Orleans and elsewhere in this country. In the meantime, the President appears headed for yet another self-inflicted defeat.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been published. Focusing on what the mainstream media hasn’t covered, it is an alternative history of the mad Bush years. A brief video in which Engelhardt discusses the American mega-bases in Iraq can be viewed by clicking here.

[Sources for this piece and further reading: In his recent articles, as in his past unembedded reporting, Patrick Cockburn has shown what a good journalist can still do for the rest of us. Special thanks go to Nick Turse for his superb and speedy research on this piece and to Christopher Holmes for superb proofreading on demand. In gathering material, I've also relied on a number of sites, including Juan Cole's invaluable Informed Comment blog (which I visit daily without fail), those splendid hunter-gatherers of the news at Antiwar.com and Cursor.org's daily Media Patrol, Dan Froomkin's superb White House Watch blog in the Washington Post, and sharp-eyed Paul Woodward at his War in Context blog. For those of you who want to get a little more sense of the endless base-building activities of the Bush administration, check out the chatty newsletter (PDF file) of the Redhorse Association, "a group of past and present members of the U.S. Air Force Prime Beef and Red Horse combat engineer units."]

Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt

Note for TomDispatch readers: Just a reminder. Today’s post on the mega-bases in Iraq represents but one of the missing stories of the Bush years that TomDispatch has been dedicated to covering. The site’s new book, The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire, just published, is, in essence, a striking history of the missing stories of our mad age, the stories the mainstream media chose to ignore. I urge TomDispatch readers to pick up a copy. It’s a great way to support the site and — if you care to give it to a friend — to introduce others to a source of information that has, for years, been an “antidote to the mainstream media.” If you can, do recommend the book and the site to your private e-lists and suggest, as well, that people consider going to TomDispatch.com to sign up — in the window at the upper right of the main screen — for the regular emails indicating that a new post has gone up. There will be surprises galore this summer as TomDispatch explores the Bush legacy and whether what the Bush administration has embedded in our lives can ever be unbuilt. You can also check out a video in which I discuss the issue of the missing mega-bases in Iraq, now finally in the news, by clicking here. Tom]

shake up in the air force

Gates ousts Air Force leaders in historic shake-up

from The Associated Press

 

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In this July 18, 2005 file photo, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. U.S. officials are saying that the military and civilian chiefs of the Air Force are resigning. Defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked Wynne Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley to step down. Associated Press © 2008

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates gestures during a news conference at the Pentagon, Thursday, June 5, 2008. Gates ousted the Air Force’s top military and civilian leaders Thursday, holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after nuclear missile warhead fuses were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan. Associated Press © 2008

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In this May 28, 2008 file photo, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, arrives for the United States Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colo. Defense Secretary Robert Gates Thursday, June 5, 2008, ousted Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Moseley holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after embarrassing nuclear mix ups. Associated Press © 2008

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In this March 5, 2008 file photo, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the Senate Armed Services Committee. U.S. officials are saying that the military and civilian chiefs of the Air Force are resigning. Defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne to step down. Associated Press © 2008

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In this March 5, 2008 file photo, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynn, left, accompanied by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. U.S. officials are saying that the military and civilian chiefs of the Air Force are resigning. Defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked Moseley and Wynne to step down. Associated Press © 2008

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates takes part in a news conference at the Pentagon, Thursday, June 5, 2008. Gates ousted the Air Force’s top military and civilian leaders Thursday, holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after nuclear missile warhead fuses were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan. Associated Press © 2008

WASHINGTON June 6, 2008, 06:58 am ET · Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the Air Force’s top military and civilian leaders Thursday, holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after embarrassing nuclear mix-ups.

Gates announced at a news conference that he had accepted the resignations of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne — a highly unusual double firing.

Gates said his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to another startling incident: the flight last August of a B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

The report drew the stunning conclusion that the Air Force’s nuclear standards have been in a long decline, a “problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade.”

Gates said an internal investigation found a common theme in the B-52 and Taiwan incidents: “a decline in the Air Force’s nuclear mission focus and performance” and a failure by Air Force leaders to respond effectively.

In a reflection of his concern about the state of nuclear security, Gates said he had asked a former defense secretary, James Schlesinger, to lead a task force that will recommend ways to ensure that the highest levels of accountability and control are maintained in Air Force handling of nuclear weapons.

In somber tones, Gates told reporters his decision to remove Wynne and Moseley was based on the findings of an investigation of the Taiwan debacle by Adm. Kirkland Donald. The admiral found a “lack of a critical self-assessment culture” in the Air Force nuclear program, making it unlikely that weaknesses in the way critical materials such as nuclear weapons are handled could be corrected, Gates said.

Gates said Donald concluded that many of the problems that led to the B-52 and the Taiwan sale incidents “have been known or should have been known.”

The Donald report is classified; Gates provided an oral summary.

“The Taiwan incident clearly was the trigger,” Gates said when asked whether Moseley and Wynne would have retained their positions in the absence of the mistaken shipment of fuses. He also said that Donald found a “lack of effective Air Force leadership oversight” of its nuclear mission.

The investigation found a declining trend in Air Force nuclear expertise — not the first time that has been raised as a problem, Gates said — and a drifting of the Air Force’s focus away from its nuclear mission, which includes stewardship of the land-based missile component of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, as well as missiles and bombs assigned for nuclear missions aboard B-52 and B-2 long-range bombers.

Gates also announced that “a substantial number” of Air Force general officers and colonels were identified in the Donald report as potentially subject to disciplinary measures that range from removal from command to letters of reprimand. He said he would direct the yet-to-be-named successors to Wynne and Moseley to evaluate those identified culprits and decide what disciplinary actions are warranted — “or whether they can be part of the solution” to the problems found by Donald.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said President Bush knew about the resignations but that the White House had “not played any role” in the shake-up.

Early reaction from Capitol Hill was favorable to drastic action.

“Secretary Gates’ focus on accountability is essential and had been absent from the office of the secretary of defense for too long,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The safety and security of America’ nuclear weapons must receive the highest priority, just as it must in other countries.”

Gates said he would make recommendations to Bush shortly on a new Air Force chief of staff and civilian secretary. Gates has settled on candidates for both jobs but has not yet formally recommended them, one official said.

Gen. Duncan J. McNabb is the current Air Force vice chief of staff.

Moseley, who commanded coalition air forces during the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, became Air Force chief in September 2005; Wynne, a former General Dynamics executive, took office in November 2005.

Wynne is the second civilian chief of a military service to be forced out by Gates. In March 2007 the defense secretary pushed out Francis Harvey, the Army secretary, because Gates was dissatisfied with Harvey’s handling of revelations of inadequate housing conditions and bureaucratic delays for troops recovering from war wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Wynne and Moseley issued their own written statements.

“As the Air Force’s senior uniformed leader, I take full responsibility for events which have hurt the Air Force’s reputation or raised a question of every airman’s commitment to our core values,” Moseley said.

Wynne said he “read with regret” the findings of the Donald report.

how the air force manages nuclear weapons and deterrence

The U.S. Air Force’s indifference toward nuclear weapons

By Lawrence J. Korb | 17 June 2008

Article Highlights

• During the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force received a bulk of the country’s defense budget because of its significant role in delivering nuclear weapons.
• But after the Soviet Union disintegrated, the air force became more interested in traditional air missions and the next generation of fighter planes.
• This disinterest manifested itself in two recent nuclear-related mishaps that cost the air force chief of staff and secretary their jobs.
• Generally, the military considers nuclear weapons costly and unnecessary, as conventional weapons can capably complete nuclear missions.

From its creation as a separate service at the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force was first among equals amid the nation’s three military departments and four armed services–whether measured by budget share or in public appeal. During the 1950s, for example, the air force received about one-half of the entire defense budget, leaving the other three services to argue over the remaining 50 percent and fumbling to co-opt some part of the air force’s mission. The army went so far as to try to develop a Pentomic Division designed to employ tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

The air force’s dominance was due primarily to its leading role in developing and deploying strategic nuclear weapons, which were deemed key to the country’s survival. In 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur urged President Harry S. Truman to attack China with nuclear weapons after the Chinese intervened in the Korean War; President Dwight D. Eisenhower was able to end the Korean War in 1953 by threatening to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese if they did not agree to an armistice. Two years later, Admiral Arthur Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Vice President Richard Nixon urged Eisenhower to use nuclear weapons to save the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. Although Eisenhower refused, he did adopt a strategy of massive retaliation–the threat to use nuclear weapons against any enemy that attacked the United States.

As the Soviet Union built up its nuclear arsenal, the United States adopted strategic nuclear deterrence, or mutually assured destruction, which relied on a triad of bombers, land-based nuclear missiles, and sea-based nuclear missiles, two-thirds of which the air force controlled. Consequently, the best and the brightest in the air force gravitated toward the strategic nuclear mission. From the flamboyant Curtis Lemay in the 1950s to the erudite Larry Welch in the late 1980s, the men who became air force chiefs of staff were the so-called Bomber Barons–that is, people who came from the Strategic Air Command.

But with the Soviet Union’s collapse, things began to change. Strategic nuclear deterrence was no longer seen as central to U.S. security and the attention and resources of the policy makers in general and the air force in particular began to shift elsewhere. Budget priorities and hard-charging officers in the air force began to flow toward traditional air missions. Rather than the Bomber Barons, the air force in the post-Cold War era was led by the Fighter Mafia. Even the B-1, B-2, and B-52 strategic bombers began to fly tactical missions, dropping conventional bombs in the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the Balkans, and Afghanistan. The air force’s priority became developing the next generation fighter, the F-22, rather than building more B-2 bombers or more land-based missiles. In fact, in the early 1990s when Congress reduced the planned buy of B-2s from 132 to 21, there were few complaints from the air force hierarchy. Moreover, as conventional weapons became smarter and more lethal, it became clear that nuclear weapons had little military utility. Gen. Charles Horner, who commanded all air forces in the first Gulf War, said as much after hostilities ended when asked about using nuclear weapons in that conflict.

Even when former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appointed Gen. James Cartwright from the marines, a service without any nuclear weapons, to head Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the air force leaders were silent. Similarly, when Congress canceled the new nuclear weapon, the “bunker-buster,” and delayed production of the reliable replacement warhead (RRW), the air force didn’t utter a peep. Only when current Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed stopping production of the F-22 at 182 planes did the air force roll out its propaganda machine.

Given this lack of attention to nuclear weapons, it’s not surprising that in August 2007 a B-52 accidentally flew six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles across the country, from North Dakota to Louisiana, or that four nuclear-missile fuses were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan in 2006. Gates was correct to hold Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne responsible for their lack of attention to nuclear weapons. But the bigger issue is why the Pentagon still needs to keep so many nuclear weapons in its inventory nearly two decades after the Cold War–particularly when just about everyone in the military believes they present minimal strategic utility. General Cartwright, who in 2007 moved from STRATCOM to become Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said as much. In Congressional testimony on March 8, 2007, he declared, “As good as [U.S. conventional weapons] are, we simply cannot be everywhere with our general purpose conventional forces, and use of a nuclear weapon in a prompt response may be no choice at all.”

At the height of the Cold War, the United States possessed more than 30,000 nuclear warheads in its inventory. Today, Washington continues to maintain nearly 10,000 warheads. Reducing that number to no more than 1,000 (600 operational and 400 in reserve) would be more than enough for deterrence; one of the last air force officers to command STRATCOM, Gen. Eugene Habiger, has actually suggested this number. Doing so would allow the air force hierarchy to direct its attention and resources to the challenges of the twenty-first century. According to the recently fired Secretary Wynne, the air force has a budget shortfall of $100 million over the next five years because the baseline defense budget is projected to decline in real terms over this period.

More importantly, reducing our own nuclear arsenal would enable the United States to gain the moral high ground in nonproliferation matters and in our increasingly tense relations with Russia. What better way to enhance our negotiating position with the North Koreans and Iranians than by our living up to Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which obliges us to reduce and eventually eliminate our nuclear stockpile in exchange for others not developing these weapons? And what better way to negotiate a new nuclear reduction treaty with Russia and enhance the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program than by reducing our own nuclear arsenal?

It’s no secret that Gates used the nuclear mishaps as justification for decapitating the air force leadership. His real reason for the joint termination was that Wynne and Moseley were lobbying Congress for more F-22s and then slow-walking the development of unmanned aerial vehicles and airlift capabilities. Thus, it’s unlikely that Gates will use the incidents as a catalyst for reducing or eliminating our nuclear arsenal. Hopefully, the next defense secretary installed by a new president will. As the recent mishaps demonstrate, when people and resources are turned elsewhere, trouble follows.

If the new defense secretary takes such a step, he or she will not only be applauded by the international community but also by the U.S. military, which sees this large nuclear stockpile as an albatross around its neck.