more garrisons in baghdad?

U.S. general plans more Baghdad garrisons

29 Jan 2008 Source: Reuters

By Dean Yates BAGHDAD, Jan 29 (Reuters) –

The new commander of American forces in Baghdad plans to increase the number of local garrisons across the Iraqi capital even as U.S. troop levels drop in the coming months.

Moving soldiers out of relatively safe bases and into Baghdad’s dangerous streets was a key element in the counter- insurgency strategy implemented by the commander of U.S. forces, General David Petraeus, when he arrived a year ago. The tactic has been vital to the U.S. military’s goal of not just clearing neighbourhoods of militants but then holding them.

Major-General Jeffery Hammond told foreign journalists on Tuesday that he had a total of 75 joint security stations and combat outposts in Baghdad and planned to add another dozen of each from now until June. U.S. forces live and operate with Iraqi forces in such garrisons.

“I’m extending our reach even further than what it is now to be less predictable and to push ourselves into locations where maybe in the past we didn’t go before,” Hammond said. “I don’t want there to be any place in Baghdad where al Qaeda or anyone else can start to take hold because we’ve ignored that particular (area).”

Hammond said at least two joint security stations were being set up now in Baghdad where he believed there was an al Qaeda “nerve”. He declined to give the location. The U.S. military calls Sunni Islamist al Qaeda the greatest threat to peace in Iraq.

U.S. commanders have previously said there was no place in Baghdad where al Qaeda had a foothold. Most of the 30,000 extra troops sent to Iraq last year were deployed in Baghdad, which was the epicentre of sectarian bloodletting between majority Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs in 2006 and early 2007.

Hammond, who assumed his post last month, described the change in the city’s security conditions as “remarkable”. He acknowledged he would have fewer forces as U.S. troop numbers across Iraq fall by more than 20,000 through to the middle of the year under a plan endorsed by Petraeus following security gains. There are around 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

“It will be less, which means I’ve got to do everything within my power to make the adjustments that are necessary on the ground to sustain security,” Hammond said, adding he was not sure how his troop numbers would change.

NEIGHBOURHOOD PATROLS

Another key factor behind better security in Iraq has been the creation of neighbourhood patrols comprising around 80,000 men, most of whom get paid a monthly wage of about $300. The U.S. military, which calls the men “concerned local citizens”, has always said deployment of such units would be temporary, with around 20 percent expected to join the Iraqi security forces and other jobs found for the rest.

Hammond said he would like to see the units scaled down over time as more security responsibility was picked up by local police, but added there would not be a hasty reduction. “We are not going to make some of the mistakes that we have made in the past and that’s turning over too quickly any piece of Baghdad,” he said.

Asked about rising attacks against neighbourhood patrols, which are mainly blamed on al Qaeda, Hammond said: “The big question is will the CLCs stand shoulder to shoulder … Right now, I see no indications whatsoever of the CLCs backing down.”

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)

white house rethinking troops reduction?

White House shows signs of rethinking cut in troops:

Four months after announcing troop reductions in Iraq, President Bush is now sending signals that the cuts may not continue past this summer, New York Times said on Wednesday. It said that the development is likely to infuriate Democrats and renew concerns among military planners about strains on the force. Bush has made no decisions on troop reductions to follow those he announced last September. But White House officials said Bush had been taking the opportunity, as he did in Monday’s State of the Union address, to prepare Americans for the possibility that, when he leaves office a year from now, the military presence in Iraq will be just as large as it was a year ago, or even slightly larger. The newspaper said Bush wanted to tamp down criticism that a large, sustained presence in Iraq would harm the overall health of the military _ a view held not only by Democrats, but by some members of his own Joint Chiefs of Staff. Within the Pentagon, senior officers have struggled to balance the demands of the Iraq war against the competing demands to recruit, train and retain a robust and growing ground force. That institutional tension is personified by two of Bush’s top generals, David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and General Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff. General Petraeus’s mission is to win the war; General Casey must also worry about the health of the whole Army. “We’re concerned about the health of the force as well, but the most important thing is that they succeed in Iraq,” said one senior White House official, adding, “If the commanders on the ground believe we need to maintain the troop numbers at the current level to maintain security for a little while longer, then that’s what the president will do.” That strong White House tilt in favor of General Petraeus comes as he prepares to testify before Congress in April about the next step in Iraq. In September, based on General Petraeus’s earlier recommendation, Bush announced that he intended to withdraw five combat brigades and Marine units – roughly 20,000 troops – from Iraq by July. That would leave 15 combat brigades in place. In his address to Congress, Bush spoke of those reductions, but not of any future ones. What a continuing commitment of 15 brigades – more than 130,000 troops – would mean for the Army as a whole is said to be a major concern of General Casey, among others on the joint staff. But officials said Bush’s primary concern was not letting military gains in Iraq slip away, a warning he issued in his State of the Union address. After meeting General Petraeus in Kuwait this month, he appeared to give the general tacit permission to recommend no further troop reductions. “My attitude is, if he didn’t want to continue the drawdown, that’s fine with me, in order to make sure we succeed,” Bush said then. “I said to the general, if you want to slow her down, fine, it’s up to you.” Bush hinted in September that there might be more reductions to come, although he has never made an explicit promise. The Pentagon has also not made any promises, although military planners have talked about wanting to reduce the number of brigades to 12 from 15 by the end of this year, if the security situation improves enough to permit it. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, has said he would like to cut even further, eventually dropping to 10 brigades if possible. But Gates has avoided using specific numbers in more recent comments, and says unswervingly that he would be guided by conditions on the ground. At the Pentagon, officials said the withdrawal of 20,000 combat troops pledged by Bush left open the future of the 7,000 to 8,000 support and aviation troops that accompanied those “surge” combat forces. If those extra support troops remain in Iraq even after the withdrawal of the additional combat troops, then it is possible that the number of American military personnel in Iraq after the surge could be higher than before, officials said. –IRNA

new rules for security contractors

Security Contractors in Iraq Get New Rules

By RICHARD LARDNER, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 30, 12:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON – Under continued pressure to exercise greater control over private security contractors in Iraq, Bush administration officials will outline stricter rules for these armed guards during a three-hour meeting Wednesday afternoon at the Pentagon.

The top executives from the largest security companies working in Iraq are scheduled to attend the meeting, which is being hosted by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Deputy Secretary State John Negroponte.

The session comes nearly four months after a shooting incident involving Blackwater Worldwide that left 17 Iraqi citizens dead. The incident, which created a worldwide furor and put the White House on the defensive, led to a December agreement between the Defense and State Departments that gave U.S. military commanders a stronger hand in managing security workers.

Senior representatives from Blackwater, DynCorp, Triple Canopy and Aegis Defence are scheduled to attend the meeting.

Peter Singer, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said government officials need to deliver a clear and firm message to the security companies.

“These ‘summits’ are great for talking,” Singer said, “but it can’t just be, ‘Hey, CEOs, this is what we would like you to do.’ It’s got to be, ‘Here are the policies. Here are the laws that we’ve developed.'”

The military does not want to assume responsibility for guarding large numbers of U.S. officials, and the State Department’s own security force is too small and already stretched too thin.

According to the agenda, the meeting begins with an assessment of the political environment in Iraq from Patrick Kennedy. A senior State Department official, Kennedy led a review team that examined oversight of security contractors in the wake of the Sept. 16 shooting incident in Baghdad.

Iraqi authorities claimed the Blackwater shootings were unprovoked and initially insisted the company’s guard be expelled from the country within six months. The Iraqis also want security guards to be subject to Iraqi law.

While U.S. officials have resisted such a move, security contractors are covered by the same code of justice that applies to American military personnel. Security company executives are expected to ask for more detail on exactly how this work.

Other topics include changes in security contract management ordered by Congress and “contractor accountability and expectations,” the agenda reads.

Jack Bell, a senior Pentagon official, told a Senate subcommittee last week that portions of the December agreement have already been implemented. Others are still being worked on.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants a progress report by Feb. 28.

drones: “defense news” reports success in killing bombers

Drone, Copter Team Kills 2,400 Bombers in Iraq

By Noah Shachtman January 21, 2008

In Iraq, a hundred-man Army unit is using an array of drones, manned surveillance planes, helicopters, and video downlinks  to kill 2,400 bomb-planters and capture 141 more.

The 14-month-old, once-classified Army outfit is called Task Force ODIN, for “observe-detect-identify-neutralize.”  It was first disclosed in May.  But now, additional details about ODIN are emerging.  And the Task Force’s “success has led Army officials to expand it and to bring its tactics to Afghanistan,” Kris Osborn reports in this week’s Defense News.

The unit generally begins its work in the air, high enough for sensor-laden C-12s [reconnaissance planes] and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] equipped with electro-optical/infrared cameras to remain undetected from the ground.    

“Without these technologies, we might never see [the insurgents], because they often plant IEDs [improvised explosive devices] at night,” a senior Army official said. “With manned-unmanned teaming, Apache pilots are on alert while the UAVs find targets. It is crucial to remain undetected, because as soon as you show yourself, [insurgents] take off and get lost in the urban terrain. Now, we track them, follow them, and quietly process targets.”    

The images are broadcast to One System Remote Video Transceivers (OSRVTs) on the ground or in command-and-control aircraft. Built on a Panasonic Toughbook laptop computer and a multiband radio receiver, the 20-pound OSRVT can receive video feeds from several varieties of UAVs at the same time. The Army has more than 400 of the terminals, delivered by Textron’s AAI unit under a $70 million deal signed in 2006. They are installed on Strykers, Humvees and A2C2S (Army Airborne Command and Control System) UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.

In an August interview with DANGER ROOM, Gen. David Petraeus didn’t mention Task Force ODIN by name.  But he did talk about how the unit, run out of the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, was proving just how effective network-centric warfare could be.   By connecting together drones and copters and ground forces, the Army was able to attack insurgents with previously unheard-of speed and an efficiency.

OK, we’ve got a UAV overhead.  It sees guys planting an IED, now what do you do?  OK, well you have to be able to command and control: maybe attack helicopters, maybe ground forces, maybe armed UAVs, maybe F-16s.  How do you tie all that together? …We’re really doing it here, in real detail.  Three to five times a day that scenario is playing itself out, that one scenario right there.

Colonel A.T. Ball, commander of the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, has a shockingly detailed official article on ODIN’s promises and challenges:

The task of integrating numerous non-standard aircraft, several exploitation systems, and dozens of civilian contractors while performing management and oversight for the contracts in place for TF ODIN is incredibly challenging for a unit deployed in combat and supporting brigade combat teams in the daily fight. This unique task force requires a systems integration officer, contract officer representatives, and government flight representatives in order to ensure that minimum infrastructure and oversight are in place…

TF ODIN also faced complex technical issues pertaining to distribution of full-motion video transmission and broadcast throughout theater. In broadcasting full-motion video across the theater, bandwidth is always a limiting factor.

Others issues smaller in scale, yet equally as critical, such as ensuring that commercial off-the-shelf avionics and radios were compatible with Army communications security requirements also needed solutions… This is the first time that an entire battalion-sized aviation task force was developed around the concept of using all non-standard material solutions to directly support ground forces in contact.

walter reed breeds infection still

Ongoing Problems at Walter Reed Hospital

Posted by Edger at 10:52 AM

Ongoing Problems at Walter Reed
By Matt Renner, t r u t h o u t | Interview, Tuesday 15 January 2008

“Nothing has changed [at Walter Reed]. Same facility. None of the recommendations that I made have been implemented and to my knowledge they really aren’t working on it.”

Former Army Lt. and military nurse Doug Connor sat down for an interview with Truthout reporter Geoffrey Millard to share his experience before and after the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal broke.

Encouraged by the firings of top military officials as a result of the problems at Walter Reed, Connor spoke out about the dilapidated conditions at Walter Reed. He sent a letter to Gen. Gregory A. Schumacher with recommendations for improving conditions in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where there were equipment shortages and outbreaks of infectious bacteria, including extremely dangerous drug-resistant forms of Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacterium that has been ravaging injured soldiers in Iraq and in domestic military hospitals.

The infection problems caused other units within the hospital to lose faith in the ICU’s ability to care for surgical patients. Because of the infections, “the kidney transplant team will not recover their patients in the surgical ICU anymore,” Connor said in the interview.

According to Connor, his recommendations were not acted upon. Instead, he claims that he was retaliated against. “I thought he would thank me for letting him know where there were areas that needed to be fixed … I have been retaliated against because of the letters that I have sent out. It is pretty transparent … Everyone that has seen what happened around me is just like ‘yeah, they’re going after you.'”

it’s christmas in fallujah: cass dillon and billy joel

Christmas In Fallujah – Cass Dillon

It’s evening in the desert
I’m tired and I’m cold
But I am just a soldier
I do what I am told
We came with the crusaders
To save the Holy Land

It’s Christmas in Fallujah
And no one gives a damn

And I just got your letter
And this what I read
You said I’m fading from your memory
So I’m just as good as dead
We are the Armies of the Empire
We are the Legionnaries of Rome

It’s Christmas in Fallujah
And we ain’t never coming home

We came to bring these people Freedom
We came to fight the Infidel
There is no justice in the desrt
Because there is no God in Hell
They say Osama’s in the Mountains
Deep in a cave near Pakistan
But there’s a sea of blood in Baghdad
A sea of oil in the sand
Between the Tigris and Euphrates
Another day comes to an end

It’s Christmas In Fallujah
Peace on Earth Goodwill to Men
It’s Christmas In Fallujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
It’s Christmas In Fallujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
It’s Christmas In Fallujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
It’s Christmas In Fallujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Merry Christmas from Fallujah
Merry Christmas from Fallujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
OO-RA!

how technology almost lost the war: in iraq, the critical networks are social — not electronic

(Excerpt) 

The network-centric approach had worked pretty much as advertised. Even the theory’s many critics admit net-centric combat helped make an already imposing American military even more effective at locating and killing its foes. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar were broken almost instantly. But network-centric warfare, with its emphasis on fewer, faster-moving troops, turned out to be just about the last thing the US military needed when it came time to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. A small, wired force leaves generals with too few nodes on the military network to secure the peace. There aren’t enough troops to go out and find informants, build barricades, rebuild a sewage treatment plant, and patrol a marketplace.

For the first three years of the Iraq insurgency, American troops largely retreated to their fortified bases, pushed out woefully undertrained local units to do the fighting, and watched the results on feeds from spy drones flying overhead. Retired major general Robert Scales summed up the problem to Congress by way of a complaint from one division commander: “If I know where the enemy is, I can kill it. My problem is I can’t connect with the local population.” How could he? For far too many units, the war had been turned into a telecommute. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon were the first conflicts planned, launched, and executed with networked technologies and a networked ideology. They were supposed to be the wars of the future. And the future lost.

u.s. weapons in iraq mismanaged by pentagon

It started in 2004, when American officials, operating under Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was then in charge of training and equipping the Iraqi security forces, contracted out the distribution of weapons to Kassim al-Saffar, who promptly turned the gig into his own private arms bazaar. He did this will the full knowledge — and possibly the approval — of several U.S. officials working in Baghdad. He was “selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.” Once again, it was a shocking lack of oversight that allowed all this to happen–slogger

Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray

By ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON

Published: November 11, 2007

This article was reported by Eric Schmitt, Ginger Thompson, Margot Williams and James Glanz, and was written by Mr. Schmitt and Ms. Thompson.

Joao Silva for The New York Times

Weapons for Iraqi police cadets, supplied by the United States, are stacked in the armory of the Baghdad Police Academy.

Joao Silva for The New York Times

The former Iraqi manager of the armory, by some accounts, ran it as a private arms bazaar. Thousands of weapons are missing.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

“This was the craziest thing in the world,” said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. “They were taking weapons away by the truckload.”

Activities at that armory and other warehouses help explain how the American military lost track of some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq’s security forces in 2004 and 2005, as auditors discovered in the past year.

These discoveries prompted criminal inquiries by the Pentagon and the Justice Department, and stoked fears that the arms could fall into enemy hands and be used against American troops. So far, no missing weapons have been linked to any American deaths, but investigators say that in a country awash with weapons, it may be impossible to trace where some ended up.

While the Pentagon has yet to offer its own accounting of how the weapons channel broke down, it is clear from interviews with two dozen military and civilian investigators, contracting officers, warehouse managers and others that military expediency sometimes ran amok, the lines between legal and illegal were blurred and billions of dollars in arms were handed over to shoestring commands without significant oversight.

In the armory that Mr. Saffar presided over, for example, his dealings were murky. Mr. Tisdale, who recalled seeing a briefcase stuffed with stacks of $20 bills under Mr. Saffar’s desk, said he thought Mr. Saffar enriched himself selling American stocks along with guns he acquired from the streets. Mr. Tisdale was supposed to sign off on any transactions by Mr. Saffar, but he said many shipments left the armory without his approval and without the required records.

Ted Nordgaarden, an Alaska state trooper who worked as the police academy’s supply chief, said most of the weapons he saw leaving the armory went with a military escort. For his part, Mr. Saffar denies any wrongdoing, including any arms dealings. Nearly a half-dozen American and Iraqi workers say his gun business was an open secret at the armory.

Elsewhere, American officers short-circuited the chain of custody by rushing to Baghdad’s airport to claim crates of newly arrived weapons without filing the necessary paperwork. And Iraqis regularly sold or stole the American-supplied weapons, American officers and contractors said.

A shipment of 3,000 Glocks issued to police cadets disappeared within a week when they were sold on the black market, said an American official involved in distributing weapons. Other military sources said the weapons would fetch between five and seven times more than the $200 a police cadet would earn in a month. American military commanders say Iraqi security guards are suspected of stealing hundreds of weapons last year in about 10 major thefts at arms depots at Taji and Abu Ghraib.

The investigations into missing weapons are among the most serious in the widening federal inquiries into billions of dollars in military contracts for the purchase and delivery of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces.

Already there is evidence that some American-supplied weapons fell into the hands of guerrillas responsible for attacks against Turkey, an important United States ally. Some investigators said that because military suppliers to the war zone were not required to record serial numbers, it was unlikely that the authorities would ever be able to tell where the weapons went.