MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED

I have left JC. If my deletions disrupt continuity, please accept my apology, but JC is no longer the place to be, as far as I am concerned.

[BFrank]

Another Shrub myth bites the dust.
Will it ever end??

+++

NY Times
November 19, 2003
Few Signs of Infiltration by Foreign Fighters in Iraq
By JOEL BRINKLEY

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 18 — The commanding general of the United States Army division that patrols much of Iraq's western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that his men had encountered only a handful of foreign fighters trying to sneak into the country to attack American and allied forces.

"I want to underscore that most of the attacks on our forces are by former regime loyalists and other Iraqis, not foreign forces," said the officer, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

His view was echoed by Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, which controls northern Iraq and parts of its borders with Syria, Turkey and Iran.

During a briefing on Monday for a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, he said that since May, his men had captured perhaps 20 foreign fighters trying to slip into the country from those three countries.

During a period in which border patrols have been intensified and new technology is being used, that number suggests only modest foreign incursions into Iraq, in contrast to estimates by the Bush administration.

In Washington late last month, officials estimated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq at 1,000 to 3,000, and the White House has been suggesting that foreign fighters are continuing to enter the country and are behind many of the attacks, linking the war in Iraq to the global campaign against terror.

In a news conference on Oct. 28, President Bush said: "We are mindful of the fact that some might want to come into Iraq to attack and to create conditions of fear and chaos. The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they fear a free and peaceful state in the midst of a part of the world where terror has found recruits."

During a news briefing on Tuesday evening, General Swannack, who took over the region two months ago, said his men had captured 13 foreign guerrillas and killed 7 others. Ten days ago, Col. David A. Teeples, who is part of General Swannack's command, said only a small number of the foreigners were among the 500 to 600 people his forces had captured in attacks on coalition forces.

American efforts to prevent attacks continued Tuesday, when American fighter jets bombed suspected guerrilla positions near Tikrit, in central Iraq. Commanders called in AC-130 gunships, A-10 attack planes and Apache helicopter gunships, as well as Air Force F-16 and F-15E fighter-bombers with 500-pound bombs, the military said, in the largest bombardment in the area since President Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1.

In Baghdad on Tuesday night, the military said it had fired heavy artillery at a suspected insurgent position.

In Washington, a military official disclosed that the Army's Fourth Infantry Division had destroyed a house that belonged to Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, one of Saddam Hussein's closest aides, who American officials believe is playing a significant role in the insurgency. It is not yet known whether General Ibrahim was inside when a satellite-guided missile destroyed his home, about 10 miles southwest of Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's ancestral home, the official said.

But the strike illustrated what military officials said was a new twist to their counterinsurgency campaign: attack bomb-making factories, weapons warehouses, guerrilla meeting places and insurgents' homes with no warning, using high-altitude bombing or long-range missile strikes. Officials indicated that it was clear the general's house was being used as a meeting place.

"This approach gives us more tactical surprise," a military official said. "They're still using houses and neighborhoods, but we've been removing sanctuaries and keeping them off balance."

Without speaking of those operations specifically, General Swannack said the stepped-up offensive "demonstrates our resolve, and we are not going to fight this one with one hand tied behind our backs." Echoing a historical quote from the British military, the general said the Army was going to "use a sledgehammer to smash a walnut."

Military officials in Iraq also reported the arrest of eight Iraqis during searches in Mosul. Soldiers seized a five-gallon container of gunpowder, three grenades, five fuses, two cases of rifle ammunition and two rifles, the United States Army said.

The military has made a rather public effort in recent days to tamp down speculation that they are fighting a guerrilla war against foreign terrorists. Late last week, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, said loyalists to Saddam Hussein — not foreign terrorists — posed the greatest danger to American troops and to stability in Iraq.

General Swannack said Iraq's borders had been "porous" in the months before he took command of the region. The number of soldiers patrolling the borders has almost tripled, to 20,000, he said.

General Petraeus, in the north, said his men had deployed new technology along the border that can locate anyone or anything trying to cross it. With that, he said, "if you don't see anything moving, then you know you have got control."

A few days ago, General Swannack said, his men came across their largest group of foreigners trying to sneak across from Syria. "We identified six of them at the border," he said. "One pulled a knife, and he was killed. We secured the other five."

[BFrank]

Just a few headlines from my Yahoo home page:

"Iraqi Teens Drag Bloodied U.S. Soldiers"
"Five U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghan Crash"
"Iraqi Town Relishes Freedom, but Resentment Runs Beneath"

I'm glad things are going so well for us.

[RBS]

I love how he calls them "these killers." And "evildoers."
And "terrists."

God help us.

[Monte Smith]

Speaking of MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED, how did that London protest end up? Way to call it, Chris A: MONUMENTAL!

[Monte Smith]

THE FONT...

Do you ever worry about it distracting from your argument? Because basically you are yelling.

[bluenoter]

WHAT?

BTW, I'm trying to download and install IE6 and the other amenities that MSNBC wants me to have before it will deign to show me the video of tonight's debate in Iowa. (It's supposed to be rebroadcast at 9 p.m. EST.)

[jesus marion joseph]

Are you still goose stepping if you go in the correct direction?

[BFrank]

The Nation
- David Corn

Fox News' Occupation Critic
12/03/2003 @ 9:36pm

Fox News Channel is considered by many to be pro-Bush, pro-war, and pro-occupation. Yet one of the harsher critics in the media of the Bush administration's postwar actions has been retired Major Bob Bevelacqua, a Fox News military analyst. "Major Bob," as he is called on air, served thirteen years in the Army Special Forces, which included a nation-building stint in Haiti. He also put in three years at the Pentagon. Fox enlisted him as a commentator eight days after 9/11. When not deconstructing developments in Iraq for Fox viewers, he works with William Cowan, another former military officer who is a Fox analyst, in a company trying to provide security assistance to the U.S. occupation authority and private enterprises in Iraq. Bevelacqua, who supported going to war on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant and a threat to stability in the region but not a direct threat to the United States, is clearly unhappy with the whole contracting process under way in Iraq--which certainly colors his opinions, as does his time in the Special Forces. After hearing him challenge the administration's handling of the occupation on the air and in the corridors of the Fox News Washington bureau--I, too, am a Fox News contributor--I asked Bevelacqua to spell out his objections and talk about what he saw in Iraq during a recent month-long visit there.

What's going wrong in Iraq?

We didn't make the transition from a conventional war to an unconventional war. That occurred when President Bush said the major combat is over and now we focus on the rebuilding. We were still fighting in a conventional mindset--war done, move on to the postwar--when we needed to be fighting in an unconventional mindset against what was now an unconventional enemy.

Was it unforeseen that the invasion of Iraq would lead to a vicious insurgency? Was there no plan for that?

It was unforeseen by the politicos, but it was foreseen by the guys who had worked in and around the military. Some were looking down the road and thinkin [bad text] tion Provisional Authority (CPA) would look like and who some of the key players would be. They took questions, and I asked two questions. First, what are you going to do with the military? Then what are you going to do with the police? There was no answer. I got a shoulder shrug: "We don't know." So I got on my soap box for 30 seconds and went over what happened in Haiti and the lessons learned. We got the military to become police there. We changed their uniforms and changed their appearances. We gave them classes on human rights. We did not collapse them. The reaction was silence, "Thank you very much, next question." A few of us looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. After the meeting some of us huddled up in the hallway and said, "We don't have a plan." In the small circle that I run within, the Special. Forces, this way of doing business is known as a "guided discovery."

What does that mean?

Go over there and make it up as you go along. If it works, great. If it doesn't, we'll try something else. That's fine if you're making chocolate bars. In this context in the Middle East, it is a recipe for failure--which is what we have at the moment, though that can be changed.

It really was avoidable. Every administration does the exact same thing. You bring in your connected friends and allies, and you give them jobs, appoint them as Cabinet secretaries and other officials. Some do a good job. Some have no skills to do the job. As a prime example I would use [national security adviser] Condoleezza Rice. What does she have in her past experience to allow her to advise the president on all this? She's a Soviet Union expert.

There are a lot of smart guys in the Pentagon, and the ones with the ability to come up with a realistic plan are not going to be heard--especially if they challenge the ideology of the guys in charge. Now I think what we see in Iraq is a classic mission for the Army Special Forces--a mission heavy with civil affairs and psychological operations. It is all about working with the indigenous population of Iraq, period. The Army has doctrine on how to conduct these types of affairs. And it has flat-out been ignored.

If the military--particularly Special Forces--has the experience to do nation-building in conjunction with counterinsurgency, why haven't things gone better?

We put civilians in charge--the CAP--and that was because the Pentagon and White House wanted to control the war without having to go through the military. Now that we are in the phase when large amounts of money are being let out in contracts and private industry has to be brought in, that all has to be controlled by the White House. Is it a coincidence that one of the largest companies that was awarded a contract in Iraq is aligned with Dick Cheney?

I recently spent a month in Iraq, and I did a lot of listening and not much talking, which is not characteristic for me. The way the Iraqis see it--and they call it very accurately--is that there is a lot of corruption in how the CPA has been handling contracts with Halliburton, Bechtel, and the subcontractors. It upsets Iraqis to see subcontractors brought in from South Africa, Germany, England, India and elsewhere to do simple contracts that are not high-tech. They feel those opportunities for work should go to the Iraqi people. It is their nation; they should probably be involved in rebuilding it.

As you know, there's been some debate here about the media coverage of security in Iraq, with the White House and its supporters claiming that the media has played up stories about the security problems in Iraq. What did you see there?

The security situation as a whole is nonexistent. In certain areas and sectors, it is pretty good. But the first day I got there in October somebody parked a car bomb outside the gates of the compound where our offices are in Baghdad. That first night, mortar attacks were fired from the area I lived in, which is only a kilometer or so from where the 82nd Airborne is based. If they could get that close to the Americans and fire mortars, I don't know how anyone can argue that security is good.

The enemy has the ability to fire when and where they like. That's because the civilian population is allowing them to do that. And that's because we have not embraced that civilian population. We have isolated ourselves in Saddam castle behind concrete barriers. Think of the irony of this. We put ourselves in the castles from where he dominated and repressed that country. Who do we look like? The members of the interim council had to be searched before they would be allowed to enter their offices. It was a slap in the face, and they could see foreign subcontractors coming and going into the CAP offices just by flashing an ID card. This is totally unacceptable.

Three days before I left, an explosive charge was placed underneath the generator for our office. The blast took out the generator and blew out a portion of the glass in the office. We feel we were attacked because we were advertising what we were trying to do--that is, use Iraqis to develop information and intelligence that can be used to provide security. None of our guys were hurt. But when the attack came, the security guards we had at our offices disappeared right before the explosion. And the Iraqi who was providing us these security guards--a prominent sheik from Mosul--is working for the U.S. military, too.

Does the Bush administration have a good bead on who--and what--it is fighting in Iraq?

I've seen lists of insurgent forces they have developed, and they're missing one category: disenfranchised and disillusioned Iraqis. They don't recognize that as a potential group these people can create havoc. They think they're onlookers. But these people don't have any jobs. So when they are approached by people in the insurgency with a handful of money and asked to shoot at Americans or plant a bomb, they say, sure, we'll do it. They think there is still a chance that Saddam Hussein will come back to power and then it will have been a smart move to have helped the insurgency.

How angry should the American public be, if at all?

The public deserves to know the truth. There is so much cheerleading on TV. They're not getting the truth. Most pundits care about getting Bush in or out of office. Its politics at its worst. The White House is doing what all White Houses do--spinning. They give their take, which most of the time I find to be inaccurate. I'm an advocate for the soldier. I love my country, not necessarily the government.

A lot of the Democratic presidential candidates talk about turning over the occupation to the U.N. and bringing in troops from other nations. Do you think that's a feasible military option? It looks as if few other countries are eager to dispatch their troops into a counterinsurgency situation, which, as you know, is much different than a peacekeeping mission.

The Iraqis don't want to see anyone else send in troops. We have to use the Iraqi people, use their police force, win hearts and minds. It has to be peace through prosperity. We have to give them jobs. The large contracts may have to go to places like Halliburton and Bechtel, but there should be a law that they only can subcontract to an Iraqi company. Let these Iraqi firms team up with foreign companies if they have to, but Iraqi companies should be making the biggest gains from rebuilding their countries. I spoke to a German who got the contract to restring power lines from Baghdad to Jordan. He said he was going to use Indians, not Iraqis, to restring the lines. He was then told by a prominent Iraqi that the Iraqi people would not stand for this, that Iraqis would be shooting the Indians down from the towers. He had to reconsider. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what is needed. We need to use cross-cultural communication skills to understand the environment and create peace through prosperity. We need the Iraqis to do their own intelligence network, their own security, their own rebuilding.

Why don't they share your view at the White House and the Pentagon?

Ignorance--they just don't know how unconventional war is fought. And arrogance--an inability to listen to the suggestions from others. And there is some professional jealousy. The civilians in the Pentagon don't want to see the Special Forces guys handed another mission.

I thought going to war in Iraq was a good thing. But we are screwing it up. If we change our policies and truly work with the Iraqi people, things can change. If they do not change, we will have another Beirut, another Somalia. We will end up leaving, and it will implode. And that will give us negative PR in the eyes of 1.6 billion Muslims. This is the Super Bowl. Look, we trained and advised the Afghanistan mujaheddin [who battled the Soviet Union in the 1980s] and some of them managed to fight against us later. Our ability to screw things up is immense.