Military Is awash in data from drones

Master Sgt. Demetrius Lester/U.S. Air Force, via EPA - An MQ-1 Predator drone returned from a mission to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2008.

In Body of Lies, both the book and the movie, drones appear.


As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up. Air Force drones collected nearly three times as much video over Afghanistan and Iraq last year as in 2007 — about 24 years’ worth if watched continuously. That volume is expected to multiply in the coming years as drones are added to the fleet and as some start using multiple cameras to shoot in many directions.

A group of young analysts already watches every second of the footage live as it is streamed to Langley Air Force Base here and to other intelligence centers, and they quickly pass warnings about insurgents and roadside bombs to troops in the field. But military officials also see much potential in using the archives of video collected by the drones for later analysis, like searching for patterns of insurgent activity over time. To date, only a small fraction of the stored video has been retrieved for such intelligence purposes.


Col. Daniel R. Johnson, right, in the intelligence center at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., where analysts watch every second of drones’ video footage live as it is streamed there.

There is too much data, and not enough analysis, as has been made clear. If one knows what one wants to look for, then there is a marker; but if one is conducting an open search, there are no markers, and it has to be exceedingly difficult to make sense of the available data.


Mindful of those lapses, the Air Force and other military units are trying to prevent an overload of video collected by the drones, and they are turning to the television industry to learn how to quickly share video clips and display a mix of data in ways that make analysis faster and easier.

Watching the film, I wondered where the line between truth and fiction really lies.

$26 software hacks drones

This is an amazing story. SOmeone in the Pentagon should be thinking of resigning over it: using software that costs 26 bucks, available off the shelf, U.S. drones have been hacked. The Journal's subheading includes the phrase Iranian backing suspected, but it should say 650 billion dollar military thwarted by 26 buck software major embarrassment.

After Cheney

IN THE FIELD Biden meeting in Baghdad with Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

An interesting article about Biden as Vice President. His experience in the Senate, his personality, his garrulousness, his role in the Obama administration, his succession of Cheney.

Some details from the story stand out for me.

First, this web and tangle of relationships: while Cheney’s staff fought for dominance with the White House, Biden’s is deeply enmeshed in the policy-making structure. His national-security adviser, Antony J. Blinken, and two other aides are also directors in the National Security Council, while a number of former Biden aides occupy important posts in the N.S.C. Thomas Donilon, deputy national-security adviser and coordinator of policy across agencies, has been a close friend of Biden’s since the 1980s; Donilon’s brother, Michael, is a senior adviser to Biden, and Donilon’s wife, Catherine Russell, was Biden’s former administrative assistant and is now chief of staff to Biden’s wife, Jill. During the transition, Biden told James Jones that he didn’t want his own N.S.C. but wanted to be able to call on the N.S.C. as needed. Jones complied; on the first day in office, he told his staff, “You work for the president and the vice president.” National-security aides routinely accompany Biden on his foreign trips. As one policymaker who was not authorized to comment publicly on internal administration issues said to me: “I don’t in my head distinguish between Office of the Vice President people and N.S.C. people. We’re all the White House staff.”

Whether such a sweeping statement is full reality or a variation of reality and wishful thinking, there seems little doubt that the style and substance of the Bush and the Obama administrations are quite different.

THE MEDIATOR So far, Biden has avoided the White House infighting that marked Cheney’s tenure.


The difference between Biden’s role and Cheney’s has at least as much to do with the culture of the two administrations as it does with the men themselves. Bush’s discomfort with world affairs created a vacuum that Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others fought to fill. Moreover, Bush’s tendency toward the snap judgment and the gut call undermined the formal policy process in favor of jockeying for position at key moments. By contrast, there is little question where foreign policy is now decided — in the Oval Office — and the absence of a San Andreas fault line has as much to do with clarity of authority as it does with personal vibes. What’s more, as the agonizingly deliberative debate over policy in Afghanistan has demonstrated, Obama wants to hear a case fully argued out before reaching a conclusion, even at some political risk. This perfectly suits Biden, a gifted expostulator and an indifferent schemer.

Biden is described as a knowledgable Washington hand, experienced in foreign policy matters, and the like.

“When you’re talking about a country which has an 85 percent rate of illiteracy, which has virtually no history of modern governance, you should go in with an overwhelming dose of humility,” he told me. “And you’d better damn well have as precise a notion as you can of what your objective is.”

Saying virtually is, perhaps, being kind.

Biden and those around him do not seem to believe that McChrystal’s strategy can work — not because they question the abilities of the military, but because they think the generals are far too optimistic about the civilian elements upon which the overall plan depends. They are deeply skeptical that the government of President Hamid Karzai can somehow gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people; that the U.S. can quickly develop the enormous civilian capacity that would accompany a military surge, or can train as many as 400,000 Afghan soldiers, especially with attrition rates now running around 25 percent; that Pakistan will accept a policy designed to bolster Afghanistan’s Pashtun-led government; that NATO allies will overcome public resistance to offer major help; or that the U.S. can afford to spend something like $250 billion on Afghanistan at a time when deficits are already running very high.

Key point there: Pakistan accepting a Pashtun-led Afghani government.

If Al Qaeda can be bottled up on the border with Pakistan through counterterrorism measures involving troops as well as drone attacks, and with the help of an expanded Afghan army, then it is unnecessary to build a secure Afghanistan that can defeat the Taliban.

And perhaps provide a handle on an exit strategy?

Patient and humble are not words that come to mind when you think of Joe Biden; yet even his limitations may suit him for this new world. Biden is the one who knows many little things but no big thing. As gifted as he is at retail politics, he has none of Barack Obama’s talent for the sweeping formulation or inspirational language, which perhaps explains why he has fared so poorly in presidential campaigns. Biden does not project even slightly in the realm of myth. But for this very reason, he is allergic to magical, wish-fulfillment thinking. “Guys,” he’ll say — this is how he describes addressing the Joint Chiefs of Staff — “what if it doesn’t work?” An administration full of youthful true believers, enraptured with their heroic leader, needs a skeptic and a scold. Obama may need one himself. And yet Biden is also, like Obama, an optimist. As vice presidents go, he has more in common with Hubert Humphrey, the happy warrior, than with dark Dick Cheney. He may well, as Tom Lehrer once sang of Humphrey, dream of staging a coup; but he is likely to remain happy as long as he has apple carts to overturn.

Biden on Afghanistan

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has had an influence on President Obama’s reconsideration of the war in Afghanistan.






From the moment they took office, Mr. Biden has been Mr. Obama’s in-house pessimist on Afghanistan, the strongest voice against further escalation of American forces there and the leading doubter of the president’s strategy. It was a role that may have been lonely at first, but has attracted more company inside the White House as Mr. Obama rethinks the strategy he unveiled just seven months ago.

For Mr. Biden, a longtime senator who prided himself on his experience in foreign relations, the role represents an evolution in his own thinking, a shift from his days as a liberal hawk advocating for American involvement in Afghanistan. Month by month, year by year, the story of Mr. Biden’s disenchantment with the Afghan government, and by extension with the engagement there, mirrors America’s slow but steady turn against the war, with just 37 percent supporting more troops in last week’s CBS News poll.

More and more it looks a quagmire, yet leaving would be catastrophic. Still, what would pouring in more troops accomplish?

Mr. Biden does not favor abandoning Afghanistan, but his approach would reject the additional troops sought by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and leave the American force in Afghanistan roughly the same, 68,000 troops. Rather than emphasize protecting the Afghan population, he would accelerate training of Afghans to take over the fight while hunting Al Qaeda in Pakistan using drones and special forces. His view has caught on with many liberals in his party.

Beyond Mr. Biden’s strategic concerns, some who participated in administration deliberations earlier this year said he was keenly aware that the country, and particularly his party’s liberal base, was growing tired of the war and might not accept many more years of extensive American commitment.

He certainly is old enough to remember Viet Nam.

When Mr. Biden visited Afghanistan in January for a third time, he returned increasingly convinced that America’s national interest lay in Pakistan. With fewer than 100 Qaeda fighters left in Afghanistan, he reasoned, the nation was investing disproportionate resources in the wrong country.

Nine months later, Mr. Obama is reassessing his goal. While officials anticipate that he will fall between the suggestions from Mr. Biden and his commanding general in Afghanistan, they agree that Mr. Biden has shaped the choices — not entirely unlike his predecessor, Dick Cheney.

“There are some ironic similarities to Cheney’s definition of the job and Biden’s in one sense,” Mr. Haass said. “They’re both people who are not hobbled by their own ambitions, they’re both experienced national security hands, and it freed up Cheney and it frees up Biden to give an honest take.”

How ironic.

a Battle of Two Books Rages

The struggle to set the future course of the Afghan war is becoming a battle of two books -- both suddenly popular among White House and Pentagon brain trusts. The two draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead. President Barack Obama recently finished the book, according to administration officials, and Vice President Joe Biden is reading it now. The second describes a different administration, in 1972, when a U.S. military that has finally figured out how to counter the insurgency is rejected by political leaders who bow to popular opinion and end the fight. It has been recommended in multiple lists put out by military officers, including a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who passed it out to his subordinates.

The two books -- "Lessons in Disaster," on Mr. Obama's nightstand, and "A Better War" on the shelves of military gurus -- have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama's presidency.

Lesson's call number is 327.7305 G; Better's is 959.7043 S. Interesting divergence in call numbers: 300s are social sciences, 327 international relations; 950s are general history of Asia, 959 Southeast Asia.

I read (most of) "Lessons" and came away with an abiding anger at McGeorge Bundy for his arrogance. Until his very end he refused to admit the mistakes that were made, and his lack of courage in examining his own thinking.

A better war's subject heading is Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- United States. and that has 265 entries. Lesson has numerous subject headings; the first two are United States -- Foreign relations -- Vietnam (56 entries) and Vietnam -- Foreign relations -- United States.(also 56; duplication?).

The impact of all the book-reading on the Afghanistan decision isn't clear. The administration's review of its Afghan strategy is expected to last until the end of this month, and views are likely to evolve. "A Better War" shaped the debate over the 2007 troop surge in Iraq: Military commanders and top Pentagon civilians pushed the book ardently on surge skeptics, winning important converts.

Oy. Better was written in 1999; Lewis Sorley is described in the book's bio as a "third-generation graduate of West Point" with a Ph.D. from Hopkins, who served in the Army for 20 years, taught at the Point and the Army War College, and had Pentagon staff duty, as well as civilian official duty at the CIA. The book's cover states that tit draws "on newly available information" and "revises our knowledge of the war and its conclusion." Its subtitle is "the unexamined vistories and the final tragedy of America's last years in VietNam."

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), long an advocate of the narrative detailed in "A Better War," warned that while Vietnam may appear to have some parallels to Afghanistan, the better comparison is Iraq, where many of the same commanders now managing the Afghan war learned the value of surging more troops into a battle zone. "Vietnam fell to a conventional invasion of the North Vietnamese military," Mr. McCain said. "The closest parallel to Afghanistan today is Iraq, the strategies that succeeded and the generals that succeeded."

Conventional military invasion? What about the guerrilla war?

There are striking similarities between the debates of today and yesteryear. Now, as in the 1960s, the discussion in the administration is how to best defeat a perceived national-security threat. In both periods, the U.S. had partnered with corrupt governments with tainted leaders.

For opponents of a major troop increase, led by Mr. Biden and Mr. Emanuel, "Lessons in Disaster" -- which traces the hawkish war stance and eventual disavowal of it by Vietnam-era national-security adviser McGeorge Bundy -- encapsulates their concerns about accepting military advice unchallenged.

"Bundy said we debated a number and not a use," said Gordon M. Goldstein, the book's author, referring to troop deployments. "That's a really critical observation which goes to the heart of what's going on right now in the White House."

A shift in focus remains anathema to commanders at the Pentagon. Gen. Stanley McChrystal voiced that view during a speech in London last week, saying he doesn't support a strategy that only focused on using unmanned drones and elite forces to track down al Qaeda terrorists.

[His] view is shared by the bulk of the senior military leadership, which has signed on to Gen. McChrystal's 66-page war assessment that calls for a large increase in force levels.

It is a view echoed by Lewis Sorley, author of "A Better War," which argues that once Gen. William Westmoreland was replaced in 1968 by Gen. Creighton Abrams, the war began to turn.

I'm going to read (some of) the book, and see. The idea that the VietNam War could have been won by the US is, was, and remains, preposterous.

Crew members ride a U.S. Chinook helicopter over the mountains after leaving Cop Cherokee base in Kherwar district in Logar province Tuesday.

Declare victory, go home

Iraqi police officers in a parade in Baquba on June 29, the day before the deadline for the pullout of American forces from cities.









A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”

The memo offers a look at tensions that emerged between Iraqi and American military officers at a sensitive moment when American combat troops met a June 30 deadline to withdraw from Iraq’s cities, the first step toward an advisory role. The Iraqi government’s forceful moves to assert authority have concerned some American officers, though senior American officials insisted that cooperation had improved.

Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum details Iraqi military weaknesses in scathing language, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist Shiite political pressure. Extending the American military presence beyond August 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling growing resentment of Americans.

“As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”

Those conclusions are not shared by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, and his recommendation for an accelerated troop withdrawal is at odds with the timetable approved by President Obama.

Still, the memo opens a rare window into a debate among American military officers about how active the American role should be in Iraq and for how long. While some in the military endorse Colonel Reese’s assessment, other officers say that American forces need to stay in Iraq for the next couple of years as the Iraqis struggle with heightened tensions between the Kurds and Arabs, insurgent attacks in and around Mosul and checking authoritarian tendencies of the Iraqi government.

Before deploying to Iraq, Colonel Reese served as the director of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the Army’s premier intellectual center. He was an author of an official Army history of the Iraq war — “On Point II” — that was sharply critical of the lapses in postwar planning.

It's 720 pages, the document (28.12 Mb).

But while General Odierno has drawn up detailed plans for a substantial advisory role, Colonel Reese argued in favor of a more limited — and shorter — effort, and recommended that all American forces be withdrawn by August 2010.

“If there ever was a window where the seeds of a professional military culture could have been implanted, it is now long past,” he wrote. “U.S. combat forces will not be here long enough or with sufficient influence to change it. The military culture of the Baathist-Soviet model under Saddam Hussein remains entrenched and will not change. The senior leadership of the I.S.F. is incapable of change in the current environment.”

At least somebody is being honest.

Threat to Niger 's Democracy

A woman selling vegetables at a market in Niamey, the capital of Niger. The country ranks fifth from the bottom in the United Nations human development index.
















Tens of thousands have taken to the streets to protest President Mamadou Tandja’s slow-moving coup d’état, as his critics call it: his plan to stay beyond the legal limit of two terms in his colonial-era palace, a gleaming oasis of whitewashed order amid dilapidated government buildings and mud-brick houses.

In his push for a new constitution that would abolish term limits and give him more power after 10 years as president, Mr. Tandja dissolved a high court that ruled against his bid to remain in office; dismissed a fractious Parliament; took steps to muzzle the press, including shutting down a radio and television station; and arrested opposition leaders.

Just as Chávez, Correa and Morales have done, as Zelaya want to do, In Latin America, one in power in Africa works to perpetuate his power.

Niger’s president, Mamadou Tandja, is seeking a new constitution that will allow him to stay in office past two terms and increase his power.






Democracy is new here in one of the world’s poorest countries, barely a decade old in this vast land of about 14 million people, most of it desert, bigger in area than France, Spain and Portugal together. Uranium deposits, among the world’s largest, provide the government with revenue, but the citizens here do not have much.

Yellow cake, W. Bush announced, Iraq sought to get, and he and Blair used that line to help justify their decision to make war.

Most of Niger’s citizens live on less than a dollar a day.






Most live on less than a dollar a day, and mortality rates for mothers and children are well above the African average — double in the case of women giving birth. The country ranks fifth from the bottom in the United Nations human development index, and persistent malnutrition stalks rural areas, aid workers say. In the capital, the hugely swollen limbs of insistent beggars testify to the effects of unchecked disease.

One thing the people have dearly acquired, though, after decades of coups, military strongmen and weak governments, is a political order that has resembled democracy, albeit with lapses: two successful presidential elections, defeated candidates who go home without causing turmoil, an outspoken opposition and an alert if beleaguered press. The citizens are manifestly unwilling to give up their shaky gains.

In the presidential palace, an airy Moorish-style edifice built for the French governors and well hidden from the road, Mr. Tandja beamed and said he wanted to stay on only because the people were begging him to do so. “The people demand it,” Mr. Tandja said. “My obligation is to never betray the aspirations of the people. It’s the people who asked.”

What people, one wonders.

Although the United States and the European Union have condemned Mr. Tandja’s moves, analysts say that because of an oil deal with the Chinese and support from the Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, he may be relatively invulnerable to Western pressure, despite the considerable presence of outside aid in Niger’s budget.

Mr. Tandja insisted that he had not “violated any act of the Constitution.”

A union leader here who also heads the protests angrily disagreed.

“Unfortunately, he’s made us miss our entrance into the great court of democratic nations, like Ghana and Mali,” said Issoufou Sidibé, secretary general of the Democratic Confederation of Workers in Niger. “He’s made us totally miss what would have been our triumphant entry. It’s made every Nigerien who is proud of his country very angry.”

U.S. Leaves Iraqi District Where Anger Lingers

American soldiers waited before going out in Ghazaliya. The base there will eventually become part of an Iraqi National Police garrison













“Right now we are balanced on a knife’s edge,” said Hamid Majeed, a Sunni speaking near the rubble of a Shiite mosque that was blown up in 2006. “We do not like the Americans, but we also thank God when we see them with the Iraqi Army, because we know we can trust them more than the government forces.”


American and Iraqi soldiers patrolling the streets of Ghazaliya in Baghdad. Sectarian violence in the neighborhood was reduced, but tensions remain.

Headlines

Sinopec Offers $7.22 Billion for Oil Firm - The takeover of Addax Petroleum would give the Chinese company access to oil fields in Iraq and West Africa.

Deep in Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears

O.E.C.D. Improves Outlook for Economy - The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has revised its forecasts for developed countries upward for the first time in two years.

DealBook Blog: KKR Revises Deal for Affiliate, Postpones NYSE Debut - The giant private equity firm said Wednesday that it is seeking to revise a merger with a publicly listed European affiliate that would give it an Amsterdam listing.

Citigroup Has a Plan to Fatten Salaries - The plan is a test for the Obama administration, which wants to limit compensation at companies that have received federal bailouts. These bozos simply refuse to understand what in damnation is going on.

Baucus Grabs Pacesetter Role on Health Bill

Worse?

Could torture photos get worse? Ex-general calls banned pics 'horrendous'
A former U.S. general said graphic images of rape are among the Iraqi prisoner abuse photos the Obama administration doesn't want released.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/#ixzz0Gp24v0Lg&B

I simply don't understand why anyone wants such pictures released. To gain what? To zing Bush and Cheney again? Considering the damage that could be done to the nation, why?

Robin Cook

Robin Cook said the Iraq war was against British interests.

On the same page as the obit below of Ibrahim Ferrer.

Who was right? Blair, or Cook? Too soon to tell.

Robin Cook, a former British foreign secretary who quit the government to protest the invasion of Iraq, died on Saturday after collapsing in the Scottish Highlands on a mountain called Ben Stack, the police said, without explaining the cause of death. He was 59.

Mr. Cook was close to tears in March 2003 when, as leader of the House of Commons, he rose on the very eve of battle to tell legislators that he did not believe an Iraq campaign had either international or domestic support and therefore, "with a heavy heart," he was quitting the government.

In a letter to Mr. Blair at the time he said: "In principle, I believe it is wrong to embark on military action without broad international support. In practice, I believe it is against Britain's interest to create a precedent for unilateral military action."

By resigning, Mr. Cook brought himself into line with a broad swath of the British population that was opposed to a war without a United Nations mandate and in alliance with a disliked American administration.

But he also set himself against Mr. Blair at one of the most critical moments of the prime minister's career. In British politics, Mr. Cook's action - defying his party at a time of national crisis - was seen as a rare display of principle at personal and political cost.

Robin Finlayson Cook was born near Glasgow and studied English at Edinburgh University. He had planned further studies in divinity but suffered doubts about his religious belief. He was known thereafter for twin passions - politics and horse racing. He wrote newspaper columns on both.

Quite a change in direction.

Impromptu Farewell: Britain’s Salute

Soldiers’ hearses, en route from the Lyneham Royal Air Force Base to a hospital morgue in Oxford, slowly made their way down the main street in Wootton Bassett in March.

General Steps From the Shadows

Stanley A. McChrystal shown in 2003 with Victoria Clarke, an assistant secretary of defense.









Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.

“He’s lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier,” said Maj. Gen. William Nash, a retired officer. “He’s got all the Special Ops attributes, plus an intellect.”

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. But former C.I.A. officials say that General McChrystal was among those who, with the C.I.A., pushed hard for a secret joint operation in the tribal region of Pakistan in 2005 aimed at capturing or killing Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld canceled the operation at the last minute, saying it was too risky and was based on what he considered questionable intelligence, a move that former intelligence officials say General McChrystal found maddening.

Questionable intelligence? Rummy was able to make that distinction?

When General McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. He won praise from C.I.A. officers, many of whom had stormy relationships with commanders running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fascinating web of relationships.

As head of the command, which oversees the elite Delta Force and units of the Navy Seals, General McChrystal was based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But he spent much of his time in Iraq commanding secret missions. Most of his operations were conducted at night, but General McChrystal, described nearly universally as a driven workaholic, was up for most of the day as well.

General McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976 and spent the next three decades ascending through conventional and Special Operations command positions as well as taking postings at Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a commander of a Green Beret team in 1979 and 1980, and he did several tours in the Army Rangers as a staff officer and a battalion commander, including service in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

Emphasis added.

Clinton Settles Into New Role

Hillary Rodham Clinton in Baden-Baden, Germany, in April. Her days have become a whirl of talks, meetings and travel.

In this, the latest mutation in a career of many changes, Mrs. Clinton’s days have become a whirl of diplomatic talks, White House meetings and foreign travel: 74,000 miles and 22 countries as of last Sunday, when she returned from Iraq and Lebanon.

State Department officials, and others in the administration, say less-than-generous things about Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, suggesting there is some jockeying among the top officials around the president. General Jones, these people say, has struggled with his transition from Marine commander to senior staff person, speaking up less in debates than Mrs. Clinton and not pushing as hard for decisions.

Office politics.

Friends acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton herself was initially swamped by the challenge of taking over the sprawling State Department bureaucracy — management being one deficit in her career. She likens it to being “mayor of a good-sized small city.”




May 2, 2009
Her Rival Now Her Boss, Clinton Settles Into New Role
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton insists her transition from presidential contender to secretary of state has been seamless, and in one respect, it is hard to argue with her: she still hustles like a candidate down a few points in the polls the week before Super Tuesday.

But in many other ways, Mrs. Clinton has shed her candidate’s skin. Her campaign staff is largely gone, replaced by a broader circle of advisers. Her husband, who stood behind her at countless campaign stops this time last year, has resumed his globe-trotting life, seeing her on rare weekends at their home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

In this, the latest mutation in a career of many changes, Mrs. Clinton’s days have become a whirl of diplomatic talks, White House meetings and foreign travel: 74,000 miles and 22 countries as of last Sunday, when she returned from Iraq and Lebanon.

By all accounts, Mrs. Clinton has worked hard to be a good soldier in an administration run by the man she spent much of last year trying to defeat. She and President Obama have developed a respectful rapport, several officials said, and she has emerged as an influential voice in the great policy debates of the day, notably Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But State Department officials, and others in the administration, say less-than-generous things about Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, suggesting there is some jockeying among the top officials around the president. General Jones, these people say, has struggled with his transition from Marine commander to senior staff person, speaking up less in debates than Mrs. Clinton and not pushing as hard for decisions.

Friends acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton herself was initially swamped by the challenge of taking over the sprawling State Department bureaucracy — management being one deficit in her career. She likens it to being “mayor of a good-sized small city.”

But Mrs. Clinton has turned a corner in recent weeks, these people say, both as a manager and as a diplomat. Her stern public warnings about the recent Taliban offensive in Pakistan put her on center stage as the messenger of American unease.

“I love the job; I mean, it’s really hard,” Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview. “We’ve inherited so many problems.”

As a former first lady, senator, and presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton enjoys rarefied status, even for a secretary of state. She has not hesitated to put this to use, whether in rock-star-like appearances in South Korea and Turkey, or in positioning herself at home.

Even before she was confirmed, Mrs. Clinton summoned Richard C. Holbrooke, now the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, for a fireside chat at her Washington home with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander who oversees the region.

In an unusual arrangement, Mrs. Clinton is protected by both the State Department’s diplomatic security and by the Secret Service, which has protected the Clintons since 1992. As a candidate, Mrs. Clinton was criticized for poor management of her campaign. She appears determined not to repeat her mistakes. Mrs. Clinton said she had sought fresh voices; mindful that previous secretaries of state have been criticized for cloistering themselves on the building’s seventh floor, she has made a point of dropping in at its bureaus.

Few of her campaign officials were offered posts, though Mrs. Clinton has brought over aides from the Senate and from her years as first lady. She has also drawn on veterans of the Clinton inner circle, like Cheryl Mills, who is her chief of staff.

“I don’t know anybody in politics who doesn’t have a group of people,” Mrs. Clinton said. But she added, “A lot of people who I hired, I never worked with, and have just taken on faith and reputation.”

There are other vestiges of Mrs. Clinton’s political life: her Senate campaign committee remains in existence and will hold on to a list of donors to her presidential campaign, a tantalizing clue that she contemplates a use for them in the future.

Mrs. Clinton tries to get to New York once or twice a month, she said, but it has been hard because of her foreign travel. But she said she talks to Mr. Clinton regularly, and exchanges e-mail messages with her daughter, Chelsea, on her BlackBerry, which she is not allowed to use, for security reasons, at work.

Mrs. Clinton turned to her husband, the former president, in planning a recent trip to Haiti because he had been there two weeks earlier. But she said Mr. Clinton had also weighed in with advice to General Jones or Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. “He’s always value-added,” she said.

These days, Mrs. Clinton has a regular Thursday afternoon meeting with the current president. People who have been in meetings with them say their relationship is comfortable, if not warm.

On a recent afternoon, at Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion, the two moved their meeting outside to a picnic table on the South Lawn, next to a new swing set installed for Mr. Obama’s daughters. “We just had the best time,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton’s influence as secretary has been somewhat obscured by the choice of highly visible emissaries for two of the world’s hot spots: Mr. Holbrooke and George J. Mitchell as special envoy for the Middle East.

Some foreign-policy experts say the arrangement poses a long-term risk to Mrs. Clinton. “I understand the logic of creating an empire of talented envoys,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator. “But to be a consequential secretary of state, you must put yourself directly in the middle of the mix.”

Mrs. Clinton, however, described the envoys as “force multipliers” and said that enlisting them “has bought us time.” She also said she had the “highest esteem” for General Jones, according to her adviser, Philippe Reines, who added in a statement, “Anyone asserting otherwise is speaking for themselves, not the secretary.”

In recent weeks, Mrs. Clinton has stepped up on key issues: warning Pakistan about the Taliban; orchestrating the first face-to-face contact between the Obama administration and Iran; and throwing Cuba off balance with warm words about restoring ties with Havana.

For Mrs. Clinton, the biggest challenge has been mental: absorbing a mountain of information on issues ranging from the Middle East to the race for fossil fuels in the Arctic Circle.

At 11 p.m. last Saturday, after 13 hours of meetings in Baghdad, Mrs. Clinton’s aides dozed on the military transport plane flying back to Kuwait. She sat alone at the front of the plane’s dimly lighted cargo bay, squinting as she plowed through a pile of briefing papers.

“I lug them everywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said, noting that she had not had time to watch a movie or read a book in the last 100 days.

Prediction: Taliban Will Cave

Amidst all the noise of people repeating the same three ideas, of media outlets concentrating on the superficial and reporting the noteworthy, is there original thinking and analysis anywhere? Here is some original thinking.

For Gen. Anthony Zinni, one of the country’s most respected military thinkers, Iraq and Afghanistan are already yesterday’s wars. Confident that the Taliban will be at the conference table by the end of the year, he is thinking about how the United States should be preparing for its next conflict.

It is easy to forget that there are some very bright military minds. Sam Grant and Robert E. Lee were intellectually gifted and capable. Even Colin Powell is quite bright, despite his lack of social courage (he has plenty of physical courage, quite a different thing).

He hinted that there had already been backroom talks between the U.S. and the Taliban—“like Kissinger’s with the North Vietnamese”—and predicted that these would lead to formal negotiations by the end of the year. So, he told an audience of several hundred students, academic staff, and visiting military officials, now is the time for the U.S. to consider what it expects from its military in the future.

Well, the US has publicly announced that it will negotiate with "moderate" Taliban elements.

The United States must be prepared to fight both a conventional war and “that other thing,” he said. And how to define “that other thing” will occupy us for the next ten years. His own definition is a nation that needs stabilization and reconstruction because the social institutions can’t cope.

Somalia?

“But our military is not designed to handle this,” Zinni said. He has counted 54 tasks the U.S. Army is performing in Iraq that can not be defined as “military,” including running swimming pools.

Nation-building, which Republicans castigated Bill Clinton for doing.

When we touch something, we own it,” Zinni said, taking Colin Powell’s quote, ‘When we break something, we own it,’ one step further. “And when we own it, we can’t help rebuilding it in our own image. That’s the American way. But we’re not good at it and we can’t afford it.”

We won’t even be able to claim victory when the troops come home, because “we don’t come home anymore,” Zinni said. “Sixty years after the Second World War, there are still American troops in Germany, South Korea. Sixty years from now, will we still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan?”

A sobering thought.

With Isolation Over, Syria Is Happy to Talk

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, right, hosted the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, this month.




Only a year ago, this country’s government was being vilified as a dangerous pariah. The United States and its Arab allies mounted a vigorous campaign to isolate Syria, which they accused of sowing chaos and violence throughout the region through its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

Today, Syria seems to be coming in from the cold. A flurry of diplomatic openings with the West and Arab neighbors has raised hopes of a chastened and newly flexible Syrian leadership that could help stabilize the region. But Syria has its own priorities, and a series of upheavals here — including Israel’s recent war in Gaza — make it difficult to say where this new dialogue will lead.

At the root of these changes is Syria’s alliance with Iran. Saudi Arabia and the other major Sunni Arab nations once hoped to push Syria away from Iran through isolation, and now — like President Obama — they appear to be trying sweeter tactics. For the Syrians, the turnabout is proof that their ties with Iran are in fact useful, and accord them an indispensable role as a regional broker. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries “have great stakes in maintaining good relations between Syria and Iran, because at difficult times they will find Syria helping them,” said Faisal Mekdad, Syria’s vice minister of foreign affairs, during an interview here

That assumes that Iran will listen, a rather big assumption. Nonetheless, it does give Syria leverage.

Israel’s recent war on Hamas in Gaza generated a tremendous popular anger that has shifted the ground of Arab politics. Even more than Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah, it put Saudi Arabia and its allies on the defensive and strengthened Syria, which hosts the Hamas leadership.

Talk about unintended consequences.

Mr. Mekdad even hinted that Syria might have hopes of turning the tables and driving a wedge between the Arabs and the United States on the question of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“I think the West is more concerned about the Iranian nuclear file than the Arabs,” Mr. Mekdad said. “I think our brothers in Saudi Arabia understand that the threat is not Iran, it is the Israeli nuclear capability. This policy of double standards is making all Arabs angry.”

Nice spin.

“There are some here who miss the Bush administration, because at least with them you knew where you stood,” said one Syrian analyst who is close to the leadership, but spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to come under scrutiny for exposing differences of opinion. “With Obama, the American demands have not really changed, but there is an impression of a new era and an expectation of new results from us.”

That's the socialist who palled around with terrorists.

In Iraq, Syria’s goals are now similar to those of the United States, analysts say. Despite its history of enabling jihadists to fight American troops in Iraq, Syria is now contemplating an imminent American withdrawal and is keenly aware that it might itself become a jihadist target, especially if it concludes any sort of peace deal with Israel.

“Syria increasingly sees an interest in Iraqi stability,” said Peter Harling, a senior Damascus-based analyst with the International Crisis Group . “It has borne the brunt of the Iraqi conflict’s spillover effect. It covets potentially huge economic benefits, posing as an outlet for Iraqi oil-products and a supplier for Iraq’s emerging markets. Beyond that, a key objective for Syria has been to keep Iraq in the Arab rather than the Iranian fold.”

That is an interesting twist.

“The Bush administration has left,” Mr. Mekdad said with a diplomatic smile, “and we are still here.”

An About-Face on Gay Troops

This is a fascinating essay that deserves being posted in full.

February 9, 2009 - Op-Ed Contributor
An About-Face on Gay Troops
By OWEN WEST

GENERALS are scolded for preparing to fight “the last war,” but if President Obama intends to keep his promise to allow gays to serve openly in the military, he would do well to study President Bill Clinton’s attempt of 16 years ago.

The Clinton argument, based largely on protecting the civil rights of gay troops, was systematically dissected by senior officers and legislators, who focused on how the presence of homosexuals could affect combat readiness. Generals circulated videos made by conservative groups depicting “gay agendas.” Senators brought television crews into cramped berthings. Congress reached a bizarre compromise: a law rendering homosexuality incompatible with military service, but allowing gays to serve under a closet-friendly “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The lesson for President Obama is that this fight is not about rights, but about combat readiness. This is a propitious moment for seeking change: a nation at war needs all its most talented troops. Last year the principal architects of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” former Gen. Colin Powell and former Senator Sam Nunn, said it was time to “review” the policy.

That’s a polite way of saying they’ve changed their minds. So have many of us who wore the uniform in 1993 and supported a policy that forced some of our fellow troops to live a lie and rejected thousands who told the truth.

There are other aspects of history that may be helpful as well. The armed forces initially resisted President Harry Truman’s 1948 order to integrate the ranks. But the Korean War forced trials by fire — in fact, the units with the highest casualty rates in Korea integrated the swiftest — and the Pentagon ultimately acknowledged that recruiting from across America’s socio-economic spectrum produced the best force. After that, the military swiftly set the standard for race relations.

Servicemen continue to be fierce believers in the idea that diversity equals strength, yet during the Clinton effort on gay troops most of us rejected analogies to racial integration. The homosexual threat to good order and discipline was behavioral, we argued, not physiological, and therefore unrelated.

It was a flawed argument. The underlying fears were the same as with integration: homosexuals jeopardized unit cohesion not because of their own conduct — after all, military law and command discretion encompass behavioral breaches — but because of the perceived reaction of those xenophobic troops who didn’t want to cohabitate with people different from themselves. Today, this sounds like one of the “worn-out dogmas” President Obama identified in his inaugural speech. And it does a disservice to the ranks.

Maintaining “don’t ask, don’t tell” ignores a vast social shift since 1993. Only 26 percent of Americans supported Truman’s order, so it was little wonder that desegregation stalled. When President Clinton announced his initiative, 44 percent of Americans were in favor of homosexuals serving openly, which perhaps explains the split decision of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

But today nearly 80 percent of Americans feel that way. As our troops tend to reflect the values of our society, lifting the homosexual ban will be easier now.

In addition, six years of war have clarified priorities. The battlefield has its own values, starting with courage. Sexual orientation falls somewhere below musical taste. What a person chooses to do back stateside, off-duty, in his own apartment is irrelevant in a fight. For months I lived with 12 other American advisers on an Iraqi outpost. There was a single pipe shower next to a hole that masqueraded as a sewer. But the reality of combat dominated personality quirks — nobody wondered about sexual orientation.

Most military jobs are office-based and provide sufficient individual privacy. Even in Iraq many of our fighting forces are comfortably housed with compartmentalized showers.

A 2006 poll of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans showed that 72 percent were personally comfortable interacting with gays. Bonnie Moradi, a University of Florida psychologist, and Laura Miller, a sociologist at the Rand Corporation, summarized the study this way: “The data indicated no associations between knowing a lesbian or gay unit member and ratings of perceived unit cohesion or readiness. Instead, findings pointed to the importance of leadership and instrumental quality in shaping perceptions of unit cohesion and readiness.”

The other readiness argument concerns recruiting. To fill its swelling ranks, the military now grants one in five recruits waivers for disqualifications that run the gamut from attention-deficit disorder to obesity to armed robbery convictions. In a press conference last fall, Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, the head of Army recruiting, said the relevant question in considering such applicants was, “Does that person deserve an opportunity to serve their country?” That’s exactly right. And to choose a felon over a combat-proven veteran on the basis of sexuality is defeatist. Ask any squad leader.

In the end, however, there is one factor that outweighs public opinion, troop morale and recruiting combined. The military is a dictatorship, not a republic. It is built to win in combat. Its strict codes of conduct ensure good order and discipline.

If “don’t ask, don’t tell” is rescinded, military leaders will ensure smooth compliance, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has said. Cohesion depends on leadership. Our troops will follow the lead of our combat-tested professionals who base their opinions on what a soldier brings to the fight, and little else.

Owen West, a commodities trader, served two tours in Iraq with the Marines.

Obama Seeks Accord With Military on Iraq

As President Obama moves to redefine the nation’s mission in Iraq, he faces a difficult choice: Is he willing to abandon a campaign promise or risk a rupture with the military? Or can he finesse the difference?

This will not be as easy as making a campaign promise.

Since taking office last week, Mr. Obama has recommitted to ending the war in Iraq but not to his specific campaign pledge to pull out roughly one combat brigade a month for the first 16 months of his presidency. His top commander in Iraq has proposed a slower start to the withdrawal, warning of the dangers of drawing down too quickly.

Well, it is not simply a military decision, and the Commander-in-Chief makes the final decision.

“We’re no longer involved in a debate about whether, but how and when,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said about a withdrawal from Iraq. “That’s a process the president wants to take seriously.”

Key words: whether, how and when.

Among those consulted by the president was Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who has developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama’s campaign timetable, by pulling out two brigades over the next six months. In an interview in Iraq on Wednesday, General Odierno suggested that it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be drawn down significantly.

“I believe that if we can get through the next year peacefully, with incidents about what they are today or better, I think we’re getting close to enduring stability, which enables us to really reduce,” General Odierno said as he inspected a polling center south of Baghdad in advance of provincial elections on Saturday.

General Odierno said the period between this weekend’s elections and the national elections to be held about a year from now would be critical to determining the future of Iraq. While some American forces could be withdrawn before then, he suggested that the bulk of any pullout would probably come after that.

Just have to make sure the general doesn't have a case of the slows.

Righties want it to go slow, heeding the military's concerns. Lefties want it to go as candidate Obama promised, if not faster.

Others said the timetable was less important than the goal. “It helps for him to aim for it,” said Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “If you can draw your troops down to within the ballpark and they’re safe, that’s what counts.”

Excellent point.

In Jisr Diyala, south of Baghdad, General Odierno traveled in an armored vehicle on Wednesday to inspect preparations for Saturday’s voting. He said his focus now was on “drivers of instability” that could halt Iraq’s security gains, including Arab-Kurdish friction in northern Iraq and tension between Shiite political parties over the division of power elsewhere in the country.

These do not seem to be military as much as civilian tasks.

Under the security agreement approved by Baghdad and Washington before Mr. Obama took office, all United States forces are supposed to leave by the end of 2011 unless requested to stay by the Iraqis — a date confirmed by General Odierno, who said, “By 2011 we’ll be zero.”

16 months from now will be May of 2010. Between May 2010 and December 2011 there are 19 months. I'd guess the difference will be split.

“We’re making progress every day,” General Odierno said. “But I still see some issues that could cause problems that I worry about. Political issues that could turn into security issues. But the longer we go, if we get through the elections, we get closer and closer to not being able to backslide.”


Political issues becoming security concerns is for the Iraqis to address.

Winning In Afghanistan

In the post below, The Afghan Quagmire, I quote Bob Herbert quoting Andrew J. Bacevich, so it seems appropriate to read Bacevich's article and see what he says. The subtitle to the article entitled "Winning in Afghanistan" seems instructive: Victory there won't look like you think. Time to get out and give up on nation building. The article was published Dec 31, 2008.

Bacevich is a retired military man (Herbert calls him a retired Colonel; I've seen him on teevee and do recall him being a full colonel, or perhaps a lt. col. - his credentials are quite impressive: Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his Ph. D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1998, he taught at West Point and at Johns Hopkins University according to his bio from BU).

He gets right to the point: Persisting on the present course—as both John McCain and Barack Obama have promised to do—will turn Operation Enduring Freedom into Operation Enduring Obligation. Afghanistan will become a sinkhole consuming resources neither the U.S. military nor the U.S. government can afford to waste.

The allied campaign in Afghanistan is now entering its eighth year.

So easy to lose track of that when so much attention is given to Iraq. While we wanted a quick victory in Afghanistan, that so much was devoted to the Iraq fight prevented such a victory.

The real problem is that Washington has misunderstood the nature of the challenge Afghanistan poses and misread America's interests there.

Afghanistan's total land area is 647,500 sq km (12.13% of that is arable).
Iraq's total land area is 437,072 sq km (13.12% of that is arable).

Afghanistan's population is 32,738,376.
Iraq's population is 28,221,180.

Bacevich states that Afghanistan is a much bigger country—nearly the size of Texas—and has a larger population that's just as fractious.Its population is 4.5 million greater than Iraq's, indeed, and its land area is nearly 50% larger. Further, he states that Afghanistan has a far lower literacy rate, an even less effective central government (not exactly a lofty standard) and aside from opium, produces nothing the rest of the world wants. That is in very significant contrast to Iraq's petroleum.

Meanwhile, the chief effect of allied military operations there so far has been not to defeat the radical Islamists but to push them across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications. September's bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad suggests that the extremists are growing emboldened. Today and for the foreseeable future, no country poses a greater potential threat to U.S. national security than does Pakistan. To risk the stability of that nuclear-armed state in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan would be a terrible mistake.

The article seems to have been written around October; no note is made of the attack in Mumbai. No matter; his points are pertinent and important.

Of course, it seems ludicrous to speak of Pakistan being (further) destabilized, considering how unstable it (always) is.

All this means that the proper U.S. priority for Afghanistan should be not to try harder but to change course. The war in Afghanistan (like the Iraq War) won't be won militarily. It can be settled—however imperfectly—only through politics.

Outside of politics for public consumption, how serious is anyone about the Afghan conflict being won? It seems to me that it is implicitly assumed that neutralization is the real aim. The Colonel must certainly understand politics.

The new U.S. president needs to realize that America's real political objective in Afghanistan is actually quite modest: to ensure that terrorist groups like Al Qaeda can't use it as a safe haven for launching attacks against the West. Accomplishing that won't require creating a modern, cohesive nation-state.

Indeed, the colonel does seem to understand politics.

U.S. officials tend to assume that power in Afghanistan ought to be exercised from Kabul. Yet the real influence in Afghanistan has traditionally rested with tribal leaders and warlords. Rather than challenge that tradition, Washington should work with it. Offered the right incentives, warlords can accomplish U.S. objectives more effectively and more cheaply than Western combat battalions. The basis of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan should therefore become decentralization and outsourcing, offering cash and other emoluments to local leaders who will collaborate with the United States in excluding terrorists from their territory.

Sounds similar to what seems to have become the policy in Iraq.

This doesn't mean Washington should blindly trust that warlords will become America's loyal partners. U.S. intelligence agencies should continue to watch Afghanistan closely, and the Pentagon should crush any jihadist activities that local powers fail to stop themselves. As with the Israelis in Gaza, periodic airstrikes may well be required to pre-empt brewing plots before they mature.

Does not seem the Colonel is stating a new approach to policy, though it does bear repeating.

Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University, and the author, most recently, of “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”

I wonder if Governor Palin would, if she read, agree with that subtitle, considering her oft-repeated emphasis on American exceptionalism.

Another shoe

Peter Brookes is at it again.