Danes Buck Broader Antiwar Trend

In the newspaper article a chart detailing ratios of soldier deaths as % to soldiers sent shows Denmark's ratio as 4.1: 31 deaths, 750 troops. Also accompanying the article was a picture of Denmark's Crown Princess Mary with troops in November.

Denmark's forces in Afghanistan—along with Britain, the Netherlands, Estonia and Canada—have formed a rump of non-U.S. allies essential to the U.S.-led war effort that do battle in Helmand province and other Afghanistan hot spots, contributing to high casualty rates for these countries' contingents.

Curious sentence structure.

* EUROPE NEWS
* FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Danes Buck Broader Antiwar Trend
As Afghan operation's popularity wanes elsewhere, Danes support effort amid high casualties

By ALISTAIR MACDONALD

Among allied forces fighting in Afghanistan, few countries have deployed a bigger share of their armed forces than Denmark, and fewer still have taken higher levels of casualties. But the small Scandinavian country is emerging as an unlikely example of how to maintain public support for the war.

The popularity of the international campaign in Afghanistan has fallen across Europe and in the U.S. On Tuesday, the Dutch government set a June 9 date for general elections, nearly one year ahead of schedule. The move followed the unraveling of the Netherlands' coalition government last weekend after it failed win support to extend the mandate of the nation's 1,600 troops in Afghanistan, presaging a likely withdrawal this year.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Tuesday that the NATO military alliance is facing "very serious, long-term, systemic problems" sparked by European nations' unwillingness to adequately fund their militaries.

"I believe we have reached an inflection point, where much of the continent has gone too far in the other direction," Mr. Gates told an audience at Washington's National Defense University.

Amid this shift, the Danes have largely maintained public support for the effort, selling the mission as a humanitarian effort rather than simply protection against a terrorist threat, and building consensus among political parties. They have reaped the benefits of a largely supportive media and the country has, to some degree, rediscovered its pride in an active military.

"The key to sustaining public support is an elite consensus that includes politicians in government and opposition as well as key opinion leaders: influential intellectuals, academics and columnists," says Peter Viggo Jakobsen, a security expert at the University of Copenhagen.

Denmark has paid a high price in Afghanistan. Its 750 troops represent almost 5% of its entire military, including reserves—among the highest in Afghanistan. Of the total, 31 Danish troops have died there, an allied casualty rate behind only Canada and Estonia, which has just 150 soldiers fighting.

Yet throughout a difficult 2009, polls consistently showed around half of Danes surveyed by TNS Gallup believed Danish troops should be in Afghanistan; only one-third said they didn't. In NATO nations such as the U.K., Germany and Netherlands, meanwhile, polls reveal over half wanting troops back home.

"If you can't win the public opinion, you have lost the war," Danish Defense Minister Søren Gade said in a recent interview.

Mr. Gade, who has led Danish efforts to maintain public support, announced Monday he is stepping down. Mr. Gade's ministry has been accused of leaking news of the deployment of Danish special forces to Iraq and he said this was attracting attention away from Afghanistan.

Denmark's forces in Afghanistan—along with Britain, the Netherlands, Estonia and Canada—have formed a rump of non-U.S. allies essential to the U.S.-led war effort that do battle in Helmand province and other Afghanistan hot spots, contributing to high casualty rates for these countries' contingents.

Now some of those nations are growing weary of the effort. The Netherlands and Canada have set pullout dates, and some foreign armies remain reluctant to fight in restive regions like Helmand. British politicians face hostile media that chronicle the return of every dead soldier's coffin.

Mr. Gade, a former Danish army officer, said a key to winning the public was giving reporters deep access to soldiers, who were allowed to talk.

When troops say, " 'We did a job and we did it good, and it is worth doing,' then it is very hard indeed for a lot of people to oppose, because those are the men and women who risk their lives," he said.

That doesn't mean the public doesn't struggle with the country's involvement. Frank Erik Carlsen says that on "down days," he questions why Denmark is in Afghanistan, where his brother Henrik lost his life to a roadside bomb in August 2009. Doubts pass, he says, when he thinks of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan and of Denmark's efforts to build wells and schools there.

"It is too easy to stay at home, and Denmark is doing its part," he said. Next month, Mr. Carlsen begins training for his own deployment to Afghanistan.

Denmark only recently returned to military action following a long stretch of neutrality that followed its 1864 defeat to Prussia, in modern-day Germany. With the end of the Cold War, Danish forces, long tasked with home defense, had little to do.

A stint in NATO's military intervention in Kosovo saw a Danish tank force rout a Serbian attack in 1994. Suddenly Danish politicians found it advantageous for the military to punch above its weight internationally and become a point of national pride, Dr. Jakobsen says.

—Yochi J. Dreazen contributed to this article.

Shot in head, Walks away

FEBRUARY 15, 2010

U.S. Marine Walks Away From Shot to Helmet in Afghanistan

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS

MARJAH, Afghanistan—It is hard to know whether Monday was a very bad day or a very good day for Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig.

On the one hand, he was shot in the head. On the other, the bullet bounced off him.

In one of those rare battlefield miracles, an insurgent sniper hit Lance Cpl. Koenig dead on in the front of his helmet, and he walked away from it with a smile on his face.

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Bryan Denton for the Wall Street Journal

Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig shows the spot on his helmet where a Taliban bullet struck, almost centered, between the eyes.
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BULLET

"I don't think I could be any luckier than this," Lance Cpl. Koenig said two hours after the shooting.

Lance Cpl. Koenig's brush with death came during a day of intense fighting for the Marines of Company B, 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment.

The company had landed by helicopter in the predawn dark on Saturday, launching a major coalition offensive to take Marjah from the Taliban.

The Marines set up an outpost in a former drug lab and roadside-bomb factory and soon found themselves under near-constant attack.

Lance Cpl. Koenig, a lanky 21-year-old with jug-handle ears and a burr of sandy hair, is a designated marksman. His job is to hit the elusive Taliban fighters hiding in the tightly packed neighborhood near the base.

The insurgent sniper hit him first. The Casper, Wyo., native was kneeling on the roof of the one-story outpost, looking for targets.

He was reaching back to his left for his rifle when the sniper's round slammed into his helmet.

The impact knocked him onto his back.

"I'm hit," he yelled to his buddy, Lance Cpl. Scott Gabrian, a 21-year-old from St. Louis.

Lance Cpl. Gabrian belly-crawled along the rooftop to his friend's side. He patted Lance Cpl. Koenig's body, looking for wounds.

Then he noticed that the plate that usually secures night-vision goggles to the front of Lance Cpl. Koenig's helmet was missing. In its place was a thumb-deep dent in the hard Kevlar shell.

Lance Cpl. Gabrian slid his hands under his friend's helmet, looking for an entry wound. "You're not bleeding," he assured Lance Cpl. Koenig. "You're going to be OK."

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Bryan Denton for The Wall Street Journal

Marines took cover after coming under attack during the Marjah offensive Monday.

Lance Cpl. Koenig climbed down the metal ladder and walked to the company aid station to see the Navy corpsman.

The only injury: A small, numb red welt on his forehead, just above his right eye.

He had spent 15 minutes with Doc, as the Marines call the medics, when an insurgent's rocket-propelled grenade exploded on the rooftop, next to Lance Cpl. Gabrian.

The shock wave left him with a concussion and hearing loss.

He joined Lance Cpl. Koenig at the aid station, where the two friends embraced, their eyes welling.

The men had served together in Afghanistan in 2008, and Lance Cpl. Koenig had survived two blasts from roadside bombs.

"We've got each other's backs," Lance Cpl. Gabrian said, the explosion still ringing in his ears.

Word of Lance Cpl. Koenig's close call spread quickly through the outpost, as he emerged from the shock of the experience and walked through the outpost with a Cheshire cat grin.

"He's alive for a reason," Tim Coderre, a North Carolina narcotics detective working with the Marines as a consultant, told one of the men. "From a spiritual point of view, that doesn't happen by accident."

Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Shelton, whose job is to keep the Marines stocked with food, water and gear, teased the lance corporal for failing to take care of his helmet.

"I need that damaged-gear statement tonight," Gunnery Sgt. Shelton told Lance Cpl. Koenig. It was understood, however, that Lance Cpl. Koenig would be allowed to keep the helmet as a souvenir.

Gunnery Sgt. Shelton, a 36-year-old veteran from Nashville, said he had never seen a Marine survive a direct shot to the head.

But next to him was Cpl. Christopher Ahrens, who quietly mentioned that two bullets had grazed his helmet the day the Marines attacked Marjah. The same thing, he said, happened to him three times in firefights in Iraq.

Cpl. Ahrens, 26, from Havre de Grace, Md., lifted the camouflaged cloth cover on his helmet, exposing the holes where the bullets had entered and exited.

He turned it over to display the picture card tucked inside, depicting Michael the Archangel stamping on Lucifer's head. "I don't need luck," he said.

After his moment with Lance Cpl. Gabrian, Lance Cpl. Koenig put his dented helmet back on his head and climbed the metal ladder to resume his rooftop duty within an hour of being hit.

"I know any one of these guys would do the same," he explained. "If they could keep going, they would."

Israeli robots remake battlefield

Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare.

Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its high-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world's leading innovators of military robotics.

A tiny country is one of the world's leading high-tech hubs.


Over 40 countries have military-robotics programs today. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world is betting big on the role of aerial drones: Even Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite guerrilla force in Lebanon, flew four Iranian-made drones against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.




One shudders to think of Hezbollah using drones.


When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it had just a handful of drones. Today, U.S. forces have around 7,000 unmanned vehicles in the air and an additional 12,000 on the ground, used for tasks including reconnaissance, airstrikes and bomb disposal.

7,000 aerial drones produce an overwhelming volume of data.

In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel's military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel's leading weapons manufacturers.


"The Israelis do it differently, not because they're more clever than we are, but because they live in a tough neighborhood and need to respond fast to operational issues," says Thomas Tate, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who now oversees defense cooperation between the U.S. and Israel.

 Their needs are too great to allow them to get bogged down. Every Israeli knows that the nation's security depends on getting things done.

Among the recently deployed technologies that set Israel ahead of the curve is the Guardium unmanned ground vehicle, which now drives itself along the Gaza and Lebanese borders. The Guardium was deployed to patrol for infiltrators in the wake of the abduction of soldiers doing thesame job in 2006. The Guardium, developed by G-nius Ltd., is essentially an armored off-road golf cart with a suite of optical sensors and surveillance gear. It was put into the field for the first time 10 months ago.

A fascinating website of a company with some innovative products. Rafael, too, is a fascinating website.

After bomb-laden fishing boats tried to take out an Israeli Navy frigate off the coast off Gaza in 2002, Rafael designed the Protector SV, an unmanned, heavily armed speedboat that today makes up a growing part of the Israeli naval fleet. The Singapore Navy has also purchased the boat and is using it in patrols in the Persian Gulf.


That is the Protector.


Military analysts say unmanned fighting vehicles could have a far-reaching strategic impact on the sort of asymmetrical conflicts the U.S. is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and that Israel faces against enemies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. In such conflicts, robotic vehicles will allow modern conventional armies to minimize the advantages guerrilla opponents gain by their increased willingness to sacrifice their lives in order to inflict casualties on the enemy.





Suicide bombers could be partially neutralized with such technology.

However, there are also fears that when countries no longer fear losing soldiers' lives in combat thanks to the ability to wage war with unmanned vehicles, they may prove more willing to initiate conflict.


A legitimate concern.


In coming years, engineers say unmanned air, sea and ground vehicles will increasingly work together without any human involvement. Israel and the U.S. have already faced backlash over civilian deaths caused by drone-fired missiles in Gaza, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those ethical dilemmas could increase as robots become more independent of their human masters.


Independence?

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.

Hugo's paranoia

This item is from Pravda: Chavez Laughs in Hillary Clinton's Face and Awards War Prize to Obama

Story starts: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez harshly criticized the US-led politics at the close of ALBA – the summit of leftist Latin American nations – in Havana. Chavez stated that the USA encircled Venezuela with army bases in Puerto Rico, Aruba, Curazao and Columbia, where the US army gained access to seven army bases. The USA will never be able to defeat Venezuela even if Americans build a thousand of bases, the Venezuelan leader said, Itar-Tass reports.

Columbia?

Chavez says Obama should give the Nobel back, plotting attack
Dutch deny Chavez aggression claim

Aljazeera.net - ‎6 hours ago‎

Bart Rijs, a foreign ministry spokesman, said on Friday that none of the territories in the Kingdom of the Netherlands - including Aruba and the Netherland ...

Venezuela: Chávez Accuses Netherlands of Plotting Aggression With the US New York Times

Dutch deny Venezuela's claim of US attack plans The Associated Press

Dutch to quiz Venezuela over "aggression" comment Reuters UK

Fidel's great lesson to Hugo: always keep an external enemy. This is a good one, too: Holland is conspiring with the US to invade Venezuela, and using Aruba as a launching pad. The tourists at the resorts must be hiding surface-to-air missiles in their rooms, too.

$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.

the Point's Combating Terrorism Center

A news story about a drone strike in Pakistan quotes an analyst; his title, and his name, caught my eye.

A U.S. drone strike this week killed a senior al Qaeda operator in a Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Friday. U.S. officials said Saleh al-Somali, who was responsible for al Qaeda's operations outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, was killed in the strike Tuesday. He was on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of the top 20 al Qaeda targets, according to an official familiar with the list.

On Friday, officials in Pakistan said intelligence officers on the ground had identified the dead militant as Abu Yahya al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda figure higher on the CIA's list of terrorist targets. Mr. Somali was likely involved in planning attacks against the U.S. and Europe, and maintained links to Pakistan-based militants plotting attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.

"He's a big fish when it comes to [al Qaeda's] efforts to strike in the West," said Vahid Brown, a research fellow at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.

Vahid Brown. And West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. The URL has cta, the Center; usma for the Military Academy, and an extension of .edu (for educational institution). Not .mil for military

Soviets' Afghan Ordeal Vexed Gates on Troop-Surge Plan

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev also faced a troop-increase request during his first year, for a war he had inherited. Soviet generals in 1985 asked for tens of thousands more soldiers to bolster their 100,000-strong contingent, roughly the same size as the current Western force in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates, discussing that period in his 1996 memoir "From the Shadows," wrote: "The Soviets had to either reinforce or lose. Because they clearly were not winning." Gen. McChrystal used similar language in his recent warning about possible American "failure" in Afghanistan unless adequate resources are committed. Mr. Gorbachev ended up authorizing a small troop surge; 18 months later, he announced plans for a withdrawal.


The future of the war in Afghanistan was on the line as Gen. Stanley McChrystal met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a secret rendezvous at a Belgian airbase in August. Gen. McChrystal, the top Western commander in Afghanistan, pushed for more U.S. troops to roll back the spreading Taliban-led insurgency. Mr. Gates, officials say, was skeptical.

A quarter-century ago, he was a top Central Intelligence Agency officer aiding the anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan, and he remembered how a 1985 decision by the Soviet Union to widen that earlier war had failed to turn the tide.

The Soviets left Afghanistan, their southern neighbor, with their collective tail dragging the ground, defeated.

Few American officials know the Soviets' bitter Afghan predicament better than Mr. Gates. In the 1980s, he was the deputy director of the CIA, overseeing a massive U.S. effort to fund, train and equip the Islamic insurgents, called mujahedeen, who fought the Soviet army to a standstill.

Now some of the most prominent of these insurgents, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are allied against America with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Almost daily their men are killing Western troops, who often operate from former Soviet bases and use Soviet-drawn military maps with faint Cyrillic markings.

Irony of history?

"It's an eerie sense of deja vu," said Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who headed the Obama administration's Afghan policy review in the spring and who in the 1980s worked under Mr. Gates as a CIA officer in the region. "America," he said, "is in the rare position of fighting the same war twice in one generation, from opposite sides. And it's easier to be the insurgents."

That point is not discussed often: the US is fighting the same war, and this second time it is the object of, not the supporter of, insurgents. Heck, Osama bin Laden was supported by the CIA.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev also faced a troop-increase request during his first year, for a war he had inherited. Soviet generals in 1985 asked for tens of thousands more soldiers to bolster their 100,000-strong contingent, roughly the same size as the current Western force in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates, discussing that period in his 1996 memoir "From the Shadows," wrote: "The Soviets had to either reinforce or lose. Because they clearly were not winning." Gen. McChrystal used similar language in his recent warning about possible American "failure" in Afghanistan unless adequate resources are committed. Mr. Gorbachev ended up authorizing a small troop surge; 18 months later, he announced plans for a withdrawal.

Eerie parallel, or mere coincidence?

In Afghanistan's dusty capital, dotted with blast barriers, talk of democracy is hard to square with widespread ballot-stuffing during Mr. Karzai's recent re-election. As for rebuilding, the middle classes here still aspire to live in Soviet-built neighborhoods of decayed housing blocks that would be an eyesore elsewhere but are luxurious by Afghan standards. Despite billions in U.S. aid since 2001 spent on roads, clinics and schools, there is little comparably prominent evidence of American reconstruction.

To us, perhaps things are fixed and fine now, but, what about Afghans?

"What have the Americans done so far? They're only busy building their own military bases," said Mohammad Nassim, a 40-year-old Kabul resident, airing a frequently heard opinion.

The Karzai government fully controls only Kabul, the provincial capitals and a few other areas. Even the main supply roads north and south of Kabul are studded with Taliban checkpoints. All over the country, the Taliban run shadow local administrations, collecting taxes and dispensing justice. "There is a total lack of government authority in rural Afghanistan, which is similar to Soviet times," said Haroun Mir, director of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies.

I'm reminded of the South Vietnamese government.

Against all predictions, after the last Soviet soldier left in February 1989, Mr. Najibullah's government, instead of collapsing, went on the offensive. Scoring key victories against the rebels, it outlived the Soviet Union, unraveling only when Russian-supplied food and weapons ran out. Absent continuing American aid for the guerrillas, it could have remained in power much longer, many former mujahedeen say.

Consider the sources, but, nonetheless, the US was quite complicit in the chaos.

Few in Kabul expect the Karzai government would display similar longevity should Western forces go home. "Najibullah had the support of a strong and well-equipped Afghan army, air force and intelligence, and of a strong party," said Mohammed Mohaqeq, a powerful former mujahedeen commander who is a parliament member and a Karzai supporter. "I don't think we can even compare these two governments to each other."

Karzai's government is a straw man. And we are committed to supporting it. A holy mess.

Veterans Day 2009

President Obama places a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Wednesday.

















President Obama extends a hand to James Gordon Meek (left) of the Daily News Washington Bureau.

















Pfc. David H. Sharrett II with his proud father, also named David, at Fort Benning, Ga.














Gravestone of Pfc. David Sharrett at Arlington National Cemetery














My solemn meeting on Veterans Day with President Obama at my friend's resting place in Arlington

by James Gordon Meek
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Thursday, November 12th 2009, 4:00 AM
ARLINGTON, Va. - He didn't introduce himself. He didn't have to.

President Obama simply stuck out his hand and asked for my name as he stepped toward me amid a bone-chilling drizzle in the Gardens of Stone.

This was Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. I wasn't there as a reporter, but to visit some friends and family buried there when Obama made an unscheduled stop - a rare presidential walk among what Lincoln called America's "honored dead" - after laying a Veterans Day wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

What I got was an unexpected look into the eyes of a man who intertwined his roles as commander in chief and consoler in chief on a solemn day filled with remembrance and respect for sacrifices made - and sacrifices yet to be made.

I'm sure the cynics will assume this wasjust anotherObama photoop.

If they'd been standing in my boots looking him in the eye, they would have surely choked on their bile.

His presence in Section 60 convinced me that he now carries the heavy burden of command.

I had stopped at Arlington to see the resting place of Ken Taylor, Ed Lenard and Dave Sharrett. Ken and Ed survived their service, in World War II and Korea, and died as old men. Dave did not leave Iraq alive. He was 27.

Obama arrived just before noon at the serene Section 60, where many of the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried together - and where many more heroes will undoubtedly be laid to rest before this President leaves office.

It's a section typically bustling with those visiting loved ones. Every time I go there, more and more graves have been dug into the earth.

The President and First Lady Michelle Obama emerged from their armored limousine hatless in the frigid downpour and took a slow stroll into the soggy rows of white marble headstones.

They stopped first at the grave of Medal of Honor recipient Ross McGinnis, an Army private who threw himself on a grenade in Iraq three years ago to save four buddies.

A sad-faced woman reached for Obama's hand and pointed him to a nearby plot.

The face of another woman - who had grimly sat in a folding chair for hours next to a headstone she'd arranged flowers around - suddenly broadened into a smile as she stood to embrace Obama and thank him for paying his respects.

She was so overcome with emotion that a soldier from the Army's Old Guard had to console her afterward.

The President patted backs of adozen other Gold Star relativesand troops visiting buddiesnow in the ground.

He gave hugs. He shook wet, chilly hands. He wanted to know something about each fallen warrior.

He began to slowly trudge back toward the motorcade - and to another White House huddle with his war council, which is advising him whether to send up to 40,000 additional troops into harm's way in Afghanistan.

And then Obama noticed a tall, bearded figure. He probably didn't see the mud-caked combat boots I trudged around Afghanistan in a few years ago.

"What's your name?" a somber President asked as he extended his hand.

"James Meek, sir," I replied, struggling to pull off my wool glove and pull my hood back from my head. "I'm here visiting a friend, Pfc. David H. Sharrett II, who was killed in Iraq last year."

He asked how I knew Dave. I explained that his father, also named David, was my high school English teacher in nearby McLean, Va. My classmates and I knew Dave as a little boy playing at our feet.

"He became a star football player and was one of the toughest soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division," I told Obama.

I didn't tell the commander in chief that Dave was killed by friendly fire. Or that the Army bungled notifying Dave's parents of a probe that concluded his lieutenant tragically mistook him for a terrorist in the dark and shot him. Or that his family had to fight for accountability - which two battlefield commanders promised but stateside generals derailed.

That wouldn't have been appropriate, Dave's deeply grateful father later agreed.

"Well, we appreciate his service very much," Obama told me.

I then told him I'm a reporter for the Daily News - but was just there to visit friends.

"Well, James," he said, looking me in the eye, "just because you're a journalist doesn't mean you can't honor your friends here."

The First Lady smiled and squeezed my hand. I thanked her for coming to Section 60.

Her face opened up into a smile filled with warmth and comfort, a welcome antidote for the weather and sadness around her. She said there was no finer place to be on Veterans Day.

Ironically, I was ready to leave the cemetery an hour earlier, but it went into lockdown because of Obama's visit.

"Sorry for any inconvenience," a terribly polite Secret Service agent whispered in my ear.

As the Obamas ended their pilgrimage through Arlington's hallowed ground, inconvenience was hardly what I felt standing there as the rain pelted my coat, staring at blades of grass around a headstone etched with a name and a date I will never forget.

Intrigue in Asunción

Paraguayan soldiers at a ceremony in Asunción on Thursday, the day that Paraguay's president swore in new commanders.




November 6, 2009
Paraguayan President Replaces Military Leadership
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Fernando Lugo, the president of Paraguay, swore in new commanders of the military on Thursday, just a day after he abruptly removed the leaders of the army, navy and air force amid speculation of a possible coup attempt that had stoked memories of the country’s militaristic past.

Mr. Lugo, a left-leaning former Roman Catholic bishop, has denied that military leaders were plotting a coup, telling reporters in Asunción that “there could be small military groups that are connected to or could be used by the political class,” but that “the military does not show any intent of reversing the process of democratic consolidation.”

Still, the coup rumors and the seemingly sudden overhaul of the military leadership — which is still subject to a decision by the Paraguayan Senate — are just the latest challenges for Mr. Lugo, whose victory in the presidential election last year ended more than 60 years of one-party rule by the conservative Colorado Party.

Since taking office, Mr. Lugo’s governing coalition has faced strong opposition to his reformist agenda from the Colorado legislators who control Congress. He has struggled to cleanse his government of members of the Colorado Party, fought with his own vice president and been attacked at every turn.

Opposition lawmakers threatened last week to impeach Mr. Lugo after he made comments on Oct. 24 in an Asunción shantytown that some contended were stoking class warfare. Mr. Lugo accused the privileged of living “in defense of their savings boxes in international banks.”

The president made the speech just nine days after a well-known cattle rancher, Fidel Zavala, was kidnapped by a radical left-wing group calling itself the Army of the Paraguayan People, which had ties to Mr. Lugo during his years as a priest that he has never fully explained.

Another controversy that dogged the president earlier this year — the assertions that he had fathered children with multiple women while still working as a priest — flared up again on Wednesday. One of the women filed a formal claim in court demanding that Mr. Lugo recognize that he is the father of her son. She previously said she respected the president too much to file a formal claim against him. But a lawyer for the woman said this week that her patience had run out, denying that she was being manipulated by the opposition.

Mr. Lugo has recognized that he fathered at least one child while he was a priest. A third woman has demanded that Mr. Lugo go to Ciudad del Este, where she lives, to take a paternity test at a private laboratory to determine whether he is the father of her son. He has refused, and his lawyer has said she would instead need to come to Asunción.

The military shake-up came after the president learned that some high-ranking military officials had met with opposition politicians over the weekend, according to Paraguayan news reports that could not be independently confirmed on Thursday.

The prospect of a coup is hardly far-fetched, analysts said, in a country that has undergone several coup attempts since democracy was restored in 1989, after a 35-year military dictatorship led by Gen. Alfredo Stroessner.

In Bolivia, at a recent meeting of ALBA, an alliance led by Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, suggested the possibility that a coup against the Paraguayan government by “ultraright-wing elements” might be in the works, the Paraguayan newspaper Última Hora reported.

Former Paraguayan military commanders were quick to criticize Mr. Lugo’s handling of the armed forces. The changes this week were the third instance in which he replaced high-ranking military officials since taking office 15 months ago.

Gen. Bernardino Soto Estigarribia, the former commander of the armed forces who was pushed into retirement by the new administration last year, said on a Paraguayan radio station that the president’s move was unjustified and dealt a tough blow to the military.

“You can’t change commanders at such a rate,” he said. “The officers deserve respect.”

Andrea Machain contributed reporting from Asunción, Paraguay.

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.

A lowered profile

Gen. David H. Petraeus was the face of the Iraq troop surge.




Gen. David H. Petraeus, the face of the Iraq troop surge and a favorite of former President George W. Bush, spoke up or was called upon by President Obama “several times” during the big Afghanistan strategy session in the Situation Room last week, one participant says, and will be back for two more meetings this week.

But the general’s closest associates say that underneath the surface of good relations, the celebrity commander faces a new reality in Mr. Obama’s White House: He is still at the table, but in a very different seat.

“General Petraeus has not hinted to anyone that he is interested in political life, and in fact has said on many occasions that he’s not,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and professor of military history at Ohio State University who was the executive officer to General Petraeus when he was the top American commander in Iraq.

“It is other people who are looking at his popularity and saying that he would be a good presidential candidate, and I think rightly that makes the administration a little suspicious of him.”

Difficult to conceive of a candidacy based solely on the troop surge. If troop levels have been reduced in Iraq and Afghanistan stabilizes a bit by 2011, any life in that candidacy will be gone.

General Petraeus’s advisers say he has stepped back in part because Mr. Obama has handpicked his own public face for the war in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who last week gave an interview to CBS’s “60 Minutes,” met with Mr. Obama on Air Force One and used a speech in London to reject calls for scaling back the war effort.

If anything, General McChrystal’s public comments may prove that General Petraeus might be prudent to take a back seat during the debate. On Sunday, when CNN’s John King asked Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, if it was appropriate for a man in uniform to appear to campaign so openly for more troops, General Jones replied, “Ideally, it’s better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.”

Ideally, indeed. Making a speech in public to lobby for his selected policy might be a bit out of line for an active general.

“He understands the Congress better than any military commander I’ve ever met,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, who said that General Petraeus had the nationwide influence to serve as a spokesman for the administration’s policy on the Afghan war.

But until the president makes a decision, and determines if he wants to deploy General Petraeus to help sell it, the commander is keeping his head down. “He knows how to make his way through minefields like this,” said Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army.


In the London Telegraph, a different take on Gen Stanley McChrystal's speech.

Barack Obama angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan

The relationship between President Barack Obama and the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has been put under severe strain by Gen Stanley McChrystal's comments on strategy for the war.

US General Stanley McChrystal

He's back

Ousted President Manuel Zelaya dramatically reappeared in Honduras on Monday, almost three months after being forced out of the country in his pajamas -- sneaking back in and taking refuge in the Brazilian Embassy.

"I am here for the restoration of democracy," Mr. Zelaya said on Honduran television. He told local media he wanted to "initiate a national and international dialogue" that would permit his return to power.

Amazingly, he can say this with a straight face.

Close ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said Mr. Zelaya told him he traveled with four companions. Mr. Chávez hailed Mr. Zelaya's return and said his country stood ready to help him return to power.

And this guy, too. Were anyone to say what he says about Venezuela, he would charge interference with internal, sovereign matters.

It was unclear what Mr. Zelaya would do next. He has the support of the international community as well as the U.S., which canceled the visas of many officials in the interim government, and cut some aid to Honduras, one of the hemisphere's poorest countries. However, Mr. Zelaya's return is vehemently opposed by the country's institutions, including the congress, the courts, the armed forces and the powerful Catholic Church.

International community as well as the US?

Who fights?

In July, Tim James was deployed to Iraq.

Who are the soldiers who fight this nation's fights?










Every day, the 5-year-old son and namesake of the basketball player Tim James, a former first-round draft pick in the N.B.A., asks when his daddy is coming home. Betty James, who is looking after her grandson while James is gone, has a stock answer: “Soon, baby. Soon.”

Last week, Tim Jr. returned home from kindergarten and broadsided Betty with a new question. “Is my daddy in a tank that shoots up people?” he said.

Betty described the moment as “very heartbreaking.” Until then, she had consoled herself with the thought that Tim Jr. did not understand how this trip was different from all the basketball tours of duty that took his father far from home.

After three seasons in the N.B.A. and a few more overseas, in Turkey, Japan and Israel, James enlisted in the Army last September. He was three months away from his 32nd birthday. In July, he was deployed to Iraq, following the example if not the exact path of the Arizona Cardinals’ Pat Tillman, who gave up his N.F.L. career after the 2001 season to become an Army Ranger. Tillman was killed in 2004 by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

“I feel good when I wake up every morning,” James said. “I feel like I’m doing something important.”

James’s N.B.A. career ended after a fruitless tryout with the Knicks in the fall of 2002. He later played in Turkey, Japan and Israel.



The transition has not been as smooth as a fast break. James initially had a hard time sleeping on the base. “I’d hear loud machine-gun fire going off in the middle of the night,” he said, “and I was just tempted to reach for my weapon.” He added, “At first it was quite nerve-racking, until I realized it’s like a normal situation.”

In Liberty City, the section of Miami where James grew up, he fell asleep many nights to the sound of gunfire, he said. It was there, at 13, that he saw his first dead body close up. Until he entered the Army, James said, he had never carried a gun.




Tim James’s unit, in T-shirts sent by the Miami Heat. James stood in the back, right of center, towering over his comrades.





His is the quintessential American success story: the kid from Miami going to college, graduating and embarking on a career that made him a millionaire. The opportunities James received filled him with gratitude and infused him with a desire to give back.

Playing overseas, James experienced a renewed appreciation for the freedoms of life in the United States. In Israel, he said, he lived near enough to the Gaza Strip to gaze at it daily and wonder, as he put it, “what’s going on across the line.”

With his basketball career winding down, James considered teaching and coaching before deciding the Army was where he could do the most good.

Pentagon wary as troops blog

Matthew C. Burden is a former intelligence officer in the Army who started one of the earliest military blogs, Black Five.


A Reservist Describes Life on the Warfront (September 9, 2009)
Links to Blogs and Military Resources (September 9, 2009)
At War: Leashing the Blogs of War



There are two sides to the military’s foray into the freewheeling world of the interactive Web. At the highest echelons of the Pentagon, civilian officials and four-star generals are newly hailing the power of social networking to make members of the American military more empathetic, entice recruits and shape public opinion on the war.

Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of American forces in Iraq, is on Facebook. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has a YouTube channel and posts Twitter updates almost daily.

Video: Israeli soldiers fire on Al Jazeera correspondent - 04 Sep 09 Al Jazeera

Álvaro Uribe

Presidents Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, left, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil met for more than two hours this week.



August 8, 2009
Colombia President, on South America Tour, Defends U.S. Military Role
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

BRASÍLIA —President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia wrapped up a seven-country tour of South America this week seeking to calm skeptical neighbors about a proposal to allow an increased American military presence in Colombian territory.

On Thursday, Mr. Uribe met for more than two hours here with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who requested guarantees from Mr. Uribe that the military cooperation with the United States would not spill over Colombia’s borders, Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, told reporters.

Mr. Uribe took to the road on his diplomatic offensive this week after some countries — including Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua — denounced the plans to allow for increased American troop levels. Others, like Brazil, expressed concern about the agreement, which Colombian and American officials insisted would only extend and formalize a continuing counternarcotics program between the countries.

The concerns — and Mr. Uribe’s hastily organized diplomatic road show — underscore contrasting views about threats to the region’s security. For the Colombian president, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, remain the primordial threat, not only to Colombia but to the entire region, said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a research group in Washington.

“Other governments don’t quite see it that way,” Mr. Shifter said. “Most are sympathetic to Uribe, but they view the FARC as essentially Colombia’s problem. They are more worried about any decisions regarding U.S. military presence in the region, which remains a highly sensitive issue that continues to arouse suspicions.”

Those sentiments were on display this week as Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, said that the move amounted to preparations for an invasion of Venezuela by a “Yankee military force.”Mr. da Silva said last week that the proposal was unsettling and that leaders in the region should have been contacted beforehand. He also reiterated his concerns about the Fourth Fleet, which the United States reactivated last year in the Americas, and its ships’ ability to range over waters where Brazil would be developing large deep-water oil fields.

Mr. Amorim said little about the substance of the talks on Thursday with the Colombian leader, which he said were continuing. “Our concerns were expressed, and Uribe clarified for us what he felt he should about the agreement with the United States,” Mr. Amorim said.

Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, said last week that countries in the region were “unnerved” by the plan to increase the number of American troops and that the issue should be addressed at Monday’s meeting in Ecuador of the Union of South American Nations. Mr. Uribe does not plan to attend the meeting, Mr. Amorim confirmed. Ecuador and Colombia broke off diplomatic relations last year after Colombia’s military assassinated a rebel leader of the FARC in Ecuadorean territory.

After meeting with Mr. Uribe, the presidents of Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay said that Colombia’s sovereignty should be respected. Peru’s leader, Alan García, who is allied with the United States in its efforts to curb narco-trafficking, emphatically supported the Colombian proposal.

But other leaders criticized Colombia. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s president, said Mr. Uribe needed to “reduce the conflict in the region” and that “the installation of the bases didn’t fit with that objective,” the Argentine state news agency reported.

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president and a staunch ally of Mr. Chávez’s, called it a threat to the region and said he would press for a resolution at the Ecuador meeting to veto the presence of foreign bases in the region.

But the strongest reaction came from Venezuela and Ecuador, which have maintained tense relations with their neighbor since last year. Mr. Chávez, already fuming over reports claiming that Venezuelan arms had ended up in the hands of FARC rebels, withdrew his diplomats from Bogotá last week.

On Wednesday he said his government planned to buy “several tank battalions” to boost its defenses in light of Colombia’s enhanced military cooperation with the United States. The Venezuelan leader also said he would halt imports of some 10,000 cars from Colombia — purchases he said would shift to Argentina and Brazil.

“Just when it seemed that relations between Colombia and Venezuela couldn’t get any worse, they have reached another low point,” Mr. Shifter said.

Some analysts said Mr. Uribe was forced to defend his negotiations with the United States because of confusion in the region about whether he had agreed to allow the establishment of American bases in Colombian territory, which is not part of the proposal. The proposal instead calls for a potential increase in American troop levels at at least five Colombian-controlled bases.

The United States has been negotiating the increase of military operations in Colombia in recent weeks in light of Ecuador’s decision to end a decade-long agreement allowing American surveillance planes to operate from a base on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast.

While American antidrug surveillance flights would sharply increase in Colombia, the world’s top producer of cocaine, the agreement would not allow American personnel to take part in combat operations in the country.

The United States, which currently has about 250 members of the military in Colombia, would continue to be limited to 800 military personnel and 600 military contractors, said Charles Luoma-Overstreet, a State Department spokesman.

Colombia has already received more than $5 billion in military and antidrug aid from the United States this decade.

“There is no military offensive nature to this,” Mr. Luoma-Overstreet said. “This is about assisting the government of Colombia to combat transnational crime and narco-trafficking within their borders.”

Let's be practical

As rain fell, Honduran police officers blocked a road last week in Jacagalpa, near Nicaragua.











On TV, Honduran Generals Explain Their Role in Coup

Military officials have been feeling increasingly isolated, as those who support Mr. Zelaya accuse them of being traitors and those who support the de facto regime, led by Roberto Micheletti, distance themselves from the decision to expel the president.

Damned for doing by both sides, left stuck in the middle.

“In the end, there is a chance that the civilians will all kiss and make up, and the military is going to be held as the bad guys,” said a high-ranking official in the defense ministry, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the military’s position. “These guys are worried. They are worried about going to jail.”

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.

An Israeli Spy

To hear Israeli intelligence chief Meir Amit tell it, the 1967 clash that established his country as the most fearsome military force in the Middle East wasn't a Six Day War after all.

On June 5, 1967, Israel's air force destroyed Egypt's air force on the ground in a series of morning bombing raids that represented as much an intelligence victory as a military one. It was the culmination of years of careful work penetrating the Egyptian armed forces. The results were decisive and swift.

"Don't call it the Six-day War, call it the three-hour war," Mr. Amit, the Mossad's chief from 1963-1968, told a conference held to mark the 1967 war's 25th anniversary in Washington. "And I must take pride in the intelligence."

In one spectacular operation in 1966, Mr. Amit engineered the defection of an Iraqi fighter pilot who landed his MIG-21 at an Israeli air base. The plane -- among the most modern of the U.S.S.R's fighters -- was immediately shared with the Central Intelligence Agency, helping to cement the bonds between the two nations' intelligence agencies.

The Iraqi pilot was inspired to defect by someone he took to be his American girlfriend but who was actually a Mossad agent.

Mr. Amit "pioneered the use of female agents, the 'honey trap,'" says Dan Raviv, author of "Every Spy a Prince," a history of Israeli espionage.

A patron called to reserve the book a couple of days ago.

He sometimes meditated on the gestalt of intelligence, which could be "boring" because it took years to build up a useful picture of the enemy, yet had moments "far beyond" the most gripping John Le Carre novel. And to Mr. Amit, success could breed failure. He believed the 1967 victory, for example, spawned a dangerous complacency.

"After the war we succumbed to the disease of arrogance, of 'We know better, we are the best, far above the others,'" he once said.

A great insight.

Shai Tsur, Mr. Amit's grandson, says his grandfather believed "the failure of the 1973 war, especially on the part of military intelligence, was a direct product of this 'konseptziya,'" the idea that Israel was so strong that its neighbors would never attack.

In recent years, Mr. Amit warned of the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran and served as chairman of Israel's Center for Special Studies in Tel Aviv, which maintains a giant sandstone monument in the form of a maze as a cenotaph for the nation's fallen intelligence agents.

In a statement Tuesday, Israel's president, Shimon Peres, said, "Generations of Israelis, entire generations of children owe Meir Amit a debt of gratitude for his immense contribution -- a large part of which remains secret."

Some secrets can never be revealed, certainly in Israel.