"perhaps" Rove takes kickbacks and has pocketed 8 Bil to invest for his retirement. "perhaps" small green aliens from Mars took the money, "Perhaps" ican has the entire 8 Bil which he uses to finance his subscriptiion to Encyclopædia Britannica, "perhaps" Dick Cheney held back the 8 Bil as a finders fee. "perhaps" The Bush is a complete moron and can't count that high without taking his socks off.
Perhaps there was not an 8 billion in Iraq that got stolen after we invaded Iraq. Perhaps Teddy Kennedy invested it in the Boston Tunnel. My subscription to Britannica costs me peanuts, but guess what I found stashed in its Appendix.
Well, I do hope that any tribunal in Iraq is as independent as in the USA or elswhere in democratic countries. (I mean, when the government decides all this, why a fake tribunal?)
Would that be as independent as say the Neurnberg trials were alleged to be?
I think, the invasion was to bring democracy to Iraq, isn't it?
The pre-9/11 draft presidential directive on al Qaeda evolved into a new directive, National Security Presidential Directive 9, now titled "Defeating the Terrorist Threat to the United States." The directive would now extend to a global war on terrorism, not just on al Qaeda. It also incorporated the President's determination not to distinguish between terrorists and those who harbor them. It included a determination to use military force if necessary to end al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan. The new directive—formally signed on October 25 [2001], after the fighting in Afghanistan had already begun--included new material followed by annexes discussing each targeted terrorist group. The old draft directive on al Qaeda became, in effect, the first annex.57 The United States would strive to eliminate all terrorist networks, dry up their financial support, and prevent them from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The goal was the "elimination of terrorism as a threat to our way of life."58
I see. So bringing democracy to Iraq had nothing to do with democracy per se.
Huh 
The Four-Day War
Who did Saddam Hussein turn to after President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox? Osama bin Laden.
by Thomas Joscelyn
07/19/2005 9:00:00 AM
"The British and the American people loudly declared their support for their leaders decision to attack Iraq. It is the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill them."
-Osama bin Laden, as quoted in various press accounts, December 26, 1998
"Oh sons of Arabs and the Arab Gulf, rebel against the foreigner . . . Take revenge for your dignity, holy places, security, interests, and exalted values."
-Saddam Hussein, January 5, 1999
THE "LONG SHORT WAR" with Saddam's Iraq, as author Christopher Hitchens has aptly described it, has had many tense moments. Perhaps never more so than in late 1998. Tensions over Saddam's obstruction of weapons inspections had accrued for months; the United States continually threatened military intervention. Earlier in the year a strike was narrowly averted when U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan brokered a last minute peace deal. But the peace was an unquiet one and, finally, after months of playing Saddam's games, President Clinton decided to act.
On December 16, 1998 Operation Desert Fox commenced. The four-day bombing campaign would strike targets throughout Iraq including military and intelligence positions as well as sites suspected of manufacturing and storing weapons of mass destruction. The Arab and Muslim street had been incited to protest the effort to contain Saddam for months and, thus, the wisdom of the strike was immediately challenged. Would it be enough to make Saddam comply with the U.N.'s resolutions or would it (unnecessarily) hurt America's image around the world even more and, thus, strengthen Saddam's hand?
The costs and benefits of the strike would be weighed for months and nothing escaped the media's scrutiny: including Saddam's desire for revenge.
Indeed, as the current war in Iraq approached many forgot or ignored Saddam's response to the four-day war of December 1998. It is a shame because his response to that four-day bombing campaign--the largest since the first Gulf War--was telling. In his quest for revenge he had few options, but one of those was Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
Just days after Operation Desert Fox concluded one of Saddam's most loyal and trusted intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, was dispatched to Afghanistan. He met with senior leaders from the Taliban and then with bin Laden and his cohorts on December 21.
While we cannot be sure what transpired at this meeting, we can be sure that it was not some benign event. In fact, within days of the meeting bin Laden loudly declared his opposition to the U.S.-led missile strikes on Iraq and called on all Muslims to strike U.S. and British targets, including civilians, around the world. According to press accounts at the time, bin Laden explained, "The British and the American people loudly declared their support for their leaders' decision to attack Iraq." He added that the citizens' support for their governments made it "the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill" them.
Bin Laden's words sounded alarm bells around the world. Countless media outlets scurried to uncover the details of the relationship between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. Dozens of news outlets--foreign and domestic--reported on the growing relationship and its ominous implications. When assessing any news account the reader must take all of the information with a grain of salt. But the sheer weight of the evidence reported from so many different sources paints a disturbing picture.
he meeting between Hijazi and bin Laden, it turned out, was not the first meeting between Saddam's envoys and al Qaeda. Nor were their conversations or cooperation limited to a few inconsequential contacts, as many in the U.S. intelligence community now claim. There were numerous reports that Saddam was training hundreds of al Qaeda operatives, that al Qaeda was receiving assistance in making chemical weapons in Sudan, that scores of Iraqi military officers had relocated to Afghanistan, and that Saddam might even use al Qaeda agents in a "false flag" operation against western targets.
The first alarm was rung by Milan's Corriere Della Sera on December 28. In the bluntest manner, the newspaper reported, "Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin have sealed a pact." Saddam's regime and bin Laden's global terrorist network had united against the common enemy, the U.S. and her allies. In preparation for the coming terrorist war, Saddam had even offered bin Laden safehaven.
Just days later, on January 1, 1999, the Paris-based, pan-Arab magazine Al-Watan Al-Arabi expanded on the details of the new terrorist alliance. High-level representatives from both organizations had been meeting for months. At one such meeting in the summer of 1998 "bin Ladin tried to feel the Iraqi official's pulse about the possibility of being received in Baghdad." But, according to this account, the Iraqi envoys were not authorized to grant his request.
Thus, according to the Corriere Della Sera account and then the Al-Watan Al-Arabi account, discussions of safehaven for al Qaeda in Iraq had gone both ways. Bin Laden had first requested safehaven from Saddam in the summer of 1998 and then Saddam had offered safehaven to bin Laden several months later. Many in the U.S. intelligence community downplay these discussions of safehaven as if they were meaningless. (This skepticism prominently manifested itself in the 9/11 Commission Report.) But, according to the press accounts, the discussions of safehaven were only part of the context for understanding the relationship.
For example, Al-Watan Al-Arabi's account provided startling details concerning joint Iraqi-al Qaeda cooperation on chemical and biological weapons in bin Laden's former safehaven, Sudan. The magazine reported that "several western diplomatic and security sources which have good relations with Sudan, warned in secret reports they sent at the end of [1998] that Iraq, Sudan, and bin Laden were cooperating and coordinating in field of chemical weapons" at several facilities. (Just months earlier, it should be noted, the Clinton administration had destroyed one such suspected facility, the al-Shifa plant, in retaliation for al Qaeda's attack on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.) The magazine also reported that there were several meetings in 1998 and at one of these, "bin Laden also stressed to the Iraqi envoys that he could reach areas, which the Iraqi intelligence could not reach."
Other Arab news outlets made similarly striking claims. An editorial in the Arab news outlet, Al-Quds Al-Arabi explained that "President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four-day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama bin Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world."
The London-based Al-Majallah added even more details. According to the Saudi-backed publication, "scores of Iraqi military intelligence men . . . arrived in Afghan territory in December." Also in December, "the Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad held a series of meetings between an Iraqi security official and the leaders of a number of Pakistani fundamentalist movements and elements from the Taleban, with the knowledge of Pakistani military intelligence." The purpose of such meetings was to whip up support for Saddam in his confrontation with the U.S. and Britain.
Several Arab press publications reported that hundreds of bin Laden's "Arab Afghans" were already being trained in southern Iraq. Al-Ittihad (Abu Dhabi), Al-Ra'y al-Amm (Kuwait) and Al-Watan Al-Arabi (Paris) all ran reports in mid to late January citing evidence of Iraq's training al Qaeda operatives. These reports even indicated that more than two dozen al Qaeda operatives had already been arrested by Kuwaiti security officials for disseminating literature, which openly advocated the overthrow of the Kuwaiti monarchy and dissuaded Kuwaitis from taking up arms against the Iraqis. These reports became so widespread that even Moscow's Novosti reported on January 31, 1999 that "hundreds of Afghan Arabs are undergoing sabotage training in Southern Iraq and are preparing for armed actions on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. They have declared as their goal a fight against the interests of the United States in the region."
(THE WEEKLY STANDARD has made numerous requests to the Kuwaiti government for more information on these detentions. The Kuwaiti government has not responded to these requests.)
REPORTS OF THE TERRORIST ALLIANCE were not confined to the foreign press. In its issue dated January 11, 1999, Newsweek quoted an anonymous "Arab intelligence officer who knows Saddam personally" as warning that "very soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis" against Western targets. The Iraqi plan would be run under one of three "false flags": Palestinian, Iranian, and the "al Qaeda apparatus." All of these groups, Newsweek reported, had representatives in Baghdad.
Newsweek was not alone in raising the specter of an Iraqi-sponsored "false flag" operation by al Qaeda. On January 14, 1999 ABC News reported the meeting between bin Laden and Hijazi in late December 1998 during its nightly broadcast. The report explained that bin Laden had "teamed up with another international pariah [Saddam Hussein], one also with an interest in weapons of mass destruction." The report indicated that bin Laden had sought Saddam Hussein's assistance in acquiring such weapons and that Saddam was willing to comply [with] his request.
ABC News concluded the segment by asking, "What could bin Laden offer Saddam Hussein?" The answer echoed the possibility explicitly mentioned in Newsweeks account: "Only days after he meets Iraqi officials, bin Laden tells ABC news that his network is wide and there are people prepared to commit terror in his name who he does not even control."
Roughly two weeks later, on February 1, 1999, the New York Post reported that Saddam was courting both bin Laden and Abu Nidal--a long-time terror ally of Saddam who relocated to Iraq in December 1998--as part of a plan "to resort to terrorism in revenge for airstrikes against his country." Saddam's plan was part of a "new campaign to strike American targets and possibly destabilize Saudi Arabia and Kuwait." The Post cited "government counterterrorism specialists" as saying that "emissaries of the two men have been secretly meeting in Sudan, where both have extensive ties."
Even London's left-of-center Guardian, which opposed the current iteration of the Iraq war and ran numerous articles dismissing the possibility of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in the last few years, ran two pieces discussing the axis of Saddam and bin Laden on February 6, 1999. One of the accounts, for example, began "Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to U.S. intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials."
The reports continued throughout February and March. At a time when the Clinton administration was trying to induce the Taliban to end its support for bin Laden, there was rampant media speculation that bin Laden would relocate from Afghanistan to Iraq. For example, on February 13 the Associated Press reported, "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."
The Los Angeles Times reported a day later, "diplomatic officials here [Islamabad] speculated that he may have fled to Iraq, which reportedly offered the Saudi dissident a haven earlier this month." The Times continued, "In Washington, experts were betting that, out of all the world leaders, the most likely to rescue bin Laden from the U.S. was Iraqi President Saddam Hussein."
On February 18 a former CIA counterterrorism official, Vincent Cannistraro, engaged in similar speculation on National Public Radio's morning broadcast. He added that "members of Osama's entourage let it be known that the meeting [with Hijazi] had taken place."
Nor was the Clinton administration unaware of these reports. Behind the scenes, officials were engaging in similar conjecture. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Richard Clarke--a highly publicized critic of the Bush administration--sent an email to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on February 11, 1999. Clarke told Berger that if bin Laden learned of U.S. operations against him, "old wily Osama will likely boogie to Baghdad." Within a few days of Clarke's email, Bruce Riedel of the National Security Council staff also emailed Berger, warning that "Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad."
Clarke's fear that bin Laden would boogie to Baghdad was not a momentary revelation. In November 1998, upon reading the unsealed indictment of bin Laden, the 9/11 Commission Report notes that Clarke "who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons" speculated to the National Security Adviser Sandy Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was "probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qaeda agreement."
IN RESPONSE TO THE FOUR-DAY WAR, Saddam Hussein, in his darkest hour, turned to Osama bin Laden in his quest for exacting revenge. We know this because the worldwide media reported it. Countless analysts, reporters, and even Clinton administration officials knew something was afoot in one way or another. We know this was not the last of the reporting on the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden's al Qaeda. Reports continued right up until the eve of the war in Iraq.
However, from the first days of the Bush administration's presentation of its public case for going to war--and continuing to this day--we have been asked to assume, by many current and former intelligence analysts and media pundits, that Saddam was not successful in working with bin Laden to exact his revenge.
It is possible, perhaps, that all of these reports are wrong. It is left to the reader to decide.
Thomas Joscelyn is an economist and writer living in New York.
The hidden horrors of Abu Ghraib
Last Friday was the deadline set by a federal judge for the Pentagon to release a stash of photographs and videotapes showing graphic proof of the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The government ignored the deadline. Instead, in a secret brief filed with the court, it argued -- as it has done ever since the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the photos last year -- that it shouldn't have to release the evidence.
Nobody knows what the government's latest argument is, but it may have something to do with the hit President Bush's flowery rhetoric may take if pictures of "freedom on the march" are shown to the world. As Editor & Publisher points out in a nice compilation of public comments about the secret images, we haven't yet seen the worst of Abu Ghraib. Not by a long shot.
Donald Rumsfeld said last year that the images in question are "hard to believe," and that what they show "can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane." And here's what Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, said of the pictures after they were screened for members of Congress last year: "The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience... We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges."
Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker writer who was one of the first reporters to see the pictures, has offered even more graphic descriptions. At an ACLU convention last year, Hersh said: "Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
No senior Pentagon official has so far lost his or her job over what happened at Abu Ghraib. Is it any wonder, then, that they're so zealously hording every bit of evidence of the horrors that occurred there?
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050801/1terror.htm <http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050801/1terror.htm> -- August 1, 2005
Plan Of Attack
The Pentagon has a secret new strategy for taking on terrorists--and taking them down
By Linda Robinson
On March 3, with little fanfare, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, signed a comprehensive new plan for the war on terrorism. Senior defense officials briefed U.S. News on the contents of the still-secret document, which is to be released soon in an unclassified form. Officially titled the "National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism," the document is the culmination of 18 months of work and is a significant evolution from the approach adopted after the 9/11 attacks, which was to focus on capturing or killing the top al Qaeda leaders. For the first time since then, Pentagon officials say, they have a strategy that examines the nature of the antiterror war in depth, lays out a detailed road map for prosecuting it, and establishes a score card to determine where and whether progress is being made.
The origins of the new plan lie in an October 2003 "snowflake," as Rumsfeld's numerous memoranda to his staff are called. Was the United States really winning the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld asked his commanders, and how could we know if more terrorists were being killed or captured than were being recruited into the ranks? Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's under secretary for policy, was told, along with the deputy director for the war on terrorism for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brig. Gen. Robert Caslen, to find answers to the questions. "We sat down as a result of the secretary's snowflake," Feith recalled, "and said, 'How do we want to state some fundamental propositions about the war?' "
The initial result was a 70-page draft report, which subsequently went through over 40 revisions as it was shared with Rumsfeld's inner circle, then a larger group, called the senior-level review group ("Slurg," in Pentagon-speak), and then regional commanders and other agencies. The president was briefed on the report last January and presented with recommendations for presidential-level initiatives to be included in a government wide review of counterterrorism policy, which is still being conducted by the National Security Council. In March, the final 25-page report, plus 13 annexes, was signed and became formal Pentagon policy. Key features of the new plan:
The terrorist threat against the United States is now defined as "Islamist extremism" --not just al Qaeda. The Pentagon document identifies the "primary enemy" as "extremist Sunni and Shia movements that exploit Islam for political ends" and that form part of a "global web of enemy networks." Recognizing that al Qaeda's influence has spread, the United States is now targeting some two dozen groups--a significant change from the early focus on just al Qaeda and its leadership.
The new approach emphasizes "encouraging" and "enabling" foreign partners, especially in countries where the United States is not at war. Concluding that the conflict cannot be fought by military means alone--or by the United States acting alone--the new Pentagon plan outlines a multipronged strategy that targets eight pressure points and outlines six methods for attacking terrorist networks.
The Pentagon will use a new set of metrics twice a year to measure its progress in the war against terrorism. Commanders are to report, for example, on successes in locating and dismantling terrorist safe havens, financial assets, communications networks, and planning cells for each of the target groups.
The Pentagon's Special Operations Command is designated in the new plan as the global "synchronizer" in the war on terrorism for all the military commands and is responsible for designing a new global counterterrorism campaign plan and conducting preparatory reconnaissance missions against terrorist organizations around the world.
Under a draft national security presidential decision directive, expected to be approved next month, the White House would have greater flexibility to resolve turf battles in the government's overall counterterrorism effort.
The new Pentagon directive, General Caslen told U.S. News , has unified the military behind one counterterrorism plan for the first time: "Prior to the release of this document, everybody had their own idea of what the enemy was. Therefore, everybody had their own idea of how to fight it. We had different ideas among the services, among the commands, among the different agencies. Heck, we even had different ideas among the different organizations within this building."
Defining the enemy in precise terms was one of the first big hurdles in producing the new strategy document. "Since 9/11," Caslen said, "the relationships and interdependencies among like-minded terrorist groups have become clearer, and we assess [that] there are nearly two dozen terrorist groups with varying degrees of interaction with and/or interdependency on al Qaeda." But some officials were leery of painting the adversary with too broad a brush for fear of alienating the mainstream Muslims the new strategy defines as pivotal allies. "It's important that we point out that it's not a religious or cultural clash," Caslen says. "It is a war to preserve ordinary people's ability to live as they choose."
The final product reflects changes of profound significance, Pentagon officials say. First, the enemy is now defined more broadly than just al Qaeda. Second, the Pentagon has now officially moved away from what has been widely seen as a unilateral American approach. "It's not a military project alone," Feith explained, "and the United States cannot do it by itself alone."
Going global. The new strategy, for the first time, formally directs military commanders to go after a list of eight pressure points at which terrorist groups could be vulnerable: ideological support, weapons, funds, communications and movement, safe havens, foot soldiers, access to targets, and leadership. Each U.S. geographic command is to follow a systematic approach, first collecting intelligence on any of the two dozen target groups that are operating in its area of responsibility and then developing a plan to attack all eight nodes for each of those groups.
Going after high-value targets like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi, his emir in Iraq, is still a big part of the strategy but only a part. Three less direct approaches will now receive much greater emphasis: helping partner nations confront terrorism, going after supporters of terrorist organizations, and helping the State Department-led campaign to reduce the ideological appeal of terrorism. The latter category includes such things as military-provided humanitarian aid. U.S. aid to tsunami victims, for example, dramatically swung Asian public opinion from a negative to a positive view of America. Despite fears that the U.S. military is waging a duplicitous propaganda war, many military officials say that "information operations" are an inevitable dimension of warfare and must play a role, along with the State Department's public-diplomacy efforts. One particular area of emphasis: educating soldiers in religious and cultural sensitivities. Caslen showed a reporter two photographs as examples of what not to do--one of marines bivouacked inside Fallujah's Khulafah Rashid mosque after driving out insurgents, another of a soldier's rosary dangling from a tank barrel.
For a Pentagon that has been seen as primarily championing pre-emptive attacks against terrorist threats, the new strategy's enthusiastic embrace of foreign partners is a real sea change. Feith describes the reasons for it. "How do you fight an enemy that is present in numerous countries with whom you're not at war?" he asked. "The answer, in many cases, is we're going to have to rely on the governments of the countries where the terrorists are present. We can't do it ourselves, because you're talking about actions on the sovereign territory of other countries. . . . We need to have countries willing to cooperate with us and capable of doing the things they need to do to serve our common interests."
For whatever opposition they encounter, Pentagon brass know they must now rely more than ever on foreign partners; the insurgency in Iraq and the continuing violence in Afghanistan have stretched U.S. forces, simply precluding go-it-alone missions. Attempting to make a virtue out of a necessity, Washington has developed some promising relationships with countries that were previously wary or reluctant allies. The special operations commander for the Middle East and South Asia recounted several cases to U.S. News in which his forces, which traditionally work beneath the radar, have scored successes in Pakistan, Yemen, Africa, and Saudi Arabia. In a rare interview, the Jordanian special operations commander said that his men are training Iraqi counterterrorism forces at three bases in Jordan, staffing a hospital in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, and sealing the Iraqi-Jordanian border against insurgents. "We have the most secure border with Iraq of any of its neighbors," Brig. Gen. Jamal al Shawabkeh said.
The head of U.S. Army special operations forces, Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, says such partnerships need to be developed around the world. "If you don't take a holistic approach to this . . . you press on one area, and you get a bulge someplace else." He described how he saw his troops fitting into the new strategy: "What my forces have got to be able to do is work around the world, continue to train and work with host-nation forces and U.S. forces and other U.S. agencies to try to establish a global intel database so that that little piece of information that you may get out of some little area, say, in Rwanda, provides the key to a cell someplace else around the world."
The new Pentagon strategy gives several new responsibilities to the Special Operations Command, which oversees all American special operations forces. "One of the earlier criticisms of the war on terror," says General Caslen, was "that we had no one to look at this from a global perspective." Now Special Operations Command has that role. Annex C of the new Pentagon plan directs the Special Operations Command to draft a global campaign plan that will detail the new counter-terrorism operations to be launched and to "synchronize" the counterterrorism plans of the five geographic military commands. In an interview with U.S. News , Gen. Doug Brown, the head of the Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, said his command was selected for the new mission "because, quite frankly, we are a global command. We've always been oriented around the world." In June, Brown convened a meeting of special operations forces from 59 foreign countries in Tampa, where SOCOM is based.
Traditionally, the geographic commands have been reluctant to yield to SOCOM on counterterrorism issues, but that's no longer an option. While Brown's command is now in charge of the planning effort in the war on terrorism, it will lead actual operations only when directed to do so by the president or Rumsfeld. Which is certainly a distinct possibility--Rumsfeld has expanded the authority of SOCOM in a number of key areas since Brown took command last year. "Most of them were in his purview," Brown said of the new areas of authority, "and we got them quickly."
One such authority granted in the new strategy is for special operations forces to conduct "operational preparation of the environment" --more Pentagon-speak for gathering information in trouble spots around the world to prepare for possible missions. "It's becoming familiar with the area in which you might have to work," explains Thomas O'Connell, the Pentagon's assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict. "It's nonhostile recon. It's not intrusive. Others without a military background may view it as saber rattling, but it's as far from that as you can get." In the 1980s, O'Connell said, special operations forces spent lots of time preparing to respond to hijackings, kidnappings, and takeovers of embassies. To do that, they visited embassies and airports and examined possible helicopter landing zones and assault routes. In 1991, O'Connell said, the preparations paid off in the rescue of U.S. Embassy personnel in Somalia: "If one marine in that contingent hadn't just been in [as part of a survey team] and known that the embassy had switched, they would have assaulted the wrong compound."
Taking charge. While the new Pentagon strategy may have resolved some internal turf battles, other issues must await the conclusion of the National Security Council's review of counterterrorism policy. The Pentagon is floating one proposal that is sure to cause a stir in Congress and, probably, the State Department. Feith says there are good reasons to consider remaking the entire apparatus for aid and training for foreign troops, police, and other security forces. It was set up during the Cold War, he says, "more for building relationships and less for developing capabilities for partners to contribute to our military purposes." He cites the headache encountered when the Pentagon proposed to train and equip the Georgian Army in Central Asia after 9/11. "We had to tap five or six different pots of money," Feith says, "and it took over half a year."
Changing the system won't be easy. Congress has a long history of attaching all kinds of conditions to foreign aid. While the State Department administers most foreign security programs, its capability is small, and the Pentagon is restricted in training police forces abroad. A senior administration official declined to comment on the substance of the Pentagon strategy because it is still classified but said that it had been "invaluable to our government wide strategic thinking." At the White House, the official said, the National Security Council has focused its approach on "an ever growing number of willing partners . . . to address violent extremists operating within their borders."
Getting along. While there may be consensus on the broad approach, the devil will be in the hard bargaining over "who's in charge." The most important document to come out of the National Security Council review will be a new presidential directive that reconciles the conflicts among four counterterrorism directives. Two are from the Clinton era; two were signed by President Bush. Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 39, signed in 1995, for example, gives the State Department the lead role in counterterrorism efforts abroad, but after 9/11, President Bush gave the CIA the lead for disrupting terrorist networks overseas. National Security Presidential Directive 9, signed on Oct. 25, 2001, directs the Pentagon to prepare military plans for eliminating terrorist sanctuaries. Similar overlapping jurisdictions exist for the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the new intelligence entities created since 9/11. Since many planks of the Pentagon's new strategy require it to work with these other agencies, resolving these intramural issues will be essential.
Officials say that the Pentagon has proposed that the new National Security Presidential Directive include a mechanism that would allow the president to delegate a particular task in a particular region to whichever entity he deemed best suited to execute it. Would such an approach end the chronic turf warfare that cripples the Washington bureaucracy? Americans are disheartened, according to a July Gallup Poll, in which only 34 percent believe the United States is winning the war on terror. Some commentators note that it has already lasted longer than America's participation in World War II. A more apt analogy, however, may be the Cold War, which was another long, largely nonmilitary struggle. "The president has said this will be a generational struggle," said a senior official involved in the National Security Council review. "We need to make the same kind of commitment."
Fewer early sign-ups as Army struggles to recruit soldiers By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
Wed Jul 27, 6:42 AM ET
The Army, which expects to miss its 2005 recruiting goal by about 12,000, already is falling behind for next year.
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The pool of recruits who sign up as much as a year before they report for training is dwindling. So far, 3,100 have signed up for 2006, according to Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky. The Army says it hopes to have 7,200 recruits in the pool by Oct. 1, when the 2006 recruiting year begins. By comparison:
The Army started the 2005 recruiting year with about 14,700 recruits in the delayed entry pool. It is making up some of the shortfall in recruiting by re-enlisting soldiers at a higher-than-expected rate. But the Army also has tried to trim this year's shortfall by rushing many delayed entry enlistees into basic training.
In 2004, the Army had more than 33,000 enlistees signed up ahead of time. It met its recruiting goals.
Allowing recruits to put off going to boot camp for up to a year gives enlistees flexibility and provides the Army with a buffer for future recruiting needs. Army statistics show the pool's size is a key indicator of its annual recruiting.
Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, who heads Army Recruiting Command, said recruiting in July is slightly ahead of its goal, but that won't wipe out the current shortfall. He said parents are still reluctant to encourage their children to enlist. The Army has taken the brunt of U.S. casualties in Iraq.
Rochelle acknowledged it can expect another struggle next year.
Stephen Cheney, a retired Marine brigadier general and recruiting coordinator, said the small size of the delayed entry pool would make it extremely difficult for the Army to meet its 2006 target.
Next year's recruits may also not be as qualified as this year's, because the Army will be looking for enlistees it can quickly ship to basic training. That means recruits whose options are limited, "are not in school and not in a job," said Cheney, chief operating officer of Business Executives for National Security in Washington, D.C.
The Army is offering unprecedented enticements - including enlistment bonuses as high as $20,000 and service stints as short as 15 months - but so far has been unable to persuade enough young men and women to join.
Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey recently proposed increasing the top enlistment bonus to $40,000 and is about to add 800 additional recruiters to the force. Even the new recruiters and higher bonuses "may not be enough for everyone," Rochelle said.
None of the recruiting trends bode well for the Army, said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
"If you think of the Army as a watershed, their reservoir is about to run dry," Thompson said. "They have nothing left in reserve."
Plan Of Attack
The Pentagon has a secret new strategy for taking on terrorists--and taking them down
