Rebel War Spirals Out of Control As U.S. Intelligence Loses the Plot
By Peter Beaumont and Patrick Graham
The Guardian

Sunday 02 November 2003

The ghosts of Vietnam are returning as Baathists, zealots, criminals, tribal leaders and al Qaeda unite in a deadly alliance of hatred.

Sharp disagreements are emerging between the US and the UK over the exact nature of the Iraqi resistance, amid warnings that the US is losing the intelligence war against the rebels. After eight days in which Iraqi fighters have scored a series of major blows to the coalition and its Iraqi allies, intelligence and military officials in Iraq and on both sides of the Atlantic are at odds over whether they are fighting a Saddam-led movement or a series of disparate partisan groups. They are just as divided on finding a way to halt the escalating violence.

The latest violence comes amid increasingly bleak assessments from Washington, where the latest attacks have been compared in the media to Vietnam's 1968 Tet Offensive against US forces and described by Sandy Berger, a former National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton, as a 'classic guerrilla war'. The comments follow leaked assessments by both the US pro-consul in Iraq, Ambassador Paul Bremer, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that war against the resistance was going less well than planned, with the latter describing a 'long, hard slog'. By last week that long, hard slog had seen attacks on coalition forces and the Iraqis co-operating with them reaching a level of 33 a day - more than twice the level in July. Anti-coalition fighters have ratcheted up the scale of attacks on schools, police and politicians, while assaults on the US-led forces have become more confident and sophisticated.

US and UK officials admit that at the centre of the worsening crisis - which has seen the UN and other aid agencies withdraw international staff from the country following the bombing of the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad - is a continuing failure of hard intelligence on exactly who is behind the resistance. The urgency of the problem was underlined by comments by a former CIA director last week that unless the coalition forces get a grip on the intelligence-gathering problem - in particular building relationships with ordinary Iraqis - it may be too late.

'We're at a crossroads,' Stansfield Turner, told the Christian Science Monitor. 'If in the next few weeks we don't persuade the Iraqi on the street that we're going to straighten things out... we won't get that intelligence.' A mark of that failure, say officials, has been the inability of coalition forces and the intelligence and policing agencies available to them to solve any of the major bombings that began in August.

'The fundamental issue with counter-insurgency warfare is intelligence. Intelligence is what matters and it is 90 per cent of the battle,' Gordon Adams, a former associate director for national security, told the New York Times. 'It's knowing who they are, where they are and when they act. If we know anything from Vietnam and the various things that have gone on in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is that our humint [human intelligence] is terrible. We know that we were woefully under-prepared in general.'

It is a view shared in part by British officials, who concede that attempts to infiltrate the resistance have been without success. Others are sharply critical of how the intelligence war against the rebels has been handled. They point to a woeful shortage of Arab linguists and analysts familiar with Arab culture in the US-run sector, despite being six months into the insurgency. To counter this, Pentagon officials briefed last week that some of these specialists working among the 1,400-strong Iraq Survey Group on the unsuccessful search for stockpiles of unconventional weapons would be transferred to this effort.

So who exactly is the resistance? In recent days American officials have briefed US papers for the first time that Saddam Hussein may be playing a significant role in co-ordinating and directing attacks by his loyalists, despite conceding such reports could not be corroborated. The claims are based in part on reports that Saddam met Izzat Ibrahim, a senior Iraqi general suspected by American officials of playing a significant role in organising the resistance and co-ordinating with Ansar al-Islam, linked to al Qaeda.

The depiction by these Pentagon officials of the structure of the resistance - though tentatively expressed - suggest a hierarchical organisation, led by former Saddam officials, with Saddam at its head, and allied to groups of foreign jihadists and al Qaeda under a single command. Whether true or not, it is a politically convenient description of the resistance for the Bush regime, suggesting as it does that the rebels represent no more than the desperate remains of Saddam's regime with no wider resonance, despite escalating attacks. It is not, however, recognised by British officials. The picture that they paint of what is going on in Iraq is a more chaotic and a far more dangerous one.

'What we are looking at,' one UK official told The Observer, 'is not some monolithic organisation with a clear command. That would be far easier for us to deal with and get into. Instead, we are looking at lots of different groups with different agendas. They are locally organised with each having its loyalty focused on middle-ranking former commanders.' What he describes is a network of partisan-type groups without a central command and links between them based on personal relationships - an organic rather than monolithic structure. The groups' communications - based, say Iraqis, on couriers, often teenage boys, to carry messages - have been equally difficult for the coalition to penetrate. And they have very little difficulty in getting materiel for attacks or the money to finance the operations. Iraqi military doctrine under Saddam, especially after the first Gulf war, long envisaged the risk of a second US-led invasion that would attempt to depose the regime. The consequence was the placement across the country of hidden caches of weapons, explosives, fuel and cash, all in vast amounts - everything required to run a guerrilla war.

'We are looking at three categories of group involved in the resistance,' said one official. 'There are ex-Baathists, especially in the Sunni triangle [where the majority of Special Republican guard and members of Saddam's security organisations were traditionally recruited from]. Then there are groups like Ansar al-Islam and groups that may be affiliated to al Qaeda or sympathetic to them. Finally, there are foreign jihadists who have been drawn to Iraq to fight Americans.' It is a view endorsed by a former colonel in the Iraqi security services interviewed by The Observer. 'It is a mixture of different groups - former Mukhabarat [security services], religious groups and Baath party members. If Saddam is involved in the resistance, as some at the Pentagon are claiming, then he believes he is just one leader among many. 'Saddam is playing some role but he is not the only one. Some groups may not even know he is leading them. I think that he is moving around meeting as many of these groups as possible.

'These groups are separate, but work together more and more as the various leaders are contacting each other. Most people are not doing it because of Saddam, but for religious or nationalist reasons. Some are criminals, who under other circumstances few people would have anything to do with. Some are paid, but not many.' He suggested that last Sunday's rocket attack on the Al Rashid Hotel showed a level of sophistication that was new for the resistance. An underground cell working with staff at the hotel, which was once virtually run by the Iraqi secret service, watched the arrival of guests while street cleaners worked with an underground cell to position the rocket launcher. After the arrival of Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, the launcher, disguised as a generator, was remotely activated.

Most worrying of all is the emergence of a broad, post-Saddam ideology across the groups. And if recent polling in Baghdad is to be believed, it is rapidly gaining currency with ordinary Iraqis. It is crudely simple, insisting that the US-led occupation is an assault against both Islam and the wider Arab nation, that Iraqis must resist and that anyone who assists the occupiers is an enemy as much as US troops. But it is not only the home-grown resistance that is concerning the coalition. It has also been struggling to prevent a wave of devastating suicide bombings against a variety of targets which Western intelligence officials increasingly believe may be being carried out by foreigners coming to fight the Americans in Iraq. Two officials have told The Observer that they do not believe the suicide bombings are 'Iraqi style'. 'It does not feel to us like their way of doing things,' said one.

The comments follow warnings from intelligence officials across Europe, reported in yesterday's New York Times, that since the summer hundreds of young militants have left Europe to join the resistance in Iraq, a trend which is also in evidence across the Arab world.

The paper quotes Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's leading investigative judge on terrorism, who said that dozens of young Muslim men had left France for Iraq since the summer, inspired by the exhortations of al Qaeda leaders, even if they were not trained by the movement. According to the Iraqi colonel interviewed by The Observer: 'There is no specific information on these car bombs.' He believes that the attacks are 'probably organised by religious Iraqi groups but carried out by foreigners who want to become martyrs during Ramadan.' But a question that is also worrying coalition and other officials is precisely who is organising these would-be foreign fighters and putting them in touch with resistance groups.

One disturbing theory being investigated is that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a former Afghan jihadist of Jordanian-Palestinian extraction who knows the al Qaeda leadership, may have recently entered Iraq and be organising foreign fighters the way he once organised them in Afghanistan. According to the former Iraqi security services colonel, 'These Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians, Syrians and Jordanians were trained for these kinds of operations and want to die. They are now working with various resistance groups whether they are religious or not.'

The bloody toll

US troops...359 dead - of which 234 died in combat (119 since end of the war) and 125 in non-combat (102 since end of the war) 563 wounded

UK troops...51 dead - of which 19 died in combat (11 since end of the war) and 32 in non-combat (seven since end of the war)
53 wounded

Iraqi forces...Estimates of between 4,895 and 6,370 (unofficial thinktank estimates) total deaths during the war.

Iraqi civilians...Estimates range from 7,784 to 20,000 (www.iraqbodycount.net)

Journalists and media workers...19 dead (Non-combat - accidents and friendly fire)...

Today's TO Features -------------- 18 Americans Dead, 21 Wounded in Deadly Day in Iraq As Casualties Mount, Doubts Grow A Grim Knock at the Door A Fiction Shattered by America's Aggression Assassinations Surge in Iraq Rebel War Spirals Out of Control As U.S. Intelligence Loses the Plot Greenpeace Charges Ashcroft, Miami Authorities Endanger Free Speech Rights Renaud Girard | A Wind of Panic Blows Through Baghdad Maureen Dowd | Pros at the Con Arsonist Burns Peace Activists' Home

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

A Fiction Shattered by America's Aggression
By William Pfaff
The International Herald Tribune

Sunday 02 November 2003

The U.S. in the world

PORTO, Portugal - More than nine months into the Iraq crisis, meetings between West Europeans and Americans of goodwill remain strained nondialogues in which most of the American participants find it hard to admit that the catastrophic loss of America's reputation abroad has anything to do with them. Such a meeting in this old port city last weekend produced the usual American citations of scandalous incidents of foreign anti-Americanism. The German Marshall Fund statistics were circulated, showing that the gap between American and European attitudes is widening and that Europeans increasingly disapprove of America's position as the sole superpower.

The Americans' response is nearly always that there must have been some failure in communication. Perhaps the United States should "consult" more, they say. "It's as if they can't hear," said an Irishman who had thought of himself as one of America's best friends abroad.

But every nation has a story - a narrative it tells to explain its place in the flow of history and to give meaning to its actions. The American story since 1942 (and before) is well known, and is considered by Americans and others a story reflecting responsibility and high-mindedness. Despite aberrations in Vietnam and Latin America, the American story of responsible world leadership has been accepted among democracies as an essentially valid account of the role modern America played during the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem today is that, in the view of many others, the story has changed. Another one has taken its place, even though most Americans deny that this is so.

Because of the powerful Calvinist influence - predestinarian and theocratic - in American Protestantism, the American story has always described a confrontation between the Elect and the Evil. When the Soviet Union no longer fulfilled the latter role, Washington tried out several possible successors, finally settling on "rogue nations" - those professing radically un-American ideas and that give evidence of wanting to possess nuclear deterrents. Their feebleness, however, tended to diminish their credibility when cast in the role of global Evil.

Then came Sept. 11, and the problem was solved. The rogue nations now became the Axis of Evil. They were integral to a vast international threat, capable of striking the United States itself. Moreover, this threat more or less resembled (less, actually, than more) the clash between civilizations that Samuel Huntington had warned would be the "next world war." Americans declared that "everything has changed, and nothing can be the same." The nation was at war with "terror."

Terror expressed itself through Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Palestinian suicide-bombers, South American narco-terrorists, Chechen separatists and Moro separatists in the southern Philippines. Terror was a ubiquitous force that could ultimately manifest itself in weapons of mass destruction, supplied by the rogue states. Hence, preventive wars were necessary; Afghanistan and Iraq had to be invaded to seize terror's leaders and their nuclear and biological weapons. International law must step aside. But what actually has happened during the past nine months is something Americans have yet to grasp, and that others have yet to say out loud: People outside the United States have stopped believing the American story.

They don't think terrorism is an Evil force the United States is going to defeat. They say instead that terrorism is a way people wage war when they don't have F-16's or armored divisions. They say that Chechens, Moros, Taliban, Colombian insurgents, Palestinian bombers and Iraqi enemies of the U.S. occupation do not really make up a single global phenomenon that the world must mobilize to defeat. They say that, actually, they had never really believed the American story in the first place. They had listened to it because Washington said it, and they respected Washington. Now they don't. This is the reason why there is trouble between the United States and the countries that have been its allies. And this is why it may indeed prove true that between them, things "will never be the same."

Think the Days of the Draft are Gone? Think Again
By William Rivers Pitt

September 11th., 2002

2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam. 304,000 of them were wounded in action, and over 75,000 of those were disabled by their injuries. As of Memorial Day 1996, there were 58,202 names listing the dead on the long, black monument in Washington, D.C. Approximately 1,300 men are still listed as missing in action.

There are many reasons why people today believe a return of the draft is an absurd notion, and the names on that wall stand tall among them. The insanity loosed within this nation when the draft was violently resisted stands as another firebreak against a politician who would call for its reinstatement. Finally, most Americans believe that our armed forces are utterly invincible and fully capable of performing any task we require beyond our borders. We stomped the Iraqi army, then the largest mechanized military force in the Middle East, like a roach back in 1991. After 9/11, we rampaged through Afghanistan.

Perceptions of this nature are dangerous, for they depart in the extreme from reality. Though we have succeeded in shattering the Taliban and dispersing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the threat posed by the latter terrorist organization remains quite real. The cultural and tribal rifts in that region will require a massive American military presence there for years. The recent car-bomb attack against Afghan president Karzai demonstrates that, though we may have won all the battles over there, we are far from obtaining victory.

The situation in Afghanistan will be a significant tax on our military resources, unless we walk away as we did once the Soviets disengaged in 1989, which would guarantee once again the rise of fundamentalist chaos there. We have reaped that whirlwind once already, and will hold this tiger by the tail until further notice. The fact that we have significant interest in the natural resources of that region only cements the permanence of our presence there.

Our military presence in the Middle East is already significant, and has begun to steadily increase since George W. Bush began to beat the war drum against Iraq. A great many officers ensconced in the Pentagon strongly believe our military will become far too stretched in a repeat engagement with Saddam Hussein's forces. Few will say openly that they fear defeat, and in fact the odds of losing a war in Iraq are extremely low, but the pressure placed upon our military resources will be extreme. The potential for explosive upheaval in the Middle East should we make war on Iraq further exacerbates this. Between Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States military is reaching mission capacity.

Still, the idea that forced military conscription of Americans could come again is a foolish one, right? Consider the following scenario. Consider it with particular care if you have loved ones of battle age.

In July of 2002, the Defense Policy Board - a powerful group at the ear of the Bush administration which is chaired by former Reagan Defense Department official Richard Perle - listened with great interest to a briefing delivered by emissaries from a Rand Corporation think tank. The thrust of the briefing was that Iraq should be considered only the beginning of a protracted campaign to bring "regime change" throughout the Middle East. The final Powerpoint slide of this presentation described "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot, (and) Egypt as the prize."

Though the administration publicly distanced itself from this briefing once it was exposed on the pages of the Washington Post, going so far as to have Bush abase himself before visiting Saudi royalty, the substance of that talk surely resonated within the men calling the shots in D.C. Richard Perle is a famously hawkish neo-conservative who springs from the same think-tank environment as those who gave the briefing. The same goes for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz. These three men, along with the like-minded Vice President Cheney, are fully in control of both American foreign policy and the War on Terror. A plan for region-wide regime change in the Middle East suits them right down to the ground.

Noted MIT professor Noam Chomsky, writing earlier this week in the Guardian, described the invitation for more terrorism on American shores should we attack Iraq. "No one," wrote Chomsky, "including Donald Rumsfeld, can realistically guess the possible costs and consequences. Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions." The inference is clear: Any war in that region will spawn a new and terrible wave of attacks against this country. Any war in that region is exactly what the terrorists are hoping for. Fresh recruits, soaked in rage, will flood into their open arms.

The unfolding scenario becomes all too clear. If Bush is pressed into a conflict with Iraq by the hawkish, neo-conservative platoon of Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney, America will once again suffer a catastrophic terrorist attack. The result will be the complete militarization of America, complete with martial law and the suspension of all basic civil rights. Bush administration officials have already admitted as much when asked in the last year what the result of another attack would be. In the aftermath, the Bush administration will assuredly push for that region-wide regime change in the Middle East, but will be unable to do so without forced conscriptions, because the military is currently stretched too thin. Thus, the draft.

Farfetched? Hardly. In fact, there is presently in Congress a bill pending that would require military conscription. H.R. 3598, entitled "Universal Military and Training Act of 2001," was introduced into the House of Representatives on December 20th, 2001 by Republican Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan. It calls for the drafting of all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 22 for military service. Even those who would declare themselves conscientious objectors would be drafted and given military training, whereupon they would be peeled off to another Federal agency to serve out their term.

At present, H.R. 3598 languishes in the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, which is attached to the House Committee on Armed Services, because it has not enjoyed enough support in Congress. Should the very real scenario described above unfold, and specifically if this nation is attacked again, H.R. 3598 could well enjoy an incredible surge in popularity.

There is a high-stakes game of poker being played within the administration right now. The hawks are holding aces and betting them. Around them on the card table, the chips are piled high. Your sons, your brothers, your friends are in that pile. So are you, if you are of age. After September 11th, the only thing likely to happen is that which was previously inconceivable. Could war in Iraq bring terrorism back to our country? Could it lead to a regional conflagration in the Middle East? Could it lead to another draft? I wouldn't bet against it.

William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. His new book, 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence,' will be published soon by Pluto Press.

DON'T MENTION THE DEAD

By Gary Younge
The Guardian UK

Friday 07 November 2003

When the body of US soldier Artimus Brassfield was flown to the military mortuary at Dover, Delaware, there were no TV pictures of a flag-covered coffin and hero's salute - the White House has banned media coverage at the base. But can Bush's efforts to hide the body bags quell growing public disquiet over the death toll in Iraq? Gary Younge reports.

When the silver casket lid went down on Artimus Brassfield a reflexive, convulsive sob echoed through Ebenezer ministries. In the seconds it took for the coffin to be draped with the American flag, Pastor Seon Thompson reminded the congregation that this was a celebration of his life. By the time the drummer had given them the beat for "He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the lord," they had found their voice.

Brassfield, 22, also went to be a soldier in the 4th infantry division of the American army. By all accounts, throughout his short life there were only two things he really wanted to do - play basketball and join the army. And so the tank driver from Flint, Michigan, was playing basketball at a military base in Samiri, Iraq, on October 24 when a mortar struck and killed both him and 26-year-old José Mora instantly. Brassfield was so determined to enlist that he took the entrance test three times. But while he enjoyed serving in the forces, his letters home suggest he had mixed feelings about serving in Iraq. His concerns were personal, not political. The weather was too hot and he was homesick. He asked his mother not to send him chocolate as it would only melt and he looked forward to buying a truck with Michigan plates and eventually opening his own barber's shop. "I'm pretty blessed to be in Saddam's home town, Tikrit," he wrote in an email to his father. "It's very nice here other than the fact that we're in Iraq and there ain't no escaping it." In a letter to his mother, he tells her: "Be thankful to the Lord that we are American because I don't see how these people live like this."

Brassfield was buried with full honours, the purple heart and bronze star presented to his wife Andrea. In the distance, the bugle played. It was not clear whether it was just a man puffing his cheeks or really playing. Since last month the military has been using "ceremonial buglers" at some military funerals - a tape that can be inserted into the bugle and sounds like the real thing. "We've got 1,800 veterans dying each day, and only 500 buglers," said Lt Col Cynthia Colin, a defence department spokeswoman. "We needed to do something to fill the void."

The mother of Donald Wheeler, who was killed 11 days earlier by a rocket-propelled grenade, sent her condolences to the Brassfields. "I hope you never wonder whether or not your son's death was in vain," she wrote. "He died for my freedom and your freedom too. What a hero!" The Brassfields have no doubt that Artimus was a hero. His father, Cary, who served in the military himself, says he is proud that his son served his country, but he is not sure his heroism was put to good use: "Evidently the war is over and yet we still have people dying every day. He was a sitting duck. Who is going to be the next person? I don't want to say my patriotism is diminishing. But I'm losing confidence in the purpose of us being there." Artimus's aunt, Karmen Williams, believes President Bush should withdraw the troops now. "He needs to say enough is enough, just bring our boys home."

For years political orthodoxy had it that America would no longer know days like these. Not because it was shy about going to war, but because after Vietnam it was determined not to incur large numbers of casualties in doing so. The US military would bomb from a great height or use proxies to enforce its will. Public opinion would endorse the country's involvement in most military conflicts, so long as the nation did not have to endure the sight of its young men and women coming home in body bags. As Henry Shelton, the chairman of the joint chiefs-of-staff, said in 1999, a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test" - public reaction to bodies arriving at the country's only military mortuary in Dover, Delaware.

Dr Joseph Dawson, a military historian at Texas A&M university, says the American public's response to casualties is qualified by what they believe the soldiers are fighting for. "If the cause seems significant enough then Americans will bear the loss," he says, pointing to the huge death tolls in the second world war and the civil war. "But if the cause no longer appears to be significant they will not. It's still rather too early to read public opinion about this cause." But now almost every day there is a funeral like Artimus's somewhere in the country. With victory already declared, two-thirds believe the number of casualties are unacceptable and more than half believe that the US will get bogged down in Iraq, according to a Washington Post poll earlier this week.

The shooting down of the Chinook helicopter on Sunday ended the deadliest week in the war and intensified pressure on the president to address the issue of casualties directly. "We're now encountering deaths at rates we haven't seen since Vietnam," says David Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations, "and I think it's important for the country to hear from the president at times like these and for the families to know. I think the weight is on the side of clear expression," he told the New York Times.

At the opening of the upgraded Dover mortuary last week, Senator Joseph R Biden said: "The idea that this facility is opening at a time when body bags are coming home is not a glad time. Thank God [the centre] is here, but I wish we didn't need to build it. Everyone thought this was going to be like Gulf war one, that Johnny and Jack would be home by Christmas."

On December 21 1989, President George Bush senior was holding a press conference about the US intervention in Panama as the first American fatalities from the conflict were arriving at Dover. With General Manuel Noriega still at large and half of America believing the military intervention could not be regarded a success while he remained so, it was a politically sensitive time. At the beginning of the briefing the president had told reporters he was suffering from neck pain. At the end he did a duck walk to illustrate his stiffness. That's when "the goof-a-meter went off the charts", as one correspondent put it.

Unbeknown to the White House, three major news networks had moved to a split screen. While the president shared his light-hearted moment with the press corps on one half, America's dead were arriving in caskets on the other. It was a public relations disaster. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater described the coverage as "outrageous and unfair" and vowed to express his "extreme dissatisfaction" to the channels concerned. Less than a year later the White House decreed a ban on traditional military ceremonies and media coverage marking the return of the bodies of US soldiers to Dover. It was an abrupt shift in policy for what had become a national wartime ritual. Along with yellow ribbons and flag waving, the scenes from Dover were part of the American war experience.

For the next 12 years the ban was largely ignored, even after it was extended to all military bases during the last days of the Clinton administration. But this March, shortly before the war began, the Pentagon handed down a directive that made it perfectly clear it expected the policy to be heeded. Bush writes to each family, but his friends say he was offended by what he regarded as Clinton's occasionally gushing public performances, which he felt turned private grief into political gain. The trouble for Bush is that the public liked Clinton for his ability to empathise. Bush's apparent reluctance to publicly identify with the dead is beginning to look like a desire to disassociate himself from the failure of the mission. When news of the downed Chinook came through on Sunday he stayed in his ranch and let defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld meet the press.

"The public wants the commander-in-chief to have proper perspective and keep his eye on the big picture and the ball," says Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "At the same time, they want their president to understand the hardship and sacrifice many Americans are enduring at a time of war. And we believe he is striking that balance."

Others disagree. They say the growing number of casualties is the ball, which is precisely why the Pentagon enforced the ban on coverage at Dover. "You can call it news control or information control of flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington's American University. "Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defence has ever undertaken in this country. Casualties are a very important media football in any war [and] this is a qualitative change." Either way, implementing the ruling has had an effect. For the first time since war in the television era, the sight of flag-covered caskets arriving to the salute of military colleagues and the tears of mourning relatives are no longer part of the national narrative. Bush has not attended the funeral of a single soldier slain in the war and refers to the casualties only in general terms. Without Dover, there can be no Dover test.

The bald numbers of the death toll dominate political debate and public disquiet. But the human impact behind those statistics has been scattered to communities throughout the country. The bodies travel from a global conflict to local crises without apparently touching the national consciousness. Even on a regional level the deaths receive scant attention. Detroit is only 60 miles from Flint but Artimus's death made neither of the city's two papers. "This is the fifth soldier in Flint to have died," says Ken Palmer, a reporter for the Flint Journal, "and the third since the president declared the war was over. The first couple had a real impact. But now I think people are becoming numb."

Yesterday, Cary Brassfield woke up to the news that two more soldiers had died in Iraq and the administration promise that its campaign in Iraq will be unrelenting. "The ones that are speaking do not have the same stakes that we have," says Artimus's father. "They have their political careers. But our homes are being torn apart."

Today's TO Features -------------- Black Hawk Down as U.S. Death Toll for Week Reaches 32 Senator Byrd | "The GOP Energy Bill: An Infinite Mirage and a Boundless Facade" 85, 000 GIs Told They're Heading to Iraq Is Bechtel Getting Special Deals in Rebuilding Iraq? L.A. Times Bans 'Resistance Fighters' in Iraq News Paul Krugman | Flags Versus Dollars U.S. Toxic 'Ghost Fleet' Not Wanted in the UK In Falluja, at the Heart of Anti-American Hatred Army Dismisses Soldier Cowardice Charge Don't Mention the Dead

NAPOLEON, BISMARCK, HITLER, BUSH?

Frederick W. Kagan, author, and teacher of military history at West Point, is a tax-and-spend hegemonist. In "The art of war," an article from the November, 2003, The New Criterion, which I found on the excellent aldaily.com site, Kagan warns about the dangers of the "search for 'efficiency' in military affairs." Rather than an efficient military, see, the US needs a massive military with intentional redundancy in equipment and functions. Or is he arguing that military defense is possible and inexpensive but world hegemony is expensive in blood and treasure -- and futile to boot?

Excerpts:

In each of the periods in recent history in which one might see a fundamental change in the nature of war, it is true that normally one state begins with a dramatic lead. Revolutionary France’s ability in the 1790s to mobilize vast conscript armies and to sustain that mobilization for years gave her an important advantage over continental states unable to match such levels of mobilization. Prussia’s early and enthusiastic development of a dense railroad net and of the general staff structure needed to plan for and control a railroad mobilization led directly to her crushing victories over Austria in 1866 and over France in 1871. The Nazis’ creation of a technologically advanced and highly trained armored force, along with a significantly better armored warfare doctrine, led directly to the destruction of the Franco-British army in 1940 In each case, however, we must also consider the sequel. Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all ultimately lost subsequent wars and were destroyed. The reasons for those failures are enlightening about the limitations of the current definition of revolution in military affairs. ...

History so far, therefore, has been very clear that “asymmetrical advantages” gained by one state do not normally last very long. Technology and technique inevitably spreads. Other states acquire either similar or counteracting capabilities. The final victors of each new “revolutionary” epoch have not usually been the states that initiated the revolution, but those that responded best once the technologies and techniques had become common property. It also shows that the initial successes those “revolutionary” states achieved have tended to breed arrogance and overconfidence, hindering their ability to respond as other states began to match their capabilities. Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all ossified in their techniques after the initial victories, and lost to enemies who, forced by defeat, built on their own advances more successfully.

The search for an indefinite American “asymmetrical advantage,” therefore, requires not merely a revolution in military affairs: it also requires a fundamental revolution in human affairs of a sort never seen before. It requires that America continue to change her armed forces so rapidly and successfully that no other state can ever catch up—indeed, that no other state in the world even try. ...[F]ew if any of America’s enemies will have the vast resource-stretching responsibilities that America has. They will be concerned only with their own region of the world and will focus their efforts on developing communications and target tracking systems only over a small portion of the globe. They will not need a dense global satellite constellation or the ability to project power over thousands of miles. The costs to them of developing systems comparable to America’s, but only in a restricted geographic area, will accordingly be much smaller than the price the U.S. has had to pay to achieve that capability everywhere.

Then, too, other states can reap the benefits of modern communications systems without bearing the expensive burden of basic scientific research and development. Microprocessors, satellites, encrypted laser communications systems, cell phone systems, and the whole host of technologies that form the basis of American military superiority are now the property of the world. It will not cost America’s enemies anything like what it cost the U.S. to develop its capabilities, either in money or in time. Since technology inevitably becomes less expensive as it proliferates and as time goes on, moreover, the situation for America’s would-be adversaries will only improve in this regard. ...

When America’s enemies have developed the technology and trained the people who will use it, they will also have to develop the doctrines and techniques to make it effective. In this regard, they have the most significant advantage of all. Much of America’s tested doctrine has been published, much can be deduced from the CNN coverage of America’s most recent wars. Once again, America’s enemies can start from the position of proven success that the U.S. armed forces achieved, and build from there.

Their real advantage in this area, however, results from the fact that they will be developing armed forces specifically designed to fight an enemy with the same capabilities. America’s military has not done so. American military doctrine continues to foresee fighting enemies lacking any significant capacity to deploy precision guided munitions, without dense satellite constellations and communications systems, and without the ability to strike targets precisely at great distances. It is one of the more troubling lessons of the history of new military technology that the states that pioneer the new technologies and techniques generally fail to adapt successfully to the situation in which all major states have the same technologies and techniques. It remains to be seen whether America will do any better than her predecessors in this regard.

Posted by: Sam Koritz on Nov 14, 03 | 3:11 pm

RUMSFELD WARNS US TROOPS COULD STAY IN IRAQ FOR MANY YEARS
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
15 November 2003

As America scrambled desperately to find a workable formula to speed the handover of political power in Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, warned yesterday that even with a new government in place US forces might remain in Iraq for two years or more.

Speaking as he arrived for talks in Japan - the latest country to refuse to send troops to join the US-led coalition in Iraq because of rising violence - Mr Rumsfeld reiterated that the political transition would be faster than originally intended. But he admitted that the speed of change would not mean US forces, who now number some 130,000, would leave any earlier.

The future political arrangements for Iraq will top the agenda during President George Bush's discussions with Tony Blair during his state visit next week. But Washington faces a dilemma - how to hand over political control as quickly as possible without being seen to cut and run. After the sudden recall this week of Paul Bremer, the chief civil administrator in Iraq, for consultations in Washington, it has become clear that the old timetable calling for a constitution before power is transferred has been torn up.

Instead the most likely sequence now is the formation of a new government, drawn in part or whole from the existing US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, followed by elections early next year to a constituent assembly that would draft a permanent constitution for a democratic Iraq. But several members of the 24-man IGC have called for a quick withdrawal of US troops, arguing that their presence only deepens public resentment and boosts sympathy for the resistance that has killed more than 60 US and Allied troops this month alone. A new government, dependent on the continuing military presence envisaged by Mr Rumsfeld, risked appearing a mere puppet of the occupying forces. Douglas Feith, under-secretary of defense for policy, said: "We intend to stay the course in Iraq, but we don't want to rule Iraq."

Mr Feith, the Pentagon's third-ranking civilian official and a leading neo-conservative in the Bush administration, told a meeting of the Council for Foreign Relations that the goal was "to transfer as much authority to Iraqis as soon as possible". But he implicitly criticised the IGC, whose sluggish performance has annoyed many officials in Washington. Mr Feith said the council had accomplished many things but needed to do "much more" - a pointed reference to the December 15 deadline for the IGC to set a timetable for a new constitution, which it may miss.

Washington is determined to present the faster political transition as a plan devised by the Iraqis rather than something imposed on them. For the White House, the important thing is to prevent events slipping out of control at the very moment Democrats are rounding on Mr Bush's handling of Iraq policy. Adding to Mr Bush's problems, a recent poll showed rising public scepticism about the rationale on which he took America to war, with 61 per cent of people saying that more time should have been allocated to the hunt for the alleged weapons of mass destruction. But Mr Feith was unrepentant about the decision to invade. "Intelligence is never perfect but that's not grounds for inaction," he said yesterday.

Is Bush Doomed?

by Paul Craig Roberts

January 17, 2004

Fear must be coursing through President Bush's veins as he realizes the Iraqi trap in which the neocons have placed him. Bush is caught between an Iraqi civil war and a wider insurgency. Desperate to extricate himself from the weekly carnage well before the November election, Bush can neither deliver on his promise of democracy via direct elections nor impose his plan for an Iraqi assembly elected indirectly by caucuses.

If Bush delivers on his democracy promise, the Shi'ites with 60% of the population will be elected, and the country will break out in civil war. If he tries to water down Shi'ite representation with his plan for an assembly elected indirectly by caucuses, the so far peaceful Shi'ites are likely to join the violence.

If the Shi'ites become violent, the insurgency would be too large to be contained by our present occupying force. Moreover, the outbreak of a general rebellion in Iraq would spill over throughout the Middle East where unpopular secular rulers are sitting on a smoldering Islam. Our puppet in Pakistan would likely bite the dust. Israel would then face countervailing Muslim nukes.

If you think more US troops are needed now in Iraq, imagine how many more would be required to deal with a wider conflagration. Where would they come from? The US military is already so thinly stretched that soon 40% of the occupying troops will be drawn from the National Guard and reservists, resulting in tremendous disruption in the affairs of tens of thousands of families. Pilots and troops are shunning the cash bonuses offered for reenlistments. The troops recognize a quagmire even if their neocon overlords cannot. The only source of troops is the draft.

A Shi'ite insurgency that brought back the draft would deprive Bush of reelection. A civil war with the prospect of a Kurdish state would bring in the Turks. On January 14 Turkish prime minister Erdogan said that Turkey will intervene in the event of Iraq's disintegration. The Shi'ites and the Turks are forming an alliance as both have the same interest in maintaining the geographical integrity of the Iraqi state. The US could come dangerously close to military conflict with a NATO ally. All of this was perfectly clear well in advance of the ill-considered invasion. If Bush wasn't smart enough to see it, why didn't his National Security Advisor or his Secretary of State? How did a handful of neocon ideologues hijack US foreign policy?

Bush did not campaign on a neocon policy of conquest in the Middle East. There was no public debate over this policy. The invasion of Iraq was the private agenda of the neocons. Why have the neocons not been held responsible for their treason in abusing their presidential appointments to substitute their personal agenda for America's agenda? Bush has been the neocon's puppet for so long that he is now stuck with responsibility for their horrible mistake. With no way of his own to get out of his trap, his arrogance toward the "irrelevant" UN and our doubting allies has disappeared. Come bail me out, he pleads.

Bush, desperate to be extricated before doom strikes him is experiencing a reality totally different from the chest-thumping of neocon megalomaniacs, such as Charles Krauthammer, who declared the US so powerful as to be able to "reshape, indeed remake, reality on its own." Bush now knows that he lacks the power to deal with the reality of Iraq. Indeed, Bush cannot even deal with his own appointees.