SECDEF Gates says too few in US bear the burdens of war

By ANNE FLAHERTY (AP) – 18 hours ago DURHAM, N.C. — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that most Americans have grown too detached from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and see military service as "something for other people to do." In a speech Wednesday at Duke University, Gates said this disconnect has imposed a heavy burden on a small segment of society and wildly driven up the costs of maintaining an all-volunteer force. Because fewer Americans see military service as their duty, troops today face repeated combat tours and long separations from family. The 2.4 million people serving in the armed forces today represent less than 1 percent of the country's total population. To attract and retain recruits, the Defense Department finds itself spending more money, including handsome bonuses and education benefits. The money spent on personnel and benefits has nearly doubled since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, from $90 billion to $170 billion. "That is our sacred obligation," Gates told the audience of compensating troops. "But given the enormous fiscal pressures facing the country," the nation must devise "an equitable and sustainable system of military pay and benefits that reflects the realities of this century." Gates, who plans to retire next year, has been using academic-style speeches to outline what he believes to be the nation's toughest challenges that lie ahead when it comes to defense. Earlier this year, Gates asked whether troops were training for the right kinds of missions and called into question the utility of D-Day style amphibious landings handled historically by the Marine Corps. He has also embarked on a cost-cutting initiative to prepare for what he says are leaner days ahead for the department. As is the case in most of these speeches, Gates on Wednesday tried to raise awareness about a long-term problem rather than solve it. He offered no plan for what he described as a growing divide between Americans in uniform and those who aren't. "Whatever their fond sentiments for men and women in uniform, for most Americans the war remains an abstraction — a distant and unpleasant series of news items that do not affect them personally," Gates said. Even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, for most Americans "service in the military — no matter how laudable — has become something for other people to do," he added. Gates gave his speech in front of some 1,200 faculty and students at Duke, considered one of the nation's top universities. Like most elite colleges, only a small fraction of Duke students consider military service. With 34 of its 6,400 undergraduates enrolled in its Reserve Officers' Training Corps, an officer commissioning program known as ROTC, Duke is actually considered among the more military-friendly elite colleges. Yale, for example, has only four of its 5,200 students enrolled in ROTC, whereas Harvard doesn't allow ROTC or military recruiters on campus. Without calling out any one particular university, Gates said he was disappointed in institutions that "used to send hundreds of graduates into the armed forces, but now struggle to commission a handful of officers every year." The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are considered the first large-scale, protracted conflicts since the Revolutionary War fought entirely with volunteers. Most military officials agree that this isn't a bad thing. Today's U.S. military forces are considered more professional and better educated than their predecessors. More enlisted troops hold a high school diploma, or its equivalent, than their civilian peers. Two-thirds of new recruits come from neighborhoods that are at or above the median household income. But the military isn't representative of the country as a whole. Recruits are most likely to serve only if they grow up around others who do so. The military also draws heavily from rural areas, particularly in the South and the mountain West. The trend is reinforced by the location of military bases, which tend to be in rural areas and the South where land is cheapest, rather than close to the big cities and the Northeast and West. Today, most soldiers who are not deployed are stationed in Texas, Washington, Georgia, Kentucky and North Carolina. Many military facilities in the Northeast and along the West coast, meanwhile, have been shut down for environmental and budgetary reasons. Whereas Alabama hosts 10 ROTC programs, the city of Los Angeles — with twice the population — hosts only four. "There is a risk over time of developing a cadre of military leaders that politically, culturally and geographically have less and less in common with the people they have sworn to defend," Gates said. The premise underlying an all-volunteer force also has changed. Initiated in 1973, the concept was that such a force would fight in short, conventional conflicts like the 1991 Gulf War, or defend the U.S. and its allies against Soviet aggression. But after almost a decade of warfare since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, troops who have escaped combat unscathed still faced repeated deployments with long separations from their families. In Iraq at one point, some combat tours stretched to 18 months. More than 1 million soldiers and Marines have been deployed there during the course of the conflict. The consequences of long deployments in combat zones have been real. Suicide figures have increased, while the divorce rate among enlisted soldiers has nearly doubled. "No matter how patriotic, how devoted they are, at some point they will want to have the semblance of a normal life — getting married, starting a family, going to college or graduate school, seeing their children grow up — all of which they have justly earned," Gates said. Without offering specifics, Gates said a system must be created that is generous enough to recruit and retain people without causing the Defense Department to sink under the weight of personnel costs.

Iraq defence minister in Ankara with PKK on agenda

(AFP) – BAGHDAD — Iraq's defence minister met with Turkish officials in Ankara on Tuesday, a spokesman said, a day after Turkey said it wanted to extend a mandate for air strikes on Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq. The top US commander in Iraq General Lloyd Austin was also in the Turkish capital on Tuesday for talks with defence officials, but his spokesman could not confirm whether he would meet Turkish Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul. Iraqi Defence Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi held talks with Gonul in a bid to continue the work of a tri-partite committee made up of Baghdad, Ankara and Washington that seeks to track threat posed by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and implement measures to curb the militants. "A delegation from the ministry of defence arrived in Turkey today, headed by Abdul Qader Obeidi, and immediately met with the Turkish defence minister," defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari told AFP. "They discussed security coordination, information exchanges, and activating and continuing the work of the tripartite committee to reduce the activities of militant groups along the Iraqi-Turkish border, especially the PKK." Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said Monday that the Turkish government will ask parliament to extend a mandate for military strikes on Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq, with the current one-year mandate due to expire on October 17. The motion is likely to sail through parliament, where the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds a comfortable majority. The mandate authorises the government to order cross-border military action against hideouts of the separatist PKK in northern Iraq which the rebels use as a launching pad for strikes on Turkish targets across the border. Using intelligence supplied by the United States, the Turkish army has staged a series of air raids against rebel targets in the region since December 2007, and carried out a number of ground incursions. Also on Tuesday, Austin met with military officials in Ankara on a one-day "introductory visit" that was also to include talks with the Turkish interior minister, and officials from the foreign ministry, according to his spokesman Colonel Barry Johnson. The PKK took up arms against Ankara in 1984 for self-rule in Turkey's Kurdish-populated east and southeast, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives. Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

Good Intentions and the Pentagon Budget

Tuesday, September 28, 2010 Top Pentagon officials are to appear before the Senate and House Armed Services committees Tuesday and Wednesday to support Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's ambitious effort to reduce Defense Department overhead by $100 billion in the next five years and to eliminate redundant spending. Although members of Congress generally welcomed Gates' approach, the few who faced immediate reductions that affected their constituencies were less supportive. For example, Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) has called for Gates to provide "full justification" for the plan to eliminate the Joint Forces Command, located in the Norfolk area. The Pentagon has described the command, established to encourage collaboration in training and deployment among the services, as becoming "over time an unneeded extra layer and step in the force management process." Two Joint Forces Command programs over the past two weeks raise questions about its unique relevance. In mid-September it sponsored, along with the National Defense University, a two-day conference entitled "Rise and Fragmentation of Great Powers," held at Old Dominion University. Analysts and academics talked about Russia in particular. Last week at Camp Pendleton, Calif., it sponsored, along with the Office of Naval Research, an interactive training tool called "Future Immersive Training Environment." There, Marines spent time with actors and others in realistic war scenarios replicating what they may face in Afghanistan. I won't mention the approximately $500 million spent annually on military bands. But there are even more controversial budget-cutting targets within the Defense Department's $700 billion budget if Gates really meant what he said when he indicated that even spending on health issues would be reviewed. For example, he might take a look at the roughly $200 million the Defense Department spends each year on cancer research through programs run primarily by contractors. I am not against cancer research - far from it. But I raise the Pentagon's cancer-research program because it is a textbook illustration of how money over the years for worthwhile and some not-so-worthwhile government undertakings have been funded through the Pentagon because it is so easy to get Congress to approve money in the defense budget. Be honest: Items get approved in the name of defense that would never make it if found in the budgets of other departments. In 1992, Congress first inserted $25 million into the Army's Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation budget to pursue research on breast-cancer screening and diagnosis for military women and dependents of military men. The program has taken on a life of its own: The next year, a grass-roots effort by the National Breast Cancer Coalition lobbied to get that amount increased to $210 million, specifying it was for support of a peer-reviewed competitive grants program in breast cancer research. The Army was not staffed to run a program of this nature. It turned management over to its Medical Research and Materiel Command, which created the Defense Department Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP), which continues to administer it today. But to establish a research program to dispense the money, the Army had to turn to the Institute of Medicine, the nonprofit, nongovernmental health arm of the National Academies of Science. The Institute of Medicine recommended an investment strategy to support scientific initiatives that had a two-tiered system of peer review. Its report also emphasized the importance of "channeling the research funds in directions that stimulate innovative ideas, involve interdisciplinary research, enhance the use of existing research resources, and reward scientific excellence among all disciplines." Congress has continued to appropriate additional funds to the BCRP, totaling $2.36 billion through fiscal 2009. Through that time, 40,301 proposals have been received and 5,542 awards have been funded or recommended for funding. The Army's Medical Research and Materiel Command contracts out staff support to handle the peer-review process and the applications process, and to help with oversight of the research. The process takes time. For example, the $150 million approved by Congress for fiscal 2009 was not planned for final distribution until this month, according to the Pentagon. Another $150 million was approved for breast cancer research in the fiscal 2010 budget, and the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee has approved an additional $150 million for fiscal 2011. Two other cancer-research programs have been begun in recent years. The Defense Department Prostate Cancer Research Program will get $80 million next year and $10 million will go to its Ovarian Cancer Research Program.

Iraqi women embrace American mothers of war dead

By YAHYA BARZANJI (AP) – 18 hours ago SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Nine American mothers whose children died fighting in Iraq were embraced Sunday by dozens of Iraqi women who lost their own children during decades of war and violence in a meeting participants said brought them a measure of peace. The gathering in Iraq's mostly peaceful northern Kurdish region was far from the sites of the roadside bombings or battlefields that accounted for the vast majority of the more than 4,400 U.S. military deaths since the 2003 invasion, but it was still a powerful experience for some mothers to even step foot in Iraq. Some kissed the ground during their arrival Saturday. "I was overwhelmed at touch down. We were really on the ground in Iraq. I was almost in disbelief that it was real. This is where my son spent the last days of his life, and now, I was there," said a blog entry by Amy Galvez of Salt Lake City, whose son, Cpl. Adam Galvez, was killed in 2006. In another web post she said she would return home a "different person." "I will be in the country where my son spent the last days of his life," she wrote. "I'll have visited the land where a piece of my heart will remain forever." The beginning of the Americans' three-day trip — organized by a Virginia-based women's aid group, Families United Toward Universal Respect — was attended by officials from State Department and Kurdish regional government. Nawal Akhil, deputy chief of the group's Baghdad office, said the goal was to "talk about their suffering to find a way to ease it." "We share the same ordeals and suffering — the American mothers who lost their children and the Iraqi mothers who lost their loved ones during the Saddam Hussein-era and in the violence since 2003," said Akhil. Elaine Johnson, of Cordova, South Carolina, said the trip allowed her to come to terms with the loss of her son, Spc. Darius Jennings, killed in November 2003 in Fallujah as the insurgency that went on to rip the country apart gained strength. "Before making this trip, I was angry for my child's death," she said. "But after making this trip, I feel peace, peace, peace." The dozens of Iraqi mothers included Kurds whose family members were killed in Saddam's 1980s scorched-earth campaign to wipe out a Kurdish rebellion in the north that claimed at least 100,000 lives, including thousands in poison gas attacks. "When I hugged an American woman we couldn't express ourselves in words, but what helped us to express our feelings and understand each other were our tears. We found them as a true expression to our grief and suffering," said Peroz Nasser, a 55-year-old Kurdish woman who lost her parents and two brothers and two sisters during Saddam's attacks. While the mothers met in northern Iraq, other parts of the country were hit by violence as insurgents attempt to regain lost footholds near Baghdad and continue to pursue an ongoing campaign against public servants in effort to undermine government institutions. Near the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, a car packed with explosives blew up, killing four policemen including a lieutenant colonel, Iraqi officials said. In Baghdad, militants flagged down the car of an employee of the country's anti-corruption commission and shot him dead. A Culture Ministry employee died of wounds in a separate shooting. Later, an Iraqi police captain and an army brigadier general were killed in separate Baghdad shootings by assailants using weapons fitted with silencers, officials said. Another blast killed a passer-by and wounded seven others in Baghdad's mixed Sunni-Shiite Karradah neighborhood. Officials said the bomb appeared to be targeting a police patrol. In the northern city of Mosul, gunman killed two brothers in a drive-by shooting, police officials said. The motive for the attack was not immediately known. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. Iraqi and U.S. officials fear that insurgents are trying to exploit the political vacuum in the wake of inconclusive March elections in an attempt to re-ignite sectarian tensions.

Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war

By Steve Luxenberg Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 22, 2010 President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday. According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives. "This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room." Obama rejected the military's request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. "I'm not doing 10 years," he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars." Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger." ( Poll: Most surprising revelation on Afghanistan in 'Obama's Wars'? ) But most of the book centers on the strategy review, and the dissension, distrust and infighting that consumed Obama's national security team as it was locked in a fierce and emotional struggle over the direction, goals, timetable, troop levels and the chances of success for a war that is almost certain to be one of the defining events of this presidency. Obama is shown at odds with his uniformed military commanders, particularly Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command during the 2009 strategy review and now the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Woodward reveals their conflicts through detailed accounts of two dozen closed-door secret strategy sessions and nearly 40 private conversations between Obama and Cabinet officers, key aides and intelligence officials. Tensions often turned personal. National security adviser James L. Jones privately referred to Obama's political aides as "the water bugs," the "Politburo," the "Mafia," or the "campaign set." Petraeus, who felt shut out by the new administration, told an aide that he considered the president's senior adviser David Axelrod to be "a complete spin doctor." During a flight in May, after a glass of wine, Petraeus told his own staffers that the administration was "[expletive] with the wrong guy." Gates was tempted to walk out of an Oval Office meeting after being offended by comments made by deputy national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon about a general not named in the book. Suspicion lingered among some from the 2008 presidential campaign as well. When Obama floated the idea of naming Clinton to a high-profile post, Axelrod asked him, "How could you trust Hillary?" 'Can't afford any mistakes' "Obama's Wars" marks the 16th book by Woodward, 67, a Washington Post associate editor. Woodward's reporting with Carl Bernstein on the Watergate coverup in the early 1970s led to their bestselling book "All the President's Men." Among the book's other disclosures: -- Obama told Woodward in the July interview that he didn't think about the Afghan war in the "classic" terms of the United States winning or losing. "I think about it more in terms of: Do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?" he said. -- The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there. -- Obama has kept in place or expanded 14 intelligence orders, known as findings, issued by his predecessor, George W. Bush. The orders provide the legal basis for the CIA's worldwide covert operations. -- A new capability developed by the National Security Agency has dramatically increased the speed at which intercepted communications can be turned around into useful information for intelligence analysts and covert operators. "They talk, we listen. They move, we observe. Given the opportunity, we react operationally," then-Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell explained to Obama at a briefing two days after he was elected president. -- A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here "a potential game changer." He said: "When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that's one where you can't afford any mistakes." -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai was diagnosed as manic depressive, according to U.S. intelligence reports. "He's on his meds, he's off his meds," Woodward quotes U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry as saying. 'The cancer is in Pakistan' Obama campaigned on a promise to extract U.S. forces from Iraq and focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he described as the greater threat to American security. At McConnell's top-secret briefing for Obama, the intelligence chief told the president-elect that Pakistan is a dishonest partner, unwilling or unable to stop elements of the Pakistani intelligence service from giving clandestine aid, weapons and money to the Afghan Taliban, Woodward writes. By the end of the 2009 strategy review, Woodward reports, Obama concluded that no mission in Afghanistan could be successful without attacking the al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens operating with impunity in Pakistan's remote tribal regions. "We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," Obama is quoted as saying at an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009. Creating a more secure Afghanistan is imperative, the president said, "so the cancer doesn't spread" there. The war in Iraq draws no attention in the book, except as a reference point for considering and developing a new Afghanistan strategy. The book's title, "Obama's Wars," appears to refer to the conflict in Afghanistan and the conflicts among the president's national security team. An older war - the Vietnam conflict - does figure prominently in the minds of Obama and his advisers. When Vice President Biden rushed to the White House on a Sunday morning to make one last appeal for a narrowly defined mission, he warned Obama that a major escalation would mean "we're locked into Vietnam." Obama kept asking for "an exit plan" to go along with any further troop commitment, and is shown growing increasingly frustrated with the military hierarchy for not providing one. At one strategy session, the president waved a memo from the Office of Management and Budget, which put a price tag of $889 billion over 10 years on the military's open-ended approach. In the end, Obama essentially designed his own strategy for the 30,000 troops, which some aides considered a compromise between the military command's request for 40,000 and Biden's relentless efforts to limit the escalation to 20,000 as part of a "hybrid option" that he had developed with Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a dramatic scene at the White House on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009, Obama summoned the national security team to outline his decision and distribute his six-page terms sheet. He went around the room, one by one, asking each participant whether he or she had any objections - to "say so now," Woodward reports. The document - a copy of which is reprinted in the book - took the unusual step of stating, along with the strategy's objectives, what the military was not supposed to do. The president went into detail, according to Woodward, to make sure that the military wouldn't attempt to expand the mission. After Obama informed the military of his decision, Woodward writes, the Pentagon kept trying to reopen the decision, peppering the White House with new questions. Obama, in exasperation, reacted by asking, "Why do we keep having these meetings?" Along with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time, they kept pushing for their 40,000-troop option as part of a broad counterinsurgency plan along the lines of what Petraeus had developed for Iraq. The president is quoted as telling Mullen, Petraeus and Gates: "In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, 'We're doing fine, Mr. President, but we'd be better if we just do more.' We're not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] . . . unless we're talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011." Petraeus took Obama's decision as a personal repudiation, Woodward writes. Petraeus continued to believe that a "protect-the-Afghan-people" counterinsurgency was the best plan. When the president tapped Petraeus this year to replace McChrystal as the head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus found himself in charge of making Obama's more limited strategy a success. Woodward quotes Petraeus as saying, "You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

Pentagon's Top Arms Buyer On Cutting Back

By Yochi J. Dreazen Wall Street Journal Ashton CarterUnder secretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logisticsWhen Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared war on Pentagon bloat this summer, he put Ashton Carter, the Department of Defense's top arms buyer, in charge of the campaign. A theoretical physicist by training and former Rhodes Scholar, Carter serves as the under secretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, one of the most powerful jobs in the Pentagon. He oversees hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of programs, from the purchase of thousands of armored vehicles for Afghanistan to the hiring of the tech-savvy contractors who help manage military computer networks. Like his boss, Carter openly acknowledges that the post-Sept. 11 spike in defense spending is rapidly coming to an end. He has worked with Gates to scrap or restructure more 30 high-profile programs, halting new purchases of the expensive F-22 fighter jet and scrapping the centerpiece of the Army's $200 billion Future Combat System. This week, he announced dozens of contracting changes designed to help Gates wring $100 billion in savings out of the Pentagon's budget over the next five years. Carter sat down with National Journal to discuss what will likely be the biggest challenge of his professional career. Edited excerpts of the interview follow. NJ: Defense contractors feel like the era of the big, build-from-scratch weapons system is either over or rapidly coming to an end. Are they drawing the right conclusion? Carter: We will continue to build things from scratch. But it's probably a good insight that adapting things we have to new needs is going to be an important theme. The secretary uses the word "adaptability" all the time to indicate two things. First, that everything we buy ought to have more than one use. And second, that everything we buy ought to have a history behind it or in front of it that will allow it to adjust to changing circumstances. This is from the experience that he's had of being a secretary of Defense during war, which is the great teacher and the great driver of change. NJ: Gates told the contracting community over the summer that the gusher of post-Sept. 11 defense spending had been shut off, and would remain off for quite some time. What kind of feedback did you hear from contractors like Lockheed Martin when they heard that phrase? Carter: What they heard is that the spigot is not going to be opening wider every year. That isn't news to these CEOs. They live in the defense world and understand perfectly well that we're entering a new era. What's good if they hear that from us is that we can work together so we jointly manage what I'll call a controlled descent from the halcyon days of ever-growing defense budgets. NJ: When you look across the defense landscape, will future cost-cutting measures focus more on eliminating programs entirely or restructuring existing initiatives to make them cheaper or more efficient? Carter: We eliminated a number of systems that were unneeded or whose time had passed or who weren't performing. And we'll continue, obviously, to do that. But the thrust of the new initiative is to look at the things that we do need and do want and deliver them for the dollars we're going to get. And that's not going to be possible if we allow their costs to grow every year. We need to manage them so that they fit inside what is a flat or only slowly growing defense budget. NJ: What is it like going from an era in which money was plentiful to a new era where you can't just always throw money at problems that creep up? Carter: You have to re-sharpen your other managerial instincts. That means being relentless in your pursuit of cost control. Constantly looking for getting the same results more cheaply. Constantly looking for ways that you can reduce requirements without compromising important military capability. Those things aren't necessary if you could always use your money to get your way out of a situation. We need to get back to the discipline that comes from not having an ever-increasing budget. NJ: Gates has fired a whole lot of people in this building who he felt weren't up to par. Is it frustrating when you don't have the same capacity to fire contractors who fail to perform? Carter: Well, we are the customer, so we always have the capacity to penalize a contractor who's not performing or to cancel a program that's not performing. There's a flip side to penalties, which is rewards. People who perform well should be rewarded. Their programs will survive and enter into stable production, which will be profitable for them. NJ: You've pointed out that the Pentagon spends millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours producing reports that few people read or need. What is it like, as the man on top, to be the recipient of so many of those reports? Carter: On Saturday afternoons when I sit in here and these big reports come in, I sometimes wonder if I'm the only human being who will ever read them. They were asked for long ago, and whoever asked for them has forgotten that he asked for them. The only reason I'm reading them is that I have to sign them and am worried about embarrassing myself. If you read many of them, you wonder if anyone read them before they sent them to me. It's illustrative of how we allow processes to accrete. NJ: Gates has faced opposition in Congress to many of his decisions about scrapping weapons systems or shuttering military commands. Going forward, do you worry about facing opposition inside the Pentagon from military leaders who like their own programs and don't want to see them cut? Carter: The reaction of everyone who has a stake in this is that they all see the writing on the wall. Everyone is looking for how we can best bend without breaking everything that we're doing, and they're pleased that we're doing this together.

New class of Entrepreneurs arises in Iraq

By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY Mehdi Majeed, left, helps buyers at a Chrysler dealership in Baghdad. Traditionally, rich Iraqis have bought homes and cars outside Iraq, but that's changing. BAGHDAD — Waiters in white shirts and dark ties glide between crowded tables at the Lebanese Club, a glitzy addition to this city's growing nightlife. Wathiq Sabeeh, a 29-year-old entrepreneur, blows a cloud of smoke from his water pipe and reflects on his good fortune. "During the sectarian violence, the old rich left," Sabeeh explains. "It was a good opportunity for others." Rising government salaries and billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts pouring into the country are creating a new class of entrepreneurs with an appetite for luxury goods and services. Fancy clubs, auto dealers and even high-end fashion stores are emerging on Baghdad's dusty streets to feed those expensive tastes. The rise in entertainment venues and sellers of high-priced goods comes as many Iraqis struggle to make ends meet. In Baghdad, people go without electricity for much of the day and have to rely on aging generators even as temperatures exceed 120 degrees. Prices for gas and food are increasing. Unofficial unemployment rates range from 18% to 20%, according to the Pentagon. But behind those worrying trends is a development that receives less notice. "Every new political system must have its new class that benefits from the political system," says Bashir al-Obaidi, a 36-year-old salesman at a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Baghdad. And they are hungry for the kind of luxury items that are common in neighboring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Al-Obaidi sits behind his desk in a small showroom crammed with gleaming cars, including a model with a sticker price of $133,000. Traditionally, Iraqis with money buy homes and cars outside Iraq, but there are signs that may be changing. On a recent evening at the Lebanese Club, a steady stream of cars pull into the circular driveway, where customers turn their autos over to valets before walking through automatic sliding-glass doors into the club's air-conditioned interior. Recessed lighting on the floor marks a path toward large picture windows, with sweeping views of the Tigris River. Lights from the Dora oil refinery glitter in the river's dark, still waters. "I've been introduced to a Baghdad I didn't know existed," says Antoine Youssef, the club's manager. "These are high-class people," he quickly adds. "These are not the looters you see in other places." The club does not serve alcohol, though others do. Like Sabeeh, many of Iraq's wealthy families have accumulated their riches since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sabeeh, who operates a construction firm, says he was quick to capitalize on new opportunities that came with billions in reconstruction money. He says his company won large contracts to rebuild a water treatment facility and hospital. "Before the fall, about 20 families controlled most of the wealth," says Alaa Salim, the general manager of al-Bashaer Iraqi, an organization that provides loans to small and midsize businesses. Under Saddam's dictatorship, only businessmen favored by him or his sons were allowed to gain state contracts. The U.S.-led invasion and subsequent upheaval left opportunities in their wakes. A new generation of tycoons has replaced the old. "Now you see someone you didn't know who builds a new house and drives a fancy car," Salim says. But Khalid complains that the new rich lack the education and polish of the older generation. "Some people who come to my shop are illiterate," says Namir Khalid, 44, marketing manager at the Dream House furniture store, which sells high-end furnishings, including ornate clocks for $2,000. The newer generation says it is much savvier about competing for contracts and comfortable dealing with foreigners. "The older businessmen are not able to get contracts," says Alaa Shon, a lawyer who specializes in registering companies to do business in Iraq. Shon, who sits with Sabeeh and another friend at the Lebanese Club, says the opportunities are there for those who know how to exploit them. Young people with the right outlook and skills are on a level playing field with more established businesses, he says. "The newly rich are mostly young," Shon says. "We think differently. Old people are used to working one way." The reconstruction money, oil revenue and improved security are beginning to stimulate the economy. The economy grew 4.2% last year and is expected to expand more than 7% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Government workers are among the highest-paid in Iraq these days, Salim says. Iraqis are feeling better about their own economic situation, according to a poll released Thursday. When asked if they expect their household financial situation to improve next year, 63% expect it to get better, according to the poll conducted June 3 to July 3 by the International Republican Institute. That's up from 46% when asked a similar question six months earlier. The survey is based on a sample of 2,988 Iraqis. Sabeeh says there are signs that some of the old families want to return to Iraq, but those that do quickly discover they have to partner with young entrepreneurs to succeed. "They can't get it on their own," he says. Najim Kareem, who owns part of a Baghdad car dealership, says the new wealth comes from a variety of sources. "Some are looters and thieves," he says. "Others are merchants." The new rich have engendered plenty of resentment in a country where unemployment is high and people are struggling with the basics. Almost 7 million people, about a quarter of the population, live in poverty, according to the United Nations. Sabeeh says even his own relatives are resentful of his rapid success. Others say that is only natural. "Some people are jumping on top," Khalid says. "Others are deep underneath."

America's New Terrorist Networks

Tony Blankley, Washington Times. While public attention was diverted by whether or not Florida pastor Terry Jones and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf had reached a compromise, a report critical to our national security went virtually unnoticed. Jones, under some pressure from most of the civilized world, offered to withdraw his threat to immolate a stack of Qurans, in exchange, he said, for Rauf's relocation of Park51, the planned mosque complex he proposes to tower over the World Trade Center site. Understandably, the press preferred to cover the spectacle between Jones and Rauf, especially as it played out on live television like a bizarre parody of "Let's Make a Deal." Culture wars, after all, make more scintillating copy than the earnest prose of yet another advisory report. But were it not for the distraction caused by the Jones-Rauf media circus, we might instead have focused our attention on "Assessing the Terrorist Threat," a timely evaluation conducted for the ninth anniversary of 9/11. This sobering report, issued under the auspices of the Bipartisan Policy Center by former 9/11 Commission leaders Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, has enormous implications for America's counterterrorist policies. First, the Good News: They report that the War on Terrorism has degraded al-Qaida's capabilities to such an extent that the authors -- whose assessment derives in part from close contact with U.S. intelligence officials -- think another 9/11 spectacular terrorist attack in the U.S. is unlikely. Even more unlikely, they believe, is a mass casualty attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. If the authors are right, you can toss out any gas masks and duct tape in your home emergency survival kit. I personally believe they are too confident that the danger from mass attack is passing. A small band of well-prepared terrorists can unleash unspeakable killing forces. Every day, such resources become more available around the world. I still believe mass disaster is more likely than not in the coming decade. But there is also new Bad News: What the media calls "home-grown terrorism" (more to follow about precisely where this terrorism is incubated later, but a hint for now is that it isn't the U.S.) is the "new normal" for terrorism attacks. In the past year, al-Qaida-affiliated groups have tried to blow up a U.S. airliner, replicate the London and Madrid commuter bombings in the New York subway system, detonate a vehicle bomb in Times Square and carry out numerous other attacks inside our borders. "Last year was a watershed in terrorist attacks and plots in the United States, with a record total of 11 jihadist attacks, jihadist-inspired plots, or efforts by Americans to travel overseas to obtain terrorist training," the report says. "They included two actual attacks (at Fort Hood, Texas, which claimed the lives of 13 people, and the shooting of two U.S. military recruiters in Little Rock, Arkansas), five serious but disrupted plots, and four incidents involving groups of Americans conspiring to travel abroad to receive terrorist training. ... This level of threat is likely to persist for years to come." And it gets worse: Al-Qaida-related groups have created a recruitment pipeline inside America, according to the report. Three American citizens -- Adnan el Shukrijumah, Omar Hammami and Anwar al-Aulaqi -- are top commanders of al-Qaida affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia and Yemen. From foreign havens, this trio oversees active recruitment drives among radicalized Muslims of various ethnic backgrounds in immigrant communities across our country. Their intimate knowledge of American society is applied to clandestine operations within our borders, terrorist training, selecting targets and planning attacks. According to the report, no single U.S. agency -- not the NDI, FBI, CIA or DHS -- is accountable for coordinating our response to this emerging threat. In plotting the 9/11 attacks, Osama bi Laden exploited the lack of coordination between counterterrorism officials. Similar vulnerabilities exist today with regard to the terrorist plots being incubated offshore, but using U.S. citizens, permanent residents and those with legal visas as their deadly operatives. It is vital for us to crack these networks, not just to defend against future attacks, but to take the offensive. With a clear understanding of the terrorist recruiting infrastructure inside the U.S., we will be able to insert double agents -- "pipeliners" -- into the foreign-based al-Qaida affiliates. It would help if U.S. authorities could gain the cooperation and active assistance of freedom-loving, patriotic Muslims. That is why the Jones-Rauf media diversion, with its cultural divisiveness, is so corrosive. But with or without such incidents, the pull and reach of radical Islam is powerful -- which is why nations from Britain to Holland to the U.S. are constantly surprised when seemingly middle-class, law-abiding Muslims suddenly turn up violent in our midst. That is why six year ago when I was writing my first book on the topic ("The West's Last Chance"), I warned that we in the U.S. just as in Europe would be vulnerable to home grown middle-class Muslims who would come under the sway of Internet mad mullahs and start blowing things up. I am gratified that the study group has finally come to the same conclusion. But it is a sad commentary on the power of political correctness and a dreadful lack of imagination on the part of our policy leaders that it took the experts 10 years to reach the same obvious conclusion that a reasonably alert generalist could spot back before the London bombings. A final implication of the Kean-Hamilton report concerns the ACLU's lawsuit to limit the CIA's use of drones to assassinate American terrorists like al-Aulaqi. If the ACLU prevails, we will have committed unilateral disarmament

U.S. Takes Over Fight in Helmand

As British Soldiers Leave Bloody Afghan Province, American Troops Try Out More-Mobile Strategy By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS SANGIN, Afghanistan—After four bloody and frustrating years trying to secure the most dangerous town in Helmand Province, the British are pulling out with, at best, a draw. Over the coming months, U.K. forces will leave Sangin and turn it over to the U.S. to finish the job. Neither British nor U.S. officers describe it this way aloud, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that U.S. Marines are being sent in to complete what the undermanned British couldn't, in a province once known as Helmandshire for the U.K.'s dominance here. Change of Command in Sangin View Slideshow Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal Almost a third of the 335 British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 have died in just one town: Sangin, Helmand Province, population 20,000. More photos and interactive graphics Although British officers point to incremental security gains, they acknowledge they simply haven't had enough men to oust the hundreds of Taliban fighters who attack from the shadows, litter the landscape with hidden explosives and blend in easily with the locals. "The concentration of force is something we haven't been able to bring in here," says Royal Marine Maj. Aldeiy Alderson, chief of staff of Combined Force Sangin. Almost one-third of the 335 British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 have died in this single town of 20,000 people. "Helmandshire is symptomatic of the broader problem in Afghanistan—that we as a coalition haven't had the resources needed to get the job done," says John Nagl, head of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. In the past two years, the British fought to a stalemate in Garmsir and Now Zad, only to see larger American forces sent in to clear the towns. U.S. Marines are also taking over Kajaki, site of a key hydropower plant. Sangin is a test of whether it is possible to reverse the gains the Taliban have made against British forces in Helmand Province. The Americans—the 1,200-strong Third Battalion, Seventh Regiment—have been entering Sangin since July and, fighting alongside 1,200 Royal Marines, appear to be making headway. But in a couple of months, the British will be gone, leaving the Americans to cover the same ground the U.K. struggled to control—with roughly the same number of troops. The British contribute the second-largest force to the international coalition. Still, the U.K. has just 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in Helmand, while the U.S. has 10 times as many in the country, including 20,000 Marines in Helmand. The British "have decided, given limited resources, to focus on the central part of the province" and leave the hot spots of northern Helmand to the U.S., says Col. Paul Kennedy, commander of U.S. Marine forces in the area. The bloodiest battlefield they are leaving is Sangin, a crossroads for insurgent fighters, drugs and money that has assumed mythic status in Britain. The U.K. has lost at least 106 men there since coming to town in 2006, with 36 of them falling this year, according to the Ministry of Defense. "On the lowest level, it's hard to fault the commitment and bravery of the lads," says Maj. Alderson, the Royal Marine officer. "This isn't two weeks in the French trenches and going to the rear. It's six months of constant patrols. This is some of the toughest fighting I've ever seen." The British say they have improved both security and governance, at least in the town's commercial center. Last year, the British counted 399 shops open in the bazaar; now there are 1,400, selling everything from cars and motorcycles to groceries and household goods under solar-powered lights provided by the international coalition. "We've invested a lot of blood and treasure in Sangin. Has it been worth it?" asks Royal Marine Maj. Paul Lynch, commander of Delta Co., 40 Commando Group. "We've made progress in governance and socioeconomic development for the people of Sangin. That's why we came." Still, the British continue to find Sangin a hard slog, even as they head to the exits. Only infrequently do locals tip off the Royal Marines to the locations of fighters or bombs. Dozens of British troops have lost legs to hidden bombs. "The Yanks do come in with the manpower to hopefully do the job properly," says Marine Adam Wells, a 29-year-old antitank gunner from Weston-super-Mare, England. "If we were just pulling out and leaving it, it would be a different matter." Sometimes the fighting assumes a roadrunner-and-coyote dimension. The British tether surveillance blimps above patrol bases, the Taliban shoot them down and the British patch them up. Taliban fighters creep next to one British patrol base and toss hand grenades over the wall; the British put up a high net. "If there were a stand-up battle between 250 Taliban and the Royal Marines, we would win," Maj. Lynch says. "But it's not as simple as that. You can't tell who's a bad person." U.S. commanders praise the fighting prowess of British troops. But the Americans question the British decision to build 22 patrol bases in Sangin, a variation on the neighborhood-policing tactic used in Northern Ireland. Even some British wonder if they tied up too many combat troops just guarding the bases. "If you stay static, Terry Taliban will sneak up and plant an IED next to you," Maj. Alderson says, referring to an improvised explosive device. British commanders have begun closing some patrol bases, although they say they haven't yet decided whether building them was a mistake. U.S. Lt. Col. Clay Tipton, commander of Third Battalion, hit the ground with a more mobile strategy. He sent two companies—roughly 200 men each—sweeping through hundreds of yards of cornfields and irrigation ditches between the main road and the Helmand River. Another company fought to secure the heights on the river's far bank, while a fourth blocked enemy movements on the outskirts of town. The fighting was fierce at first, with Marines coming under sustained machine-gun and rifle fire from tree lines and mud-walled compounds. "I heard it was a pretty kinetic environment," says Lance Cpl. Parker Greider, a 21-year-old Lima Co. infantryman from Wichita, Kan. "They weren't joking." Apparently battered in initial clashes, the Taliban have turned cautious. Fire fights are more sporadic and shorter now, though booby-traps and snipers remain constant dangers. The true test will come over the next two months, when the last Royal Marines leave Sangin to the U.S. Marines. Right now, the Americans just have to fight; they don't have to manage relations with the local Afghan government, navigate tribal politics or promote economic growth. Once the Royal Marines are gone, those jobs will fall to the U.S. Marines.

Bad Economy Drives Down American Arms Sales

By THOM SHANKER New York Times WASHINGTON — The global economic recession significantly pushed down purchases of weapons last year to the lowest level since 2005, a new government study has found. The report to Congress concluded that the value of worldwide arms deals in 2009 was $57.5 billion, a drop of 8.5 percent from 2008. While the United States maintained its role as the world’s leading supplier of weapons, officials nonetheless saw the value of its arms trade sharply decline in 2009. This was in contrast to 2008, when the United States increased the value of its weapons sales despite a drop in business for competitors in the global arms bazaar. For 2009, the United States signed arms deals worth $22.6 billion — a dominating 39 percent of the worldwide market. Even so, that sales figure was down from $38.1 billion in 2008, which had been a surprising increase over the $25.7 billion in 2007 that defied sluggish economic trends. The decrease in American weapons sales in 2009 was caused by a pause in major orders from clients in the Middle East and Asia, which had pumped up the value of contracts the year before. At the same time, there were fewer support and services contracts signed with American defense firms last year, the study said. Russia was a distant second in worldwide weapons sales in 2009, concluding $10.4 billion in arms deals, followed by France, with $7.4 billion in contracts. Other leading arms traders included Germany, Italy, China and Britain. The annual report was produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress. The analysis, regarded as the most detailed collection of unclassified global arms sales data available to the public, was delivered to members of the House and Senate over the weekend in advance of their return to work on Monday after the summer recess. The decline in new weapons sales worldwide in 2009 was caused by government decisions “to defer the purchase of major systems” in a period of “severe international recession,” wrote Richard F. Grimmett, a specialist in international security at the Congressional Research Service and the author of the study. The recession did not halt military modernization and improvements, as nations sought to make their armed forces more lethal despite tight budgets. “Some nations chose to focus on completing the integration into their militaries of major weapons systems they had already purchased,” Mr. Grimmett wrote. Other nations, according to the study, focused available military money on smaller contracts for “training and support services, as well as selective upgrades of existing weapons systems.” Mr. Grimmett said that while the global recession slowed overall weapons sales, “The international arms market is still very competitive,” with major weapons-producing nations battling over traditional clients and seeking new buyers in emerging markets. To that end, the study focuses in particular on the category of weapons sales to the developing world, which totaled $45.1 billion of the overall arms trade in 2009, a drop from $48.8 billion in 2008. In 2009, Brazil was the top weapons buyer in the developing world, concluding $7.2 billion in purchase contracts, followed by Venezuela with $6.4 billion in purchases and Saudi Arabia with $4.3 billion. Other major arms buyers last year were Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Egypt, Vietnam, India and Kuwait. Over much of the past decade, Saudi Arabia, China, India and the United Arab Emirates have been among the largest weapons purchasers in this category. The United States led not only in global arms sales, but also in the category of weapons contracts to the developing world, signing deals worth $17.4 billion in arms to these nations in 2009. Russia was second, followed by France. “Relationships between arms suppliers and recipients continue to evolve in the 21st century in response to changing political, military and economic circumstances,” Mr. Grimmett concluded. “Where before the principal motivation for arms sales by foreign suppliers might have been to support a foreign policy objective, today that motivation may be based as much on economic considerations.” The study uses figures in 2009 dollars, with amounts for previous years adjusted for inflation to give a constant financial measurement.

U.S. Urges Iraqis to Try New Plan to Share Power

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ANTHONY SHADID New York Times WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is encouraging a major new power-sharing arrangement in Iraq that could retain Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as prime minister but in a coalition that would significantly curb his authority. The compromise plan was promoted in Baghdad last week by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., though at a time when American influence is waning and the United States continues to draw down troops. The new plan would alter the structure of Iraq’s government by bringing additional restraints to the authority of Iraq’s prime minister and establishing a new committee with authority to approve military appointments, review the budget and shape security policy. American officials said that the approach, which aims to bring Mr. Maliki’s State of Law party, Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya party and the Kurdish alliance into a governing coalition, represents the best chance to break the political logjam that has left the Iraqi public without a new government six months after voters went to the polls. A senior American official said that the plan was likely to result in a new government over the next month or so, and that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton could travel to Baghdad at that time. “We don’t really see what other option there is out there,” said another American official, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing confidential negotiations. “If we have a national unity government that is less efficient but perceived as representative and accountable to the Iraqi people, we think that’s better for the future of Iraq.” American officials assert that they do not have a preferred candidate for prime minister. But the proposal is intended to make Mr. Maliki, or a strong-willed successor, more palatable to the rest of a broad-based governing coalition. The redefined authority would be codified by new legislation but would not require that the Constitution be amended. Doubts remain whether the Americans can close the deal and, meanwhile, Iran has stepped up its efforts to press an alternative coalition in which Mr. Maliki might remain prime minister but in a coalition with his Shiite rivals and not Mr. Allawi. Which coalition prevails will serve as a barometer on whether Iran or the United States has more prestige in an unsettled and still turbulent country. An utter lack of trust among the contending factions has hampered all efforts to build a coalition. Some experts say that even if the American proposal succeeds it could leave Iraq finally with a government that, by being so broad-based, is too weak to tackle the tough problems that lie ahead. “It may perhaps help smooth the surface in the very short run, but it isn’t a good solution for Iraq as a viable state in the long run,” said Reidar Visser, an Iraq analyst. Politics in Baghdad have been stymied as insurgents have continued bombings and assassinations and Iraqis have become increasingly disgruntled about the failure of the government to deliver basic services. Though turnout for the March parliamentary election was relatively high, the vote failed to produce a decisive outcome. The Iraqiya party, which is headed by Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite, but represents many Sunnis, won 91 seats. Mr. Maliki’s State of Law secured 89 seats, while the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shiite coalition, won 70 seats. Across the spectrum, there are concerns that Mr. Maliki’s return would further strengthen the hold of his Dawa Party over the key instruments of the state — the police, the army and, perhaps most importantly, intelligence — and close off the possibility that there will ever be a peaceful transfer of power to a rival party. Mr. Biden said in an interview in Baghdad last week that if Iraq went another six months without a new government it would raise concerns that Iraq’s military might intervene in politics. “My worry will be that generals in the military will start saying, ‘Wait a minute, which way is this going to go?’ ” he said. “But I think we are far from that,” said Mr. Biden, who added that the Obama administration had been striving for a political breakthrough. “We have been deeply involved with each of the parties from the day after the election results came in,” he said, adding, “This has been constant.” The idea of a new power-sharing arrangement has been discussed for several months. Soon after the election results were certified in June, Christopher R. Hill, the American ambassador in Baghdad at the time, and his political aides drafted a paper in consultation with Mr. Biden reflecting ideas discussed among Iraqi politicians. The aim was not just to curb the powers of the prime minister, but in a game of reverse musical chairs, to create new positions that could be occupied by members of a broad governing coalition. Toward this end, a largely advisory Iraqi government body — the Political Council for National Security — would be given the power to review security, budget and oil export policy. “I think there is a growing awareness that there is a need for something akin to our National Security Council,” said Mr. Biden, who noted that such a step would be taken “to sort of balance the powers, but also provide landing spots for the number of serious people who have to occupy serious ministries.” American officials assert they are not trying to pick who should run the government but rather to shape an arrangement conducive to compromise. Still, current and former American officials said that a number of specific possibilities had been discussed with the Iraqis, including having Mr. Allawi lead the new committee or having him serve as president with clearly defined veto authority, a position occupied by Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader thought to be reluctant to give up the job. According to one early variation of the plan, the new committee would be headed by a secretary general and would include the prime minister and the president. Other members of the panel could include the head of the judiciary and the head of Kurdistan’s regional government as well as members of some powerful ministries. Some of Mr. Maliki’s authority over security would be shifted to the new committee, but he would retain his role as the commander in chief of Iraq’s armed forces. While it appears publicly that there has been little progress, behind the scenes both sides have prepared competing papers on how the new body would function. Difficult issues remain, however, hindered by the poor chemistry between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Allawi. “We have made slight progress,” Mr. Allawi said in an interview, “and I emphasize the word ‘slight.’ ” Discussing the new committee, Mr. Allawi insisted that it must have executive power, a budget, advisers and the right to call ministers to testify, effectively making it a position whose influence would compete with the prime minister’s. “If there were powers, and there was clarity, and there was an explanation why we should not be able to form a government, then why not, to serve the country?” Mr. Allawi said. In contrast, Mr. Maliki appears to be guarding his prerogatives on the assumption that he can remain prime minister. A senior Western diplomat said that Mr. Maliki believed that the shifting of his power to the committee should be “events based,” or curbed according to the security situation in the country. One point of disagreement in the talks is the fate of about 140 appointments by Mr. Maliki to senior positions in the military and intelligence. Mr. Allawi said he had insisted that those appointments be reviewed and perhaps overturned, by the council or Parliament; Mr. Maliki’s allies have said only that they should be “assessed.”

Surge Is Fully Deployed to Afghanistan

By JULIAN E. BARNES Wall Street Journal SHARANA, Afghanistan—The final U.S. brigade sent to Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's surge strategy assumed authority for a swath of the country's eastern territory Wednesday. The 4th Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division has only a short time to make an impact before the harsh winter of eastern Afghanistan, due to set in by November, makes travel and combat difficult. Commanders are also under pressure to show progress ahead of a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in November and the Obama administration's next strategy review, in December. Col. Sean Jenkins, with arms raised, takes part in a ceremony Wednesday transferring authority to his 4th Brigade in Paktika province. "The task is great and time is of the essence, as we face parliamentary elections and the future decisions of nations around the world and our own this fall," said Col. Sean Jenkins, at a ceremony in which his task force took charge of Paktika province. The Taliban has threatened to attack polling stations during the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections. On Wednesday, Afghan election officials said scores of additional polling stations will be closed during the vote because of security conditions, the Associated Press reported. The ceremony Wednesday officially put in place the last of the 30,000 infantry troops ordered into the country by Mr. Obama in December. The 4th Brigade, known as Task Force Currahee, was the only large unit assigned to eastern Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration's troop build-up. The majority of the surge forces were sent to southern Afghanistan to participate in operations around Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The first members of Task Force Currahee began arriving in Paktika in July. The majority of the forces arrived in the country in August and began a process of taking over from the 101st Division's 3rd Brigade. The Taliban operate in much of the province, and the Haqqani network—an ally of al Qaeda—operates in the northern part, near its historic stronghold of Khost province. Military officials in Washington and Kabul have said they hope building up conventional troops in eastern Afghanistan will help secure progress made by Special Operations troops. Since the spring, Special Operations Forces have captured and killed dozens of militant leaders in eastern Afghanistan. But senior military officials say that without a larger troop presence to help improve security in population centers, they fear the militant networks will simply regenerate through new recruits. The Taliban and the Haqqani network in recent years have taken refuge in Pakistan in winter months, but military officials believe the pattern could change this year because of the floods that have devastated much of Pakistan. Col. Jenkins said some groups of fighters may remain in Afghanistan, and could continue to fight or lay roadside bombs. Capt. Melvin Cabebe of the 101st Airborne Division stands in July near an armored vehicle that hit an IED in the Arghandab Valley. Even as military leaders push new units into position, they are also under pressure to develop plans to draw them down. Mr. Obama has said the U.S. will begin to withdraw forces beginning in July. Col. Jenkins said as security improves in areas he has placed troops, he will look to thin out those forces, moving his soldiers to other trouble spots. Separately, Taliban leader Mullah Omar posted an end-of-Ramadan online message Wednesday to rally followers and discourage enemies, the AP reported. In the message, posted on jihadist websites and relayed by the Site Intelligence Group, the Taliban leader said the U.S. military had failed to achieve its objectives after nearly nine years, and would soon be leaving the country. U.S. officials say they believe Mullah Omar is hiding in Pakistan, though he hasn't appeared in public since the Taliban were driven from power in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Iraqi Treasures Return, but Questions Remain

By STEVEN LEE MYERS New York Times BAGHDAD — Iraq announced on Tuesday the return of hundreds of looted antiquities that had ended up in the United States, even as a senior official disclosed that 632 pieces repatriated last year and turned over to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki were now unaccounted for. The latest trove reflects not only a history dating from the world’s oldest civilizations but also a more recent and tortured history of war, looting and international smuggling that began under Saddam Hussein, accelerated after the American occupation and continues at archaeological sites to this day. The returned items include a 4,400-year-old statue of King Entemena of Lagash looted from the National Museum here after the American invasion in 2003; an even older pair of gold earrings from Nimrud stolen in the 1990s and seized before an auction at Christie’s in New York last December; and 362 cuneiform clay tablets smuggled out of Iraq that were seized by the American authorities in 2001 and were being stored in the World Trade Center when it was destroyed. There was also a more recent relic: a chrome-plated AK-47 with a pearl grip and an engraving of Mr. Hussein, taken by an American soldier as booty and displayed at Fort Lewis, Wash. Kitsch, certainly, but priceless in its own way. While Iraqi officials celebrated the repatriation of what they called invaluable relics — “the return of Iraq’s heritage to our house,” as the state minister of tourism and antiquities, Qahtan al-Jibouri, put it — the fate of those previously returned raised questions about the country’s readiness to preserve and protect its own treasures. Appearing at a ceremony displaying the artifacts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaidaie, pointedly said a previous shipment of antiquities had been returned to Iraq last year aboard an American military aircraft authorized by Gen. David H. Petraeus, only to end up missing. “They went to the prime minister’s office, and that was the last time they were seen,” said Mr. Sumaidaie, who has worked fervently with American law enforcement officials in recent years to track down loot that had found its way into the United States. It was not immediately clear what happened, and Mr. Sumaidaie said he had tried and failed to find out. He did not directly accuse Mr. Maliki’s government of malfeasance, but he expressed frustration that the efforts to repatriate works of art and antiquities had resulted in such confusion and mystery. Ali al-Mousawi, a government spokesman, demanded that the American government account for the artifacts since an American military aircraft delivered them. “We didn’t receive anything,” he said in a telephone interview. Mr. Jibouri, one of Mr. Maliki’s advisers, said that if the relics were not somewhere in the prime minister’s custody, then they would probably be with the Ministry of Culture, which oversees the country’s museums. Its spokesman declined to comment. Amira Edan, the director of the National Museum, said none of the objects had been returned to her collection, which is where, she said, they all belonged. Mr. Jibouri said a committee would be formed to investigate. Perhaps with this uncertainty in mind, Mr. Jibouri and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari publicly signed documents transferring custody of the latest batch of artifacts — which arrived in Baghdad on Monday, packed in wooden crates, aboard a specially chartered aircraft — to the museum. “The artifacts are what’s pushing us to build the present and future, so we deserve this great heritage,” Mr. Zebari said during the ceremony. The United States has returned 1,046 antiquities since 2003, when looters ransacked buildings across Iraq, including its museums, according to the American Embassy here. For all the international outrage the looting stirred toward the United States and its allies, many of the items were smuggled out of the country before the invasion, often with the connivance of officials in Saddam Hussein’s government, according to archaeological officials here. They have been tracked and seized by the F.B.I., the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and other law enforcement agencies, often working on tips from experts and officials with the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, which stored many of them at its building on Massachusetts Avenue for safekeeping as Iraq remained engulfed in violence. Only a handful of the items returned on Tuesday once belonged to the National Museum. The most prominent is the statue of King Entemena, the oldest known representation of a monarch from the ancient civilizations that once thrived in Mesopotamia. Carved from black diorite, it is 30 inches tall and headless, and inscribed with cuneiform that says it was placed in a temple in Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, to please the god Enlil. It weighs 330 pounds but disappeared from the museum during the looting, only to be seized in a 2006 sting when someone in Syria tried to sell it to an art dealer in New York. Another Sumerian sculpture, a bronze depicting a king named Shulgi, had been shipped by Federal Express from a London dealer to a collector in Connecticut, but was seized at Newark Liberty International Airport. Many such pieces are items that Iraq never knew it had lost. Iraq has 12,000 known archaeological sites where Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Persian cities — and later Islamic cities — once stood. Many are unprotected, and have been badly looted for years, especially during the bloodiest years of war in 2006 and 2007. A special police force created in 2008 has yet to fill its ranks, mired at its inception by the government’s bureaucracy and a lack of support for cultural preservation. The National Museum, which officially reopened last year though many of its galleries remain closed and in disrepair, has recovered roughly half of 15,000 pieces that were looted from its collection. All told, Iraqi officials say they have confiscated and returned to government property more than 30,000 antiquities and artworks since 2003, from inside and outside Iraq. The museum can hold only a fraction of those. “We can make 15 museums like the one we had,” its deputy director, Muhsin Hassan Ali, said on Tuesday. The ultimate fate of the Saddam Hussein AK-47 also remains unclear, though it too was signed over to the custody of the National Museum. “Some material belongs to the fourth millennium B.C.,” Ms. Edan, the museum’s director, said laughing, “and the new ones belong to Saddam’s Iraq.” The assault rifle ended up at the headquarters of the Third Stryker Brigade of the Second Infantry Division. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said it had been taken “legally via official Army channels with the intent of placing it in a military museum as a war trophy.” Agents confiscated it after Mr. Sumaidaie’s aides read about it in a local newspaper report. A factory in Iraq once produced AK-47s, including some plated in gold and chrome, which Mr. Hussein distributed as gifts. At the time the rifle was recovered, a special agent of ICE in New York, Peter J. Smith, called it “a priceless symbol of Iraqi history.”

Kept safe in US, Iraqi royal statue heads home

MassArt professor helped in recovery John Russell, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, with a map of Babylon. Russell identified the 4,400-year-old statue of King Entemena after its recovery in 2006. (By Farah Stockman Globe Staff / September 7, 2010 WASHINGTON — It took four men to lift the wooden box in the lobby of the Iraqi Embassy. They carried it gingerly to the waiting truck, then loaded it into the belly of a commercial plane. Hours after President Obama announced the end of US combat operations in Iraq last week, one of that country’s most precious artifacts — the statue of an ancient king — began its journey home to Baghdad. In a saga that reads like the plot of an Indiana Jones movie, the 4,400-year-old statue of King Entemena was stolen from Iraq’s national museum in 2003, during widespread looting in the early days of the US invasion. It then moved through an underworld of black-market art dealers until it was recovered in a 2006 US sting operation, with help from a professor of antiquities in Boston. Then, for four more years, it sat in a glass case at Iraq’s embassy in Washington, waiting for Baghdad to be safe enough for its return. It is expected to arrive later this week, the final chapter in a tale of the anarchy of war and the fragile promise of peace. “Now he’s going back where he belongs,’’ said John Russell, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, who was hired by the State Department to help preserve Iraq’s ancient art. Russell verified Entemena’s authenticity for US officials. Russell, a gregarious archeologist who wears chunky glasses and blue blazers when he is not on a dig, said the statue’s return marks a sign that modern-day Iraq is getting “back to normal.’’ But it also marks the end of his own struggle to see it repatriated. “He has become important to me since we became a part of each other’s lives,’’ said the Missouri-born 57-year-old, who frequently refers to the statue of Entemena as if it were a living person. Amy Gansell, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University and a former student of Russell’s, said it is fitting to talk about Entemena that way. “The ancient Mesopotamians believed that these statues contained the essence of a person,’’ she said. “It is not just a piece of rock that we are returning, but it is the essence of humanity.’’ King Entemena ruled in 2400 BC, when the land that makes up modern-day Iraq was a cradle of civilization. Archeologists believe that the 3-foot-tall statue of imported diorite stood in a temple in the city of Lagash. The statue was discovered by archeologists in the early 1900s in the nearby city of Ur. Archeologists surmised it was hauled away as a trophy after a war by conquerors who removed its head. It was believed to have stood in the doorway of a city gate, where its neck was worn smooth by people running their hands across the top as they passed by, Russell said. In recent decades, Entemena, one of the earliest statues of a known king from the region, stood in Baghdad’s National Museum. As Saddam Hussein led Iraq into a series of wars, the museum’s curators routinely hid their priceless artifacts to protect them from theft. But in May 2003, they didn’t have time to move Entemena, which weighs some 300 pounds. Thieves rolled Entemena down the museum’s main stairway, breaking every step. They also took highly prized pieces from locked storage containers, leading Iraqi museum officials to believe a sophisticated criminal syndicate was involved. A few weeks after the looting, Russell, who teaches a class on the ancient art of Iraq, got an urgent call from the State Department at his MassArt office on Huntington Avenue. US officials asked whether he could quickly join a UN team to assess the needs of the looted museum. But he was told he had to get on a plane that night. “It was very exciting,’’ he said. “I couldn’t say no.’’ Russell was eventually hired as the Coalition Provisional Authority’s second-ranking official for cultural preservation in Iraq, as the United States tried to recover from international criticism following the museum’s looting. For nine months, bodyguards escorted him every day from the Green Zone to the museum, where he helped Iraqi curators repair damaged items and maintained contact with US soldiers tracking the lost items. In the years that followed, Russell worked to set up a training institute for Iraqi museum curators, and he lobbied successfully for the closure of a US military base that had been set up atop an archeological site of Babylon. In 2004, he returned to full-time teaching in Boston, but stayed on as a State Department consultant. For years, he heard nothing about Entemena. But in 2006, he got a call from a US Customs official who sent him a photograph of the statue and asked whether it looked like the real thing. An Iraqi art dealer in New York City had been offered a chance to buy the statue, apparently hidden at a farmhouse in Syria. The dealer, who had been caught falsifying documents related to another artifact, agreed to help get the statue back. Russell would not elaborate on how customs officials — through the art dealer — persuaded illicit art brokers to ship the statue to New York. But he was there when they opened the box in a warehouse in Queens. He knew immediately it was genuine. Soon after, Russell and his State Department colleagues held a ceremony to hand over the statue during a visit to Washington by Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqi prime minister. “It was the modern ruler of Iraq and the ancient ruler in the same room,’’ Russell said. “Little Entemena was sitting there in the foreground, looking on as best he could, without his head.’’ But Baghdad’s National Museum stayed closed until February 2009 due to the violence. This year, Iraqi authorities decided to bring Entemena home, coincidentally as thousands of US troops were returning to their homes. More than 15,000 artifacts were stolen from the museum during widespread looting in 2003. Only about a third have been recovered. Last week, the glass case that recently housed Entemena stood empty, as workmen assembled the box that would carry the ancient king. Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaida’ie, said the statue’s return is a symbol of the slow, painful progress of a new Iraq and the bloody tribulations of the old one. “It’s a metaphor for Iraq,’’ he said. “The looting took place over three or four days. We have been working on this for the last seven years. We will be working for the next 20 years, and we may never get it all back.’’

An Example of Progress in Northern Iraq

By General Tom Vandal RealClear World.com Iraqis and Americans serving together has been the hallmark of Operation Iraqi Freedom in recent years. Long gone are the days of the initial invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein. Today, U.S. Forces (USF) and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) partner together while conducting stability operations - USF advising, assisting and training the ISF to increase their capability to ensure the security of the Iraqi people. In the northern Iraqi province of Ninewa, an Iraqi General and a U.S. General have shared an area of operations since 2008. As a result of this continuing partnership and the September 1 drawdown to 50,000 American troops, it is an opportune time to examine a central question regarding the future of Iraq: are the Iraqi Security Forces ready to provide security for the Iraqi populace? A logical place to look for answers to this question is Ninewa Province and the effective working relationship formed there between USF and ISF over multiple years. If Iraq is going to be a stable and secure country, Ninewa will be a key component to that equation. Partnering with Lieutenant General Hassan Karim Khudayr Abbas al-Sa'ady, the situation is improving daily and the future of the province is no longer one of fear and violence, but of hope and potential. Ninewa is situated in northern Iraq with Syria to the west and the Kurdish Region to the north and east. The human environment is complex with Sunni Arabs as the primary demographic, as well as Kurds, Turkmen, Yezidi, Christian, Shabak, Assyrian and others intermingled along a seam called the Disputed Internal Boundary. It is an area filled with economic potential, containing fertile farmlands and deposits of oil. Added to this dynamic mix are boundaries between the Kurds and Arabs which have been disputed for hundreds of years, and the city of Mosul, often cited as the place where insurgents hope to make a final stand to obstruct progress in Iraq. Future stability in Ninewa - and throughout Iraq - depends on a capable, strong and apolitical Iraqi Security Force. Through extensive training and commitment to the Iraqi people, the ISF are keeping pressure on violent extremist networks, and conducting effective, intelligence-driven operations, with minimal U.S. involvement. Fueling the renewed effectiveness of the ISF, which consists of the Iraqi Army, Iraqi Police and Kurdish Regional Guard Brigades (RGBs), is their ability to work together against a common enemy. Two examples highlight the progress made by ISF in recent years: combined check points and Mosul Dam joint security. There are eleven check points located throughout the province. These check points, manned by ISF, USF and RGBs, known collectively as the "Golden Lions," create an environment where all sides share intelligence and conduct operations to provide security and to build confidence with each other. The lesson Iraqis take away from the team work at these check points is that despite differences, their belief in a strong, unified Iraq binds them together for a common purpose. Implemented in February 2010, the joint efforts are not the first initiative where ISF and RGBs have come together to form a single security force. The first time ISF and RGBs worked together to provide security for a key piece of infrastructure was on the Mosul Dam. Today, Mosul Dam is secure and able to operate uninterrupted as a result of this combined effort. The net result of an improving ISF is apparent in decreased violence across Ninewa and in the severely degraded capabilities of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and other violent extremist groups. Overall, since ISF assumed complete control for security in the city of Mosul on June 30, 2009, attacks have declined over 200 percent, going from 60-80 attacks per week to 10-15 per week. Across Ninewa, attacks have decreased from a high of 720 in March 2008 to less than 50 a month for the past 90 days. Combined with security gains and an increasingly effective provincial government, and using the expertise of the U.S. State Department Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), Ninewa is an example of the progress that can be made when civil and military leaders work together for a common purpose. There is still a long struggle ahead in Iraq and increasing the capabilities of the ISF in Ninewa is critical before the U.S. departure in December 2011. But all signs point in the right direction as the ISF continues to demonstrate their ability to provide for the security of the Iraqi people. The final outcome of the war in Iraq will not be seen for years, but with Arabs, Kurds and others working together, combined with assistance over the next 16 months from the U.S. military and diplomats, a fully capable ISF and prosperous Ninewa province are achievable. Brigadier General Tom Vandal is the Deputy Commanding General for the Third Infantry Division and Task Force Marne, currently deployed in northern Iraq.