JULY 3/03: Welcome! Our goal is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news, and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Today's "Winds of War" is brought to you with the help of Dan Darling of Regnum Crucis.
TOP TOPICS
* Ali Abdul Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, the mastermind behind the Riyadh bombings, is now in Saudi custody, albeit for the third time. ICT and Alphabet City both document the sequence of events. We've covered the al-Ghamdis before - their name turns up a lot.
* Strategy Page discusses the strategic situation in Iraq, what to expect, and how it will be fought. Their reasoning meshes with Greg Buete's.
* Dan Darling offers some Algeria-related updates, including a survey and analysis from France.
Other Topics Today Include: Iran update; A rundown on Iraq's al-Awda guerillas; Iraqi Shi'ite developments; New names for Iraq's army; An argument for fewer troops in Iraq; U.S. anthrax update; American al-Qaeda sleeper cells; U.S. Army's future; PA plan to subvert Jordan; Chechnya updates; Bin Laden alive?; and Saddam - still blogging.
IRAN UPDATES
* Just in case anyone thinks the Americans are fooling around, Merde in France has a link to Condi Rice's latest statements in Europe.
* Pejamn notes the importance of the Iranian merchant class (bazaaris), whose status is best described as conflicted. We've covered this before too, and it's worth re-emphasizing.
* According to al-Arabiyyah TV, the Iranian government is holding Ayman al-Zawahiri, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, and one of bin Laden's sons. Now the Iranians are denying all of this, but the claim that they can't identify whether the al-Qaeda they're holding are senior leaders of the organization or some guy named Herb is extremely duplicitous. The ayatollahs certainly don't seem to have much trouble identifying arrested student activists.
IRAQ REPORT
* Chief Wiggles has some more photos, plus reports from the new front lines in Iraq as he deals with high-ranking Iraqi prisoners. (Hat Tip: Plunge)
* The ??Daily Times?? has a run-down of al-Awda, which appears to be an umbrella organization for the various Iraqi guerrilla organizations that I documented last week. Interestingly enough, al-Awda's ranks appear to include both al-Qaeda fighters and former soldiers loyal to the Baathist regime. It also appears that Salam Pax had a run-in of his own with an al-Awda member in Baghdad.
* The Guardian has an article up on why six British soldiers were killed at the hands of an angry mob.
* OOOPS! U.S. authorities discovered that the acronym of the reconstituted Iraqi army, the New Iraqi Corps, is an Arabic slang word for fornication. The name has been changed to the New Iraqi Army. (Hat Tip: The Week magazine)
* Daily Kos notes a number of developments involving the Shi'ites in Iraq.
* Greg Buete, meanwhile, pens a very counterintuitive but well-researched piece in TCS: "Wanted - Fewer Troops In Iraq". The material on Afghanistan is especially relevant.
US HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING
* The FBI is apparently tracking al-Qaeda in 40 states, though it appears that the most dangerous members of the domestic network like Adnan el-Shukrijumah have managed to elude the dragnet thus far.
* It appears that despite draining that pond out in Maryland, the FBI has no new evidence about the 2001 anthrax attacks.
* According to the end of this Washington Times story about al-Qaeda sleeper Iyman Faris, 15 other US al-Qaeda operatives may have also made plea bargain agreements with the Justice Department.
* The US has arrested a Lashkar-e-Taiba cell based in Virginia. Lashkar-e-Taiba, as can be seen from its FAS profile, is one of the most brutal of the Pakistani terrorist groups and was responsible for harboring Abu Zubaydah after the fall of the Taliban.
THE WIDER WAR
* Phil Carter discusses the role and requirements of the U.S. Army in the current environment, from Fareed Zakaria's "An Army of Builders," to his own essay on nation building in the Washington Monthly and Robert Kagan's "An Army of Lots More Than One."
* What is North Korea up to now? Guess. Note that "miniature" is relative to the crude atomic devices that use lots of uranium or plutonium. More advanced constructions can use less, producing a smaller warhead.
* South Korea's government, of course, remains in deep denial.
* ICT has the article Step by Step, Piece by Peace up. It documents the stated strategic goals of the Palestinian Authority, which apparently include the overthrow of the Jordanian government.
* This Roadmap-related article by Orrin Judd is good. The accompanying discussion is even better. (Hat Tip: Mike Daley)
* On the bright side, here's proof that actions in Iraq have helped not hurt the situation with the Palestinians.
* The latest fighting in Chechnya has left ten Russian soldiers dead at the hands of rebel fighters.
* The UN is now stating that there is a connection between al-Qaeda and the recent suicide bombings in Chechnya that have killed over a hundred civilians.
* Pakistan has arrested an al-Qaeda courier who was told to deliver the tape to al-Jazeera. The videotape was reportedly of bin Laden, threatening attacks against US interests in Saudi Arabia. If the tape is new, it would serve as definitive evidence that bin Laden is alive.
* We always try to end on a lighter note if possible. This sign pretty much says it all from the boys in Iraq (next time, read the fine print). Meanwhile, Saddam says he's just fine.
Did you see the BBC headline: Saudi Bombing mastermind "kills himself"
Yes, they left the quotes in the headline. Oh boy.
Yes, indeed, thanks to M. Simon. Guy apparently "blew himself up," no less. Blogged it over at Command Post, as we're pretty full up today and the al-Ghamdi shennanigans are the more critical long-term story.
But I agree with your take on this. To quote the SNL Church Lady: "isn't that conveeeenient." Doesn't leave a body to identify, or a suspect to talk.
Dan, Great roundup of the war. I have to say that while I agree with Dunnigan's assessment of the enemy's current course of action; I disagree somewhat with Greg Buete's recommended friendly course of action or perhaps forcefully disagree with his characterization of friendly troops available and what their capabilities are. Neither one adequately addresses the current friendly strategy.
In short, I think General Shinseki, the outgoing Army Chief of Staff was probably correct in his estimate that we needed somewhere in the neighborhood 200k troops to effectively occupy Iraq. And while the Special Forces are absolutely essential to an effective counter-guerrilla, counter-insurgency campaign they simply cannot, by themselves, carry out the full range of Support and Security Operations that are needed. There are not enough of them in the whole Army to begin with and they don't have the equipment or expertise to do the full range of missions.
It is funny that the implied criticism of conventional forces that Greg Buete makes is that all they know how to do is kill people and break things in large numbers and then all he talks about is how the SF is so good at killing people in smaller numbers.
He totally ignores the concept of Combined Arms which is when different types of forces operate in a mutually supporting manner, so that the complentary and reinforcing effects combine synergistically to produce an effect greater than any individual part could do.
Look, there are a whole bunch of things that need to be done in Iraq. On the support and nation building side; roads, hospitals, sewage treatment plants, water purification plants, electrical generation plants etc, etc need to be built and maintained. The conventional Army and other services have folks who can do just that. SF can't or can only do it on a small scale and they are more valuable and better at going and finding the bad guys and killing them. At some point civilian contractors, NGO's or reconsitituted Iraqi agencies will take over those jobs but until they do, thousands of guys in BDU's will do it. A large number of the 146,000 troops in Iraq are engineers, medical units, and logistics units. A good case can be made that we need more of these guys and sooner. Not fewer. Now, so that they and eventually the contracors, NGO's and reconstituted Iraqi agencies can do their thing we have to have security.
That is where all the conventional Armor, Infantry and Aviation units come in. Iraq is a big country. Baghdad alone is a huge city. The friendly forces engaged in nation building have to be guarded, the main roads have to be kept open, the key infrastructure has to be secured, the bad guys we capture have to be secured. That, flat out, takes lots of people. And, while a tank is not a good tool to use searching houses it is great for setting up a checkpoint (along with a squad of infantry) at a road intersection twenty miles into the desert or patrolling the main highway to make sure the bad guys don't set up their own check points or lay mines. It is also a great thing to have around when the bad guys get a bunch of SUV's with .50 Cals and RPG's and go roaring around the countryside shooting things up. Ditto helicopters, only more so. Of course it takes 10 log and admin types to keep one tank or helicopter running and another couple infantry guys to secure all of them. Speaking of infantry, if you want to keep a single infantryman on a street corner 24 X 7 you need at least five guys to do it. You need one guy for each 8 hour shift, one guy to replace anyone who gets sick or wounded and another guy to be in charge of the other four. There are literally thousands of points we want to secure....we need lots of troops to do that.
Buete talked about intelligence. The SF and CIA types are good, maybe even great, at setting up human intelligence networks but what about collecting signal intelligence, satellite and aerial photography, prisoner interrogation, document translation and then tying all that data from all those different sources together in some coherent form? That takes intelligence battalion's. Hundreds of girls and guys crunching all that data and assimilating it using very sohpisticated processes and equipment. And of course, people to supply them and people to secure both the intel folks and the log folks suporting them. Some of that can and should be done out of theater, but some of it has to be done right there on the ground.
Then there is the business of finding the bad guys and killing them. In Afghanistan our SF guys were working with thousands of Afghani militia who had their own tanks, SUV's, infantry and mortars. If they had been alone on a hilltop with their radio and GLD the bad guys would have just overrun them and killed them with small arms and mortars. The bad guys couldn't do that because our allies would have shot them as they approached. Complementary and reinforcing effects.
There is no force equivalent to the Northern Alliance in most of Iraq and until there is we will have to rely on American units. Our conventional forces can be a safe refuge (and rescue/extraction force) for the SF while they are working the counterguerrila ops and they can be the heavy muscle to destroy any concentrations of the bad guys that we find.
In Panama, our Light Infantry forces and SF operated in small combined forces teams to secure the outlying barrios and villages after the main fighting in Panama City took place. In a typical scenario an Infantry platoon and an SF NCO would go to a village. The Infantry would surround the vilage and the SF NCO would address the Panamanian Defense Force in Spanish and negotiate their surrender. If the SF NCO had been alone he probably would have just been shot. If the Infantry had gone in alone there probably would have been a firefight and lots of casualties. Complementary and reinforcing effects.
Finally, there is the pyschological effects of our forces. While there is a danger of our guys being unwelcome guests it is certain that most Iraqi's did not believe Hussein's regime had been destroyed until our troops came to their town and took down the statues. A single SF soldier or even a dozen simply does not have the same effect. Handled correctly, our presence in Iraq, in large numbers, demonstrates our resolve and our power, reasures our allies and those who fear the Baathists, and intimidates those other countries in the region who now know that we can drive into their capital in a matter of hours.
I would argue that the problems we are having are not due to having too many troops in Iraq but to not having enough. We have enough troops there to annoy people but not enough to overwhelm those who are predisposed to cause trouble. Every town and tenement which does not have a regular American presence is a potential refuge for the bad guys. It would be harder, although not impossible, for them to assemble and plan their operations if Americans were constantly patrolling the streets and observing the neighborhoods and (tactfully) searching buildings and questioning people. Yes, this would have the potential for antagonizing people but that is a risk I prefer to not having enough forces and it is one that could be mitigated by training and assigning the right troops to the job. One of the reasons the 4th ID is forced to conduct foot patrols is because there isn't anyone else there. It sure would be nice to have one of Light Infantry Divisions that were deactivated in the 1990's there to do that patrolling instead of dismounted mech infantry or artillerymen.
Well this has gone on too long. I still haven't addressed what I think our strategy is in Iraq and the potential risks and rewards associated with it. Maybe next time.
Patrick, this post plus that post = a full Guest Blog. The invitation is open.