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 The Pentagon Early Bird 11Jan 2008 E A R L Y B I R D January 10, 2008 Use of these news articles does not reflect official endorsement. Reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. Story numbers indicate order of appearance only. This is the single print version. Use the PRINT command in your browser to print the entire Early Bird as one document. (NOTE: This single file format is a long document and can use 50 or more pages of paper.) IRAQ
Washington Post January 10, 2008 Pg. 1 Blast Kills 6 As Troops Hunt Iraqi Insurgents U.S. Forces Encounter Booby-Trapped House By Amit R. Paley and Joshua Partlow, Washington Post Foreign Service FORWARD OPERATING BASE NORMANDY, Iraq, Jan. 10 -- The explosion of a booby-trapped house killed six American soldiers on Wednesday during an offensive against Sunni insurgents in Diyala province, making it the deadliest day for U.S. troops in Iraq since November. The blast, which also killed an Iraqi interpreter and injured four U.S. soldiers, took place on the second day of an unusually large campaign in Diyala against the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. Three U.S. troops were shot to death Tuesday in the neighboring northern province of Salahuddin. The U.S. military is struggling to exert control over northern Iraq, where Sunni insurgents have fled during the past year after being driven out of Baghdad and Anbar province to the west. In addition to this offensive, commanders here are hoping to recruit local Sunnis into U.S.-backed volunteer forces that have successfully countered al-Qaeda in Iraq in other parts of the country. U.S. commanders expected the fight in Diyala, part of a nationwide campaign against al-Qaeda in Iraq sanctuaries, to be particularly fierce. But most of the 200 fighters they expected to find here appear to have either escaped or successfully blended in with the local population. Lt. Col. Rod Coffey, commander of the squadron leading the charge into the insurgent sanctuary, known as the Bread Basket, estimated that the fighters would make their last stand in the town of Himbuz. U.S. soldiers said that when they entered the town Wednesday afternoon, it appeared to have emptied of insurgents. At a news conference in Baghdad, the top U.S. military commander in northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, acknowledged that the insurgents had not put up "the major defense that we initially thought." "We have some areas that we're still very interested in where we think the enemy has withdrawn to," he added, "and we're continuing to pursue." The attack on U.S. troops took place west of Himbuz around noon. According to initial reports received by commanders on the ground, the house had been searched by U.S. forces about 10 days ago and cleared of weapons. Before the recent offensive, insurgents were seen returning to the house at night and doing construction work. The house, which had a "for sale" sign on it, was apparently ringed with explosives, some of which were contained in drums, according to the initial reports. The blast was so forceful that it caused most of the structure to collapse. Some of the soldiers were buried in the rubble and had to be pulled out. Insurgents in Diyala have previously booby-trapped houses to target U.S. soldiers. Early Wednesday, before the blast, a radio briefing for battalion commanders warned that al-Qaeda in Iraq would employ "deep-buried" bombs in previously cleared areas. "The closer we get to Himbuz, the more we may encounter deep-buried IEDs," Coffey said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs. Some soldiers listening to radio communications following the blast were angered that an hour passed from the first accounts of casualties just after noon to word that some of the injured had been airlifted at 1:15 p.m. "This is ridiculous, I just don't understand why it took so long to get them out," said Staff Sgt. David Rozmarin, 26, of Omaha, who was sitting inside a Stryker combat vehicle as it rolled through villages where soldiers searched for weapons and insurgents. Maj. Shawn Garcia, a U.S. military spokesman, could not be reached early Thursday for comment on the evacuation. Other officials asked that the unit of the dead soldiers not be identified because their families had not yet been notified. The entry into Himbuz itself took place about 3 p.m., soldiers said. As troops moved into the town, a man on the second floor of a three-story building waved a red-and-green flag as if it were an insurgent banner, according to reports over the radio. Then he fled. There was little fighting most of the day in the Bread Basket, though a number of bombs and weapons caches were found, ground commanders said. A company outside Himbuz spent the day searching orange and date groves for weapons and insurgent fighters, for the most part with no success. U.S. troops surrounded the area to prevent fighters from escaping. After finding a maze of paths in the date groves outside Himbuz that commanders had identified as possible exit ways, soldiers stood guard as others entered the town. Some soldiers doubted they would be able to spot an insurgent among people leaving Himbuz, but in any event no one fled. "It's very possible for someone to be hiding in plain sight in front of us," Coffey said. The operation in Diyala is part of a broader U.S. military offensive called Phantom Phoenix, which includes forces across the country. Across four provinces of northern Iraq, the effort involves 24,000 U.S.-led troops, 50,000 Iraqi army soldiers, 80,000 Iraqi policemen and some of the 15,000 U.S.-backed volunteers, Hertling said. An Iraqi commander in Diyala province, Lt. Gen. Abdul Kareem al-Rubaie, estimated that 20 to 30 suspected insurgents were killed there during the initial operations, a figure that Hertling corroborated as roughly accurate. Battalion commanders on the ground, however, said only a few insurgents were killed over the past two days. Rubaie said he believed that al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters remain in Himbuz and the neighboring town of Dindel. "This is considered a main stronghold for terrorism in Diyala," he said. "The decisive battle with terrorism will be at this place." After the combat operations, the U.S. military plans to open outposts in the province to keep a full-time security presence, as well as bring in Iraqi army and police personnel and the U.S.-funded volunteer forces to try to secure the terrain. That would be followed by humanitarian and infrastructure projects, Hertling said. The United States has established the mainly Sunni volunteer forces in Anbar, Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. Coffey said commanders have already identified two tribal leaders willing to lead one of the militias in the Shirween area of northern Diyala. U.S. officials said they would continue to pursue al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters who might still be in the area, having blended in with the local population or hidden in the lush vegetation and fields. "We need to get after some of them palm groves," Col. Jon S. Lehr, the commander of U.S. forces in Diyala, told his battalion commanders on Wednesday. "Continue to do what you're doing out there and good hunting." Partlow reported from Baghdad. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572391.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times January 10, 2008 Pg. 1 Booby Trap Kills 6 U.S. Soldiers In Iraq The house rigged with explosives is the work of insurgents in Diyala province who fled just before a military operation against them. By Alexandra Zavis and Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers SINSIL THARIA, IRAQ —Senior Sunni Arab insurgents may have fled the Diyala River valley this week just as U.S. troops were preparing to attack, but they left behind a deadly calling card. A booby-trapped home exploded Wednesday, killing six American soldiers and injuring four others. The U.S. military also reported that three service members were killed by small-arms fire the day before. The two-day toll makes the latest effort to flush out the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq the deadliest military operation in months. The casualties came as about 4,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops descended Tuesday on Diyala province as part of a campaign to put new pressure on insurgents nationwide. Military officials believe many settled in the area north of Baghdad after being forced out of the capital and Anbar province in the west. At least 3,921 U.S. troops have been killed since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to the independent website icasualties.org. The last time six American troops were killed in a single hostile incident was in late May, in a roadside bombing in the Diyala community of Abu Sayda. The Diyala region accounts for more than 40% of attacks nationwide. Intelligence reports estimated that 50 to 60 senior insurgent leaders had been holed up northwest of Muqdadiya, but by the time the offensive began, they had fled -- in keeping with a long-standing pattern. As U.S. forces continue to press into areas where they have not regularly patrolled, they have been at greater risk of encountering homes rigged with large amounts of explosives, officials said. The military offered no details about Wednesday's deadly attack, nor did it release the names of the dead soldiers, pending notification of their families. "We are looking really closely at the tactic," said Edward Loomis, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. "We will continue to do everything we can to lower the risk of these events occurring. We are going to look really hard at this one." Rigged houses typically use explosives and triggering devices similar to those in roadside bombs or car bombs, which the military calls vehicle-borne IEDs. U.S. forces in Iraq first encountered large numbers of booby-trapped houses during the battle of Fallouja in 2004. American forces had steered clear of the city in Anbar province for much of that year, then telegraphed their intention to clear the city of Sunni Arab insurgents weeks before the operation began, allowing them to prepare elaborate defenses. A number of rigged homes were also found in Diyala province in May and June, Loomis said, as U.S. forces stepped up operations against Sunni insurgents. During the previous Diyala operations some military officers referred to such homes as house-borne IEDs. In the past, when such homes were discovered before they detonated, Air Force fighter planes were used to destroy them. On Sunday, soldiers south of Baqubah spotted suspected insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s unrolling wire around a building. U.S.-led forces launched a Hellfire missile at the building, then dropped two bombs on it. Secondary blasts, and wire discovered at the site, confirmed that the building had been rigged as a house-borne IED, U.S. military officials said. On Wednesday, U.S. and Iraqi forces combed isolated villages, dense orchards and palm groves. Mortar rounds crashed through thick foliage ahead of the advance through the agriculturally rich area, known as the breadbasket of Iraq. In Sinsil Tharia, curious villagers gathered to watch soldiers from the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, roll in with their armored vehicles. Families greeted the troops with offers of tea and sodas as they went door-to-door searching for insurgents and weapons. "There is no security," one man told the soldiers, as he cradled his daughter in his arms. "We are afraid to go out, and we expect to be killed at any moment." Residents said they hadn't seen masked gunmen who had been a common sight in their village before the offensive began. But the mayor warned that some insurgents still lurked among them. U.S. commanders said they believed senior insurgent leaders had fled the region before the offensive, but that as many as 200 lower-level fighters could be hiding among the population. Soldiers trudging through villages laced with canals said they were encountering much less fighting than they had expected. U.S. soldiers handed out pamphlets urging residents to form volunteer groups to help defend their areas from insurgent groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq, a mostly local organization that the military says is foreign-led. The decision by more than 70,000 mostly Sunni tribesmen across Iraq to turn against the insurgents they once tolerated played a key part in a 60% drop in violence nationwide since U.S. forces completed a 28,500-troop buildup in June. But a recent spate of suicide bombings has made clear that insurgents remain capable of spectacular attacks, many of them targeted at the security volunteers. Elsewhere in Iraq on Wednesday, car bombs exploded in front of two churches in the northern city of Kirkuk. The bombings came three days after four bombs targeted churches in Mosul. No one was killed in any of the blasts, though a few people suffered injuries. Religious leaders denounced the bombings as an attempt to instigate anger between religious groups. "We lived side by side with the Muslim brothers in Iraq and Kirkuk," said a priest at one of the two targeted churches in Kirkuk. "Those attacks will increase our determination. We will go on to carry the olive branch and carry the banner of peace and brotherhood." Also on Wednesday, radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr issued a statement condemning President Bush's visit to the Middle East and urging Arab leaders not to meet with him. "You brought the wars and you can't bring peace. . . . Get out of our land and you will be safe from us," Sadr said. "Then I address my words to the Arab leaders and say: ' . . . Don't be partners responsible for the blood of your own people. If you will accept his visit, then you are collaborating with him on the blood of your brothers in Palestine, Iraq and others." But some Shiites living in Najaf, where Sadr enjoys strong support, said the cleric should not be weighing in on such matters, particularly because Bush has not announced plans to visit Iraq. "It's not our business," said Abu Zahaa, a government employee. "I don't think the words in this statement can come from someone sane. Bush's visit is the concern of the states and nations that he is visiting." Zavis reported from Sinsil Tharia in Diyala and Barnes from Washington. Times staff writer Kimi Yoshino in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Najaf contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572326.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post January 10, 2008 Pg. 1 For U.S., The Goal Is Now 'Iraqi Solutions' Approach Acknowledges Benchmarks Aren't Met By Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writers In the year since President Bush announced he was changing course in Iraq with a troop "surge" and a new strategy, U.S. military and diplomatic officials have begun their own quiet policy shift. After countless unsuccessful efforts to push Iraqis toward various political, economic and security goals, they have decided to let the Iraqis figure some things out themselves. From Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to Army privates and aid workers, officials are expressing their willingness to stand back and help Iraqis develop their own answers. "We try to come up with Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," said Stephen Fakan, the leader of a provincial reconstruction team with U.S. troops in Fallujah. In many cases -- particularly on the political front -- Iraqi solutions bear little resemblance to the ambitious goals for 2007 that Bush laid out in his speech to the nation last Jan. 10. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis," he pledged. "Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year . . . the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution." Although some progress has been made and legislation in some cases has begun to slowly work its way through the parliament, none of these benchmarks has been achieved. Nor has the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki taken over security responsibility for all 18 provinces, as Bush forecast it would. Last month's transfer of Basra province by British forces brought to nine the number of provinces under Iraqi control. In explaining the situation, U.S. officials have made a virtue of necessity and have praised Iraqi ingenuity for finding different routes toward the same goals. Iraqis have figured out a way to distribute oil revenue without laws to regulate it, Crocker has often noted, and former Baathists are getting jobs. Local and provincial governing bodies -- some elected, some not -- are up and running. The Iraqis "are at the point where they are able to fashion their own approaches and desired outcomes," Crocker said in an interview, "and we, I think, in part recognizing that and in part reflecting on where we have been over the last almost five years, are increasingly prepared to say it's got to be done in Iraqi terms." The U.S. military has praised the Maliki government for acknowledging it is not ready to handle security in much of Iraq, and at the same time has dismissed ongoing violence in Basra and much of the rest of the south as an Iraqi problem. "There are innumerable challenges in the security situation in Basra," Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said late last year, "but there are Iraqi solutions emerging to some of these." For some observers, the approach indicates a new realism in Washington, a recognition that long years of grandiose plans drawn from U.S. templates have not worked in Iraq. But others charge that the phrase "Iraqi solutions" implies a cynical U.S. willingness to turn a blind eye to sectarianism, political violence and a wealth of papered-over problems -- if that is the price of getting the United States out of Iraq. "The new phrasing is both the dawning of reality, and the cynical use of language and common sense to camouflage past errors, hoping to avoid the audit of flawed logic that got us to this point," said a retired British general familiar with the U.S. experience in Iraq, and who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his current position. U.S. officials at various levels are pushing the idea for different reasons, said Sarah Sewall, director of Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a Clinton-era Pentagon official. While Petraeus has embraced the notion out of "realism," Sewall said, she thinks the Bush administration "has recently arrived at this formula out of desperation -- due to the failure of its past efforts." The U.S. occupation authority initially envisioned a free-market paradise for Iraq, with flat taxes and a state-of-the-art stock exchange. Its successors lowered their expectations, seeking a westernized, relatively corruption-free system, gently trying to wrest the economy away from state ownership. But with little progress, U.S. officials in Baghdad now are simply looking for something that works, frequently spotlighting the Iraqi government's top economic milestone -- passing a national budget and spending some of the appropriated funds. On the military front, reliance on Iraqi solutions brought an unanticipated success. During the March 2003 invasion, the U.S. military neglected Anbar province, in western Iraq. Later, top commanders decided that a few raids would subdue the growing Sunni insurgency there. Only after Anbar became the center of operations for the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq did U.S. combat forces move to claim the province, engaging in heavy fighting in the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. Last year, as Sunni tribes began to turn against al-Qaeda, U.S. officials accepted their offer to sort out the province themselves. Taking a leap of faith, U.S. commanders opened talks with tribal leaders and agreed to let them fight their own battles. But when the U.S. military suggested that the Shiite-led Iraqi government incorporate the Sunni fighters -- many of them veterans of anti-U.S. combat -- into their own security forces, the Iraqis balked. The Anbar situation has become an example of the reality Washington confronts, as Iraqis have made clear they do not need U.S. permission to do what they want. "We completely, absolutely reject" a permanent Sunni-based security force, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi told a news conference in late December. As soon as restive Sunni areas are calmed, he said, the local forces will be disbanded. Talk of Iraqi solutions "is largely a red herring," said Wayne White, who led the State Department's Iraq intelligence team from 2003 to 2005. "This is a catchy phrase aimed at touting -- and exaggerating -- success in Sunni Arab areas," such as Anbar, "while diverting focus away from potential downsides related to same," including the creation of local forces allied with the United States but opposed to the Iraqi government. Much of the "Iraqi solutions" strategy is taking place on the neighborhood level, where the U.S. military has expressed little interest in reversing the sectarian cleansing that contributed to the recent decline in violence. Joint U.S. civilian-military teams seem steeped in new levels of patience and flexibility. They report ground-level accommodations on such issues as adjusting U.S.-sponsored "micro-loans" to reflect Islamic rejection of interest payments and direct dealings with representatives of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Politically, realistically, representatives of . . . Sadr are important," said Paul Folmsbee, a Foreign Service officer who heads the U.S. civilian-military reconstruction team in Baghdad's Sadr City. "There's an office called the Office of the Moqtada al-Sadr, and they also provide many services to the population, and so we work with them." That includes working with Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, elements of which are fighting U.S. forces elsewhere, Folmsbee told reporters last month. To Crocker, the meaning of "Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems" is "blindingly obvious. Iraq has got a government. It's got a system. It's got provincial governments. It's got a military and a police. And it has leaders of all of these things who increasingly take themselves seriously as leaders." Crocker, who co-authored a 2002 paper predicting a "perfect storm" of things likely to go wrong after an ill-conceived U.S. invasion, was one of a number of U.S. diplomats who urged early caution. Since his arrival in Baghdad in March, he has insisted that the U.S. role is to "steer, push, prod and pound the table" to help Iraqis move forward without trying to do everything for them. A major challenge for the Iraqi government this year, he said, will be dealing with rampant corruption. "Will it be through a U.S.-style approach to rule of law, under which officials file financial disclosure payments and can't take more than a cup of non-Starbucks coffee?" Probably not, he said. "We can make some suggestions. We have. We are," Crocker said. "What we need them to do now is say, 'Thanks very much, but we've got a way of our own down which we want to move with this.' " The approach also seems designed to bypass thorny issues. Direct dealings with Sadr's forces in the Baghdad neighborhoods they control both reverses earlier policy and sidesteps initial U.S. hopes for elected local government. In southern Iraq, U.S. military and civilian officials have refused to become involved in the violence between warring Shiite groups, with Petraeus describing that conflict as something Iraqis must deal with on their own. The new openness to "Iraqi solutions" also reflects the U.S. military's painfully learned lessons about how to operate in an alien land. Army Col. Robert Roth, who trained Iraqi Army commanders in 2005, said it means that the only way to win in a counterinsurgency campaign is "by, with and through the people within that country where the insurgency exists -- they must decide how they want to live and then take action to make it so." The most successful example of that process in Iraq, Roth added, was the turnaround in Anbar. To the U.S. civilian officials with whom the military has frequently been at odds in Iraq, it is a welcome change. "I have a lot of admiration for my military colleagues," said a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. "A lot of them are really getting this, understanding issues . . . family, culture, values, religion. You don't identify an objective in those areas, like a hill, and say, 'Let's come up with a plan, and we'll take that piece of territory.' " The traditional military belief, he said, was that "if you just bring enough resources to a problem and get the right approach, the outcome is guaranteed. But it's very, very frustrating for them, as it is for all Americans, for members of Congress, because we are expending so much on this exercise, and we want to know that we're going to achieve something good. "But we are learning," the diplomat said. "We are a pragmatic people at the end of the day . . . [and] you don't get anybody ever to do something they don't want to do." Several officers pointed out that the emphasis on local answers simply follows the instructions of the Army's new manual on counterinsurgency. Conrad Crane, an Army historian who co-authored the manual, noted that it quotes Lawrence of Arabia's famous admonition, "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly." Crane said he has seen among U.S. brigade and battalion commanders in Iraq "a growing realization on the ground that Iraqi solutions will best fit Iraqi problems. We have learned some of this the hard way." http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572338.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 10, 2008 Pg. 1 ’05 Use Of Gas By Blackwater Leaves Questions By James Risen WASHINGTON — The helicopter was hovering over a Baghdad checkpoint into the Green Zone, one typically crowded with cars, Iraqi civilians and United States military personnel. Suddenly, on that May day in 2005, the copter dropped CS gas, a riot-control substance the American military in Iraq can use only under the strictest conditions and with the approval of top military commanders. An armored vehicle on the ground also released the gas, temporarily blinding drivers, passers-by and at least 10 American soldiers operating the checkpoint. “This was decidedly uncool and very, very dangerous,” Capt. Kincy Clark of the Army, the senior officer at the scene, wrote later that day. “It’s not a good thing to cause soldiers who are standing guard against car bombs, snipers and suicide bombers to cover their faces, choke, cough and otherwise degrade our awareness.” Both the helicopter and the vehicle involved in the incident at the Assassins’ Gate checkpoint were not from the United States military, but were part of a convoy operated by Blackwater Worldwide, the private security contractor that is under scrutiny for its role in a series of violent episodes in Iraq, including a September shooting in downtown Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead. None of the American soldiers exposed to the chemical, which is similar to tear gas, required medical attention, and it is not clear if any Iraqis did. Still, the previously undisclosed incident has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq, and whether they operate under the same rules of engagement and international treaty obligations that the American military observes. “You run into this issue time and again with Blackwater, where the rules that apply to the U.S. military don’t seem to apply to Blackwater,” said Scott L. Silliman, the executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at the Duke University School of Law. Officers and noncommissioned officers from the Third Infantry Division who were involved in the episode said there were no signs of violence at the checkpoint. Instead, they said, the Blackwater convoy appeared to be stuck in traffic and may have been trying to use the riot-control agent as a way to clear a path. Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, said the CS gas had been released by mistake. “Blackwater teams in the air and on the ground were preparing a secure route near a checkpoint to provide passage for a motorcade,” Ms. Tyrrell said in an e-mail message. “It seems a CS gas canister was mistaken for a smoke canister and released near an intersection and checkpoint.” She said that the episode was reported to the United States Embassy in Baghdad, and that the embassy’s chief security officer and the Department of Defense conducted a full investigation. The troops exposed to the gas also said they reported it to their superiors. But military officials in Washington and Baghdad said they could not confirm that an investigation had been conducted. Officials at the State Department, which contracted with Blackwater to provide diplomatic security, also could not confirm that an investigation had taken place. About 20 to 25 American soldiers were at the checkpoint at the time of the incident, and at least 10 were exposed to the CS gas after “rotor wash” from the hovering helicopter pushed it toward them, according to officers who were there. A number of Iraqi civilians, both on foot and in cars waiting to go through the checkpoint, were also exposed. The gas can cause burning and watering eyes, skin irritation and coughing and difficulty breathing. Nausea and vomiting can also result. Blackwater says it was permitted to carry CS gas under its contract at the time with the State Department. According to a State Department official, the contract did not specifically authorize Blackwater personnel to carry or use CS, but it did not prohibit it. The military, however, tightly controls use of riot control agents in war zones. They are banned by an international convention on chemical weapons endorsed by the United States, although a 1975 presidential order allows their use by the United States military in war zones under limited defensive circumstances and only with the approval of the president or a senior officer designated by the president. “It is not allowed as a method or means of warfare,” said Michael Schmitt, professor of international law at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. “There are very, very strict restrictions on the use of CS gas in a war zone.” In 2003, President Bush approved the use of riot control agents by the military in Iraq under the 1975 order, but only for such purposes as controlling rioting prisoners. At the time of Mr. Bush’s decision, there were also concerns that the Iraqi Army would use civilians as shields, particularly in a last-ditch battle in Baghdad, and some officials believed that riot control agents might be effective in such circumstances to reduce casualties. A United States military spokesman in Baghdad refused to describe the current rules of engagement governing the use of riot control agents, but former Army lawyers say their use requires the approval of the military’s most senior commanders. “You never had a soldier with the authority to do it on his own,” said Thomas J. Romig, a retired major general who served as the chief judge advocate general of the United States Army from 2001 to 2005 and is now the dean of the Washburn School of Law in Topeka, Kan. Several Army officers who have served in Iraq say they have never seen riot control agents used there by the United States military at all. Col. Robert Roth, commander of Task Force 4-64 AR of the Third Infantry Division, which was manning the Assassins’ Gate checkpoint at the time of the Blackwater incident, said that his troops were not issued any of the chemicals. “We didn’t even possess any kind of riot control agents, and we couldn’t employ them if we wanted to,” said Colonel Roth, who is now serving in South Korea. But the same tight controls apparently did not apply to Blackwater at the time of the incident. The company initially got a contract to provide security for American officials in Iraq with the Coalition Provisional Authority, an agreement which did not address the use of CS gas. After the authority went out of business, the State Department extended the contract for another year until rebidding it. Blackwater and two other companies — DynCorp and Triple Canopy — that now provide security are not permitted to use CS gas under their current contracts, the State Department said. The State Department said that its lawyers did not believe the Blackwater incident violated any treaty agreements. In a written statement, the State Department said the international chemical weapons convention “allows for the use of riot control agents, such as CS, where they are not used as a method of warfare. The use of a riot control agent near a checkpoint at an intersection in the circumstances described is not considered to be a method of warfare.” Yet experts said that the legal status was not so clear cut. “I have never seen anything that would make it permissible to use tear gas to get traffic out of the way,” Mr. Schmitt said. “In my view, it’s an improper use of a riot control agent.” Blackwater’s regular use of smoke canisters, which create clouds intended to impede attacks on convoys, also sets it apart from the military. While it does not raise the same legal issues as the CS gas, military officials said the practice raised policy concerns. Col. Roth said that he and other military officers frowned on the use of smoke, because it could be used for propaganda purposes to convince Iraqis that the United States was using chemical weapons. Officers and soldiers who were hit by the CS gas, some of whom asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the incident, have described it with frustration. They said no weapons were being fired or any other violence that might have justified Blackwater’s response. In a personal journal posted online the day of the incident, Captain Clark provided a detailed description of what happened and included photos. While standing at the checkpoint, he wrote, he saw a Blackwater helicopter overhead. “We noticed that one of them was hovering right over the intersection in front of our checkpoint,” he wrote. “There was a small amount of white smoke coming up from the intersection. I grabbed my radio and asked one of the guard towers what the smoke was. He answered that it looked like one of the helicopters dropped a smoke grenade on the cars in the intersection. I asked him why were they doing that, was there something going on in the intersection that would cause them to do this. He said, nope, couldn’t see anything. Then I said, well what kind of smoke is it? “Before he could say anything, I got my answer. My eyes started watering, my nose started burning and my face started to heat up. CS! I heard the lieutenant say, “Sir that’s not smoke, it’s CS gas.” After reporting the incident to his superiors, Captain Clark wrote, a convoy that the helicopter was protecting showed up. Because the gas caused a “complete traffic jam in front of our checkpoint,” the captain wrote, “armored cars in the convoy made a U-turn — and threw another CS grenade.” “It just seemed incredibly stupid,” he wrote. “The only thing we could figure out was for some reason, one of them figured that CS would somehow clear traffic. Why someone would think a substance that makes your eyes water, nose burn and face hurt would make a driver do anything other than stop is beyond me.” Army Staff Sgt. Kenny Mattingly also was puzzled. “We saw the Little Bird (Blackwater helicopter) come and hover right in front of the gate, and I saw one of the guys dropping a canister,” Sergeant Mattingly said in an interview. “There was no reason for dropping the CS gas. We didn’t hear any gunfire or anything. There was no incident under way.” http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572322.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post January 10, 2008 Pg. 18 New Estimate Of Violent Deaths Among Iraqis Is Lower By David Brown and Joshua Partlow, Washington Post Staff Writers A new survey estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of the country. Roughly 9 out of 10 of those deaths were a consequence of U.S. military operations, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare. The survey, conducted by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization, also found a 60 percent increase in nonviolent deaths -- from such causes as childhood infections and kidney failure -- during the period. The results, which will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine at the end of the month, are the latest of several widely divergent and controversial estimates of mortality attributed to the Iraq war. The three-year toll of violent deaths calculated in the survey is one-quarter the size of that found in a smaller survey by Iraqi and Johns Hopkins University researchers published in the journal Lancet in 2006. Both teams used the same method -- a random sample of houses throughout the country. For the new study, however, surveyors visited 23 times as many places and interviewed five times as many households. Surveyors also got more outside supervision in the recent study; that wasn't possible in the spring of 2006 when the Johns Hopkins survey was conducted. Despite reaching a lower estimate of total deaths, the epidemiologists found what they termed "a massive death toll in the wake of the 2003 invasion." Iraq's population-wide mortality rate nearly doubled, and the death rate from violence increased tenfold after the coalition attack. Men between 15 and 60 were at the greatest risk. Their death rate from all causes tripled, and their risk of dying a violent death went up elevenfold. Iraq's health minister, Salih al-Hasnawi, in a conference call held by WHO yesterday morning, said: "Certainly I believe this number. I think that this is a very sound survey with accurate methodology." Other experts not involved in the research also expressed confidence in the findings, even though, as with the earlier survey, the 151,000-death estimate has a wide range of statistical uncertainty, from a low of 104,000 to a high of 223,000. "Overall, this is a very good study," said Paul Spiegel, a medical epidemiologist at the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in Geneva. "What they have done that other studies have not is try to compensate for the inaccuracies and difficulties of these surveys, triangulating to get information from other sources." Spiegel added that "this does seem more believable to me" than the earlier survey, which estimated 601,000 deaths from violence over the same period. U.S. military officials yesterday pointed to the great disparity between the two estimates, noting privately that it underscores the potential for inaccuracies in such surveys. The Defense Department has not released any estimates of civilian deaths and has said often that the military takes precautions to prevent civilian casualties, while the United States' enemies in Iraq deliberately target civilians. "It would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman. "The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq." Les Roberts, an epidemiologist now at Columbia University who helped direct the Johns Hopkins survey, also praised the new one. While both found a large increase in mortality, his found that much more of it was caused by violence. "My gut feeling is that most of the difference between the two studies is a reluctance to report to the government a death due to violence," he said. "If your son is fighting the government and died, that may not be something you'd want to admit to the government." The new study was conducted between August 2006 and March 2007 in all regions of the country, including the Kurdish northern area. Surveyors visited about 1,000 randomly selected geographic areas (called "clusters") and interviewed people in 9,345 households. They were asked whether anyone in the household -- defined as people living under the same roof "and eating from one pot" -- had died from June 2001 through June 2006. Each death was assigned to one of 23 causes. "Violent death" covered shootings, stabbings, bombings and other intentional injuries, and included civilian, military and police deaths but not suicides and traffic fatalities unrelated to roadside bombs. Danger prevented surveyors from visiting 11 percent of the chosen clusters. Deaths in those areas were estimated using the ratio of deaths in the region to deaths in other regions as found in the Iraq Body Count, a continuous count of reported and verifiable violent deaths of civilians kept by an independent, London-based group. (That count, which even its organizers agree misses many deaths, registered 47,668 deaths from the U.S.-led invasion through June 2006). Previous research has shown that household surveys typically miss 30 to 50 percent of deaths. One reason is that some families that have suffered violent deaths leave the survey area. Demographers think that as many as 2 million Iraqis have fled the country since the war began, and the 151,000-death estimate includes an adjustment for this. Calculating death tolls in Iraq has been notoriously difficult. Some people are kidnapped and disappear, and others turn up months or years later in mass graves. Some are buried or otherwise disposed of without being recorded. In particularly violent areas, local governments have effectively ceased to function, and there are ineffective channels for collecting and passing information between hospitals, morgues and the central government. One senior Health Ministry official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there are detailed casualty numbers, but "we have strict instructions not to give them out." The U.N. human rights mission in Iraq has criticized the Iraqi government for withholding information on civilian casualties. Last month, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, provided a U.S. military chart on civilian deaths in Iraq between January 2006 and December 2007, but specific monthly tolls were not included. A rough estimate based on this chart, which synthesized Iraqi and U.S. figures, indicated that some 40,000 civilians had died in the past two years in Iraq. Jalil Hadi al-Shimmari, who oversees the western Baghdad health department, said the 151,000 total seems roughly accurate but is probably a "modest" one. "The real number might be bigger than this," he said. The study employed about 400 interviewers. Some were employees of the Iraq Health Ministry, and others were local health workers, such as pharmacists, midwives and nurses. Women surveyors were used to interview women in the households. Different religions and sects were represented. "They built up the trust of the community, especially in the difficult areas," said Naeema al-Gasseer, WHO's representative in Iraq. One Iraqi official working on the survey was killed in random violence on the way to work. A few interviewers were detained by local militia under suspicion they were spies. One surveyor was kidnapped and ransomed. "They did risk their lives. There was a determination to make it a success," Gasseer said. Partlow reported from Baghdad. Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572345.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 10, 2008 W.H.O. Says Iraq Civilian Death Toll Higher Than Cited By Lawrence K. Altman and Richard A. Oppel Jr. The World Health Organization on Wednesday waded into the controversial subject of Iraqi civilian deaths, publishing a study that estimated that the number of deaths from the start of the war through June 2006 was at least twice as high as the oft-cited Iraq Body Count. The study is the latest in a long series of attempts to come up with realistic numbers of civilian deaths. The numbers are politically fraught, and researchers’ work has been further complicated by problems in collecting data while working in a war zone. The estimates have varied widely. The Iraq Body Count, a nongovernmental group based in Britain that bases its numbers on news media accounts, put the number of civilians dead at 47,668 during the same period of time as the World Health Organization study, the W.H.O. report said. President Bush in the past used a number that was similar to one put forward at the time by the Iraq Body Count. But another study, by Johns Hopkins, which has come under criticism for its methodology, cited an estimate of about 600,000 dead between the war’s start, in March 2003, and July 2006. The World Health Organization said its study, based on interviews with families, indicated with a 95 percent degree of statistical certainty that between 104,000 and 223,000 civilians had died. It based its estimate of 151,000 deaths on that range. Those figures made violence the leading cause of adult male deaths in Iraq and one of the leading causes of death for the population as a whole, the health organization research team reported online in the New England Journal of Medicine. More than half the violent deaths occurred in Baghdad. While the new study appears to have the broadest scope to date, increasing its reliability, well known limitations of such efforts in war areas make it unlikely to resolve debate about the extent of the killing in Iraq. Iraqi officials gave conflicting assessments of the newest study, with one senior Health Ministry official praising it and another saying the numbers were exaggerated. The White House said that it had not seen the study and would not comment on its estimated death toll, but that the recent increase in American forces had reduced civilian and military casualties. “We mourn the deaths of all people in Iraq,” said Jeanie Mamo, a White House spokeswoman. In any case, the study ended four months after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra helped set off a wave of killings throughout Baghdad and other mixed Sunni-Shiite areas. So because of its timing, the study missed the period of what is believed to be the worst sectarian killings, during the latter half of 2006 and the first eight months of 2007. The figures on violent deaths were part of a large study of chronic illnesses, mental health status, environmental risk factors and other factors affecting family health in Iraq. The figures were based on interviews with 9,345 heads of households across the country that had been selected according to statistical methods that are standard in peaceful areas. The interviewers, who were employees of the Iraqi Ministry of Health, had been trained how to ask the survey questions and to assign the stated causes of deaths. The surveyors largely conducted their work in August and September 2006. In Baghdad, Shiite militiamen, often acting in coordination with or with the acquiescence of fellow Shiites in the Iraq security forces, purged many neighborhoods of Sunnis. Many were grabbed, handcuffed, shot in the head and dumped with other victims. Sunni insurgents continued their campaign of terrorizing Shiite areas with car bombs and other attacks. In fact, one co-author, Louay Hakki Rasheed, was killed on his way to work on Aug. 2, 2007. The extraordinarily dangerous security situation prevented surveyors from visiting about 11 percent of the areas that the researchers had intended to visit. Most of the places that were off-limits to the researchers were in Anbar Province, the Sunni-dominated region of western Iraq. While there have been significant security improvements in Anbar in the past year — after Sunni tribal leaders joined with United States troops to drive out extremist militants — in 2006 the province was a lawless haven dominated by insurgents. Most of the other areas into which the researchers could not go for safety reasons were in Baghdad, which at the time was being ripped into balkanized concentrations of Shiites and Sunnis. Some neighborhoods looked like urban ghost towns, as the residents who did not have the money or the ability to flee the country stayed holed up in their homes rather than risk being abducted or killed by the death squads and gangs of criminals and insurgents who roamed much of the capital freely. Iraqi authorities often have asserted that estimates of deaths provided by outside groups and researchers are too high. But there is a significant political element to the numbers, and as the surge in violent deaths in 2006 from death squad activities and other killings became a major embarrassment, the Iraqi government moved to sharply curb access to the data. At the same time, Iraqi officials have asserted that they made improvements in their ability to track fatalities using morgue counts and other means. One shortcoming has always been that the corpses of many victims, if they are identifiable, are taken by family members straight to the cemetery, bypassing the morgue and hospital. Yet Iraqi authorities say that relatives still have an incentive to obtain a death certificate because it is required for inheritance, for government compensation, and for other purposes. In a telephone news conference organized by the health organization, a voice identified as that of the Iraqi health minister, Salih Mahdi Mutlab al-Hasnawi, said, “It is a very sound survey, and the sample is a good sample,” and “I believe in those numbers.” But a senior official in the Iraq Health Ministry’s inspector general’s office cast doubt on the findings, saying 151,000 was far too high. The official, who said he was not allowed to speak about the matter and refused to allow his name to be used, said the numbers cited by the study were much larger than figures tracked by the ministry. But he refused to provide any alternative tallies for the death toll, saying he was not authorized to do so. Mohamed M. Ali, a health agency statistician and co-author of the report, said that “in the absence of comprehensive death registration and hospital reporting, household surveys are the best we can do.” Even then, the figures collected are likely to be underestimates because “some homes could not be visited because of high levels of insecurity and more people move residence in times of conflict,” Mr. Hasnawi, the health minister, said in a statement issued by the W.H.O. To come up with estimates for the 11 percent of target areas they could not reach, the researchers used a formula that was based primarily on the Iraq Body Count to determine how much higher the number of deaths could have been there than in other areas of the country. The Iraq Body Count project bases its numbers on news media reports. That count registered 47,668 civilian deaths because of violence in the study period, a figure that the health organization considered low because many such deaths are not reported in the news media. The Johns Hopkins study, which was published in The Lancet in October 2006, estimated that 601,027 Iraqi civilians had died from violence. That study, which was conducted with researchers from Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, involved one-fifth the number of households and one-twentieth the number of areas surveyed by the new W.H.O. study. Gardiner Harris contributed reporting.. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572405.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP CNN January 9, 2008 Six Soldiers Killed In Booby-Trapped House In Iraq’s Diyala Province By Jamie McIntyre Lou Dobbs Tonight (CNN), 7:00 PM LOU DOBBS: Good evening, everybody. We begin tonight with news that nine of our troops have been killed in Iraq over the past 48 hours. Six of our soldiers were killed today on an explosion north of Baghdad. Three were killed in a separate attack yesterday northwest of the Iraqi capital. The soldiers were killed as thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops began an offensive against al Qaeda in northern Iraq. Jamie McIntyre has our report from the Pentagon. Jamie? JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Lou, in recent weeks the trends in Iraq have looked pretty positive, but today showed that on the battlefield, something that looks peaceful can turn deadly dangerous in the blink of an eye. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MCINTYRE (voice-over): It was a booby trapped house in Iraq's Diyala Province, much like this one bombed by a U.S. F-16 a few days ago, that inflicted a heavy toll on the U.S., then the trap was discovered in time and the house destroyed. But in the latest incident, the U.S. wasn't so lucky. Six soldiers were killed, four wounded. Rigging houses with high explosives is not a new tactic, but it's just part of the deadly arsenal that al Qaeda is using to fight back against the recent successes of the U.S. and its Iraqi citizen allies. MAJ. GEN. MARK HERTLING, MULTI-NATIONAL DIVISION NORTH: There has been a marked increase in AQI activity in Diyala Province in the form of high profile spectacular events. MCINTYRE: This latest high profile attack has put the U.S. death toll right back on the fast track. After only 23 Americans were killed in all of last month, already 17 have died this month with more than 20 days to go. But as this video shot from an unmanned predator spy plane seems to show, al Qaeda is using murder and intimidation to target so-called CLCs, concerned local citizens who have been the biggest reason behind a drop in violence. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you're about to see on the film are three individuals pulling another individual from the trunk of a car in the middle of an open field. And then throwing him into a ditch and assassinating him. MCINTYRE: The U.S. military hopes the brutality will be al Qaeda's Achilles heel. That it will backfire as it did last year when Iraqis turned against al Qaeda in Anbar Province and other areas. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That, in fact, is what's generated the concern local citizens in the first place, and it's sort of a reverse counter-intuitive logic. They're trying to intimidate people that join them by killing them. It's causing more people to go against them. (END VIDEOTAPE) MCINTYRE: Whenever violence flares in Iraq, the U.S. military has the same explanation, they're attacking our success. Military commanders also say that the recent events give some justification for tempering their recent optimism with a healthy dose of caution. Lou? DOBBS: Jamie, thank you, Jamie McIntyre from the Pentagon. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572372.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post January 10, 2008 Pg. 4 U.S. To Bolster Forces In Afghanistan Pentagon Cites NATO's Failure to Provide Additional Troops By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer The U.S. military is planning to deploy about 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan this spring to counter an expected offensive by Taliban insurgents, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday, citing NATO allies' failure to provide additional combat troops. The reinforcements would be in place by April and stay for about seven months to try to bring down violence, which rose significantly last year, leading the Bush administration to reassess its Afghanistan strategy. Overall attacks were up 27 percent, with a spike of 60 percent in the volatile southern province of Helmand, where the Taliban resurgence is strongest, according to Pentagon data. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will receive the formal order Friday to deploy a Marine air-ground task force and a Marine battalion to Afghanistan, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. Gates does not plan to approve the order immediately but will weigh it carefully because the Marine deployment would represent a "serious allocation of forces," Morrell said. Bush administration officials said a political decision has been made that the U.S. military must shoulder a greater combat burden, given that the United States has failed to persuade NATO allies to contribute the thousands of extra combat troops needed to train Afghan forces and provide security. "The commander needs additional forces there . . . and the allies are not inclined to provide them, so we are looking at providing additional combat forces," Morrell said. The United States now provides about 26,000 of the roughly 54,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan and has the lead combat role in the eastern part of the country, while U.S. Special Operations forces operate in all regions. British, Canadian, Australian and Dutch forces play key combat roles in southern Afghanistan, where violence has surged over the past year, particularly suicide and roadside bombings. During a trip to Afghanistan last month, Gates said he was not inclined to supply the additional combat troops and continued to press NATO. But now, Morrell said, Gates has decided "to stop hammering our allies for things which may not be politically possible for them to deliver." NATO force commanders have acknowledged that they lack enough troops to control territory in the nation of almost 32 million people, allowing the Taliban to recapture district centers following NATO offensives against the insurgents. That shortage led the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, to ask for at least three more combat battalions, they said. Many NATO countries have placed restrictions on their troops that keep them out of combat. Other countries, such as Canada, operate without such restrictions but say their forces are already stretched. "It's difficult to see how Canada could contribute more without a negative impact" on sustaining the troops' presence, Canada's army chief, Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, said in Washington last month. Canada has about 2,500 soldiers in southern Afghanistan. Gates has decided that the Marines going to Afghanistan will not come from Iraq's Anbar province, as called for under an earlier Marine Corps proposal, because the situation in Iraq remains tenuous, Pentagon and administration officials said. The plan to send Marines to Afghanistan was first reported yesterday by ABC News. The Marine air-ground task force will go to Helmand, where its mission will be "to beat back another spring offensive," Morrell said. Fighting in Afghanistan tends to be seasonal, with a lull in winter when the weather makes travel difficult. British forces now lead the NATO command in southern Afghanistan, including Helmand. Leslie acknowledged that Taliban gains in southern Afghanistan are a serious challenge. "The south is on a knife edge," he said. "Failure to secure the south could lead to unpleasant second- and third-order effects." The Pentagon plan would dispatch a Marine battalion to train the Afghan army and police, partially meeting a shortfall of about 3,500 trainers for the police force, which U.S. officials say suffers from corruption and illiteracy. More trainers are needed for the Afghan army, following a decision by the Pentagon last month to increase the manpower goal of that force from 70,000 to 80,000. Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572395.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times January 10, 2008 Sending Marines To Afghanistan Proposed Gates has yet to OK the idea to ship 3,200 more troops for a rotation. More NATO forces are still sought. By Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON —Faced with rising violence, U.S. military officials have proposed sending additional troops to Afghanistan this spring in an effort to counter the growing power of Taliban militants. Pentagon officials want to deploy 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan for a standard seven-month stint and would not replace them when they leave. Added to the 27,000 U.S. troops there, the additional Marines would boost the U.S. force to the highest level since the 2001 invasion. The proposal is supported by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and could be submitted to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as early as Friday. But Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, emphasized that Gates would not rubber stamp it. "The secretary is going to want to think long and hard about it before he approves it, because it involves a serious additional commitment of U.S. forces," Morrell said. Gates for months has tried to persuade U.S. allies to send additional troops. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization commands about 42,000 troops in Afghanistan, including about 15,000 of the Americans there. The number of bombings and clashes with Taliban-aligned militants increased in 2007, and 117 U.S. military personnel were killed, according to the independent website icasualties.org. Pentagon planners have examined the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy and troop build-up in Iraq to determine which tactics and strategies could work in Afghanistan. But Morrell said the proposal for additional Marines grew less out of the lessons of Iraq and more from the realization that, though weakened, the Taliban is a "stubborn" problem. "It's based upon the fact the Taliban remains a persistent threat and commanders on the ground feel that additional forces are necessary to take on an additional spring offensive," he said. The majority of the Marine force would serve in southern Afghanistan, one of the more violent areas. They would join other U.S. forces as well as troops from Canada, Britain and the Netherlands. A smaller group of Marines would train Afghan security forces. The proposal to send more U.S. troops follows months of unsuccessful efforts by Gates and Mullen to persuade NATO countries to send additional combat battalions and trainers. At a congressional hearing last month, Gates said he intended to continue applying pressure. "I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point," Gates said. In a meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, a few days later, Gates was told by several NATO defense ministers that domestic politics prevented them from sending more troops. U.S. planners consequently have sought other ways to meet a request for 7,500 more troops from Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who serves as commander of NATO forces in the country. But a military official said Wednesday that sending Marines would not mean that Washington would ease the pressure on its allies. "The U.S. leadership would still like NATO to meet its commitments," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the proposal. "We still need NATO nations to exert a greater effort." Morrell said that the need for more NATO forces remained. "If anything, it increases the pressure on NATO," Morrell said. "It shows we are stepping up to the plate to fill part of the shortfall of 7,500 and other countries should dig deep and provide what they can to fulfill the rest." Military officials compared the extra Marines to a buildup of U.S. forces last spring. Gates ordered extended tours for members of a brigade of the 10th Mountain Division to augment a NATO offensive against the Taliban. The new Marines would arrive in April, when the winter snows have melted and heavy fighting is expected to resume. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572448.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) January 10, 2008 Afghanistan Welcomes Plan To Boost US Troop Numbers KABUL (AFP) -- Afghanistan on Thursday welcomed U.S. plans to send up to 3,000 addition marines to counter an expected Taliban spring offensive but insisted the long-term solution is to boost Afghan forces. The defense ministry said more international troops are needed to battle the extremist militia, which is believed to be preparing to launch an offensive as soon as the winter snows melt. "At present, we need foreign forces to maintain peace and security. We welcome the increase in numbers and facilities," ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP. "But the long-term solution is that we need support to increase Afghan forces in quality and quantity, so they can take up the responsibility for their country." Since the collapse of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001, Afghanistan has seen a significant slowdown in the militants' activities each winter, followed by a surge when the weather improves in spring. "We don't expect any particular spring offensive this year, just the normal increase in activities every spring," Azimi said. The Afghan army is expected to reach 70,000 troops in the first half of this year. "The year 2008 is going to be different from last year. The Afghan army is getting better and bigger and well-equipped," he said. "We don't expect a major speedy change, but slowly and steadily our security forces are expanding." U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering sending about 3,000 marines to Afghanistan in anticipation of a spike in Taliban attacks once roads and mountains become passable again in spring, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday. The marines would make up part of the shortfall of 7,500 troops, after North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries failed to meet promises to provide men and combat equipment despite a rise in Taliban activity last year. "The commander needs additional forces there, our allies are not in a position to provide them, so we are now looking at perhaps carrying a bit of that additional load," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. Coalition commanders have complained that they are short three infantry battalions, 3,000 trainers and helicopters, which were promised but not delivered by NATO members. The proposal to send marines to fill the gap goes before Gates on Friday but he is unlikely to make a final decision at that time, Morrell said in Washington. Currently, there are 26,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, most of them under the 40,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080110572431.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1233668_AEf PjkQAAQb2R4fHkgRhbzJ5gJc&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080110aaindex_concat.html&cred=qMwNL2Avb.YeO7ho 43fGmehBer2DwfGF42kl0P4VH_yPT.oY3TNGgaVrEBUdmhm8#T OP"> |
