Over the last few weeks Dutch media have published information gleaned from Dutch intelligence files regarding the Muslim Brotherhood. One report indicated that Samir Azzouz and Noureddine el Fatmi, two top members of the Hofstad group (and, later, of the so-called “Piranha network”) had had close financial dealings with members of the Brotherhood based in the Netherlands. Another indicated that the Brotherhood, through the European Trust (its powerful financial arm in Europe), controlled two of the country’s largest mosques.
The lively discussion taking place both in the Dutch parliament and in the media as a consequence of these revelations resembles very closely the debate that is taking place on this side of the pond at various levels (and on this site). I have published an article in the latest issue of Opinio, a Dutch weekly, regarding the issue. While the article is in Dutch, below is the translation:
Recent media reports revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and most influential of all militant Islamist groups, has gained a foothold in the Netherlands, quietly placing itself behind two of the country’s largest and important mosques (de Rotterdamse Essalammoskee en de Westermoskee in Amsterdam-West).
The debate at the Tweede Kamer that immediately followed the revelation mirrors the discussion that is taking place among academics and policymakers throughout Europe and America on the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and on whether it poses a danger to the West. Some, including the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR), consider that the Brotherhood has renounced the violence that has characterized its activities since its foundation in the 1920s, has embraced democracy, and can even be considered a viable partner in attempts to contrast jihadi groups. Others, both in the West and in the Muslim world, consider this position naïve and based on statements made by Brotherhood leaders for the consumption of credulous Western ears, ignoring what the group says in Arabic and, more importantly, what it does on the ground.
The truth is that, despite its recent claims of moderation, the Brotherhood still adopts the same radical agenda that has characterized it for the last 80 years. In a December 2005 interview to the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, Mohammed Akef, the group’s official supreme guide clearly stated that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview - the spread of Islam, until it rules the world.” On the Brotherhood’s website Akef also tellingly said: "I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America, because Islam has logic and a mission.”
And while the final goal of the Brotherhood is, as its publications and leaders openly say, world dominance, the group adopts different tactics to obtain it. Flexibility and deceit are the two qualities that distinguish the Brotherhood from groups such as al Qaeda and that have allowed the group to thrive throughout its history. The Brotherhood, in fact, operates in different ways according to the circumstances. In places were conflict is what it deems the best option to achieve its goal, the Brotherhood will pick up arms. In Palestine, for example, the Brotherhood operates through Hamas (art. 2 of Hamas official charter states: “Hamas is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.”). In the West, on the other hand, the Brotherhood has chosen a completely different tactic. Having realized that a full front confrontation, as the one al Qaeda is attempting, against the West, is premature, given the relative weakness of the radical Islamic movement, the Brotherhood has decided for a more nuanced approach.
In the West violence and confrontation are replaced by a cleverly engineered mix of penetration of the system through appeasement and simultaneous radicalization of the Muslim population. Its leaders publicly vow the group’s dedication to integration and democracy, representing themselves as mainstream, and seeking to portray themselves as the representatives of the various Western Muslim communities in the media and in dialogues with Western governments. Yet, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While Brotherhood representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, the group’s mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
Some, eager to create a dialogue with their increasingly disaffected Muslim minority, overlook this duplicity. Yet the Brotherhood’s plans are there to be seen. In 1990 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, possibly Sunni Islam’s most influential scholar today and the unofficial theological leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood, published a book called Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase. This 186-page treatise can be considered the most recent manifesto of the Islamist revivalist movement. As Qaradawi explains in the introduction, the “Islamic Movement” is meant to be the “organized, collective work, undertaken by the people, to restore Islam to the leadership of society” and to reinstate “the Islamic caliphate system to the leadership anew as required by sharia.”
After examining the situation of the “Islamic Movement” throughout the Muslim world, the dissertation devotes significant attention to the situation of Muslims living in the West. Qaradawi explains how Muslim expatriates living in Europe, Australia and North America “are no longer few in numbers,” and that their presence is both permanent and destined to grow with new waves of immigration. While Qaradawi says that their presence is “necessary” for several reasons—such as spreading the word of Allah globally and defending the Muslim Nation “against the antagonism and misinformation of anti- Islamic forces and trends”—it is also problematic. Because the Muslim Nation, and therefore Muslim minorities “scattered throughout the world,” do not have a centralized leadership, “melting” poses a serious risk. Qaradawi warns, in other words, that a Muslim minority could lose its Islamic identity and be absorbed by the non-Muslim majority.
Qaradawi sees the lack of Muslim leadership not only as a problem, however. He also views it as an unprecedented opportunity for the Islamist movement to “play the role of the missing leadership of the Muslim Nation with all its trends and groups.” While the revivalist movement can exercise only limited influence in Muslim countries, where hostile regimes keep it in check (the Brotherhood is outlawed in several Muslim countries), Qaradawi realizes that it is able to operate freely in the democratic West. Muslim expatriates disoriented by life in non-Muslim communities and often lacking the most basic knowledge about Islam, moreover, represent an ideally receptive audience for the movement’s propaganda. Qaradawi asserts that revivalists need to take on an activist role in the West, claiming that “it is the duty of [the] Islamic Movement not to leave these expatriates to be swept by the whirlpool of the materialistic trend that prevails in the West.”
Having affirmed the necessity of the Islamist movement in the West, Qaradawi proceeds to present a plan of operation. The Egyptian-born scholar openly calls for the creation of a separate society for Muslims within the West. While he highlights the importance of keeping open a dialogue with non-Muslims on the surface, he advocates the establishment of Muslim communities with “their own religious, educational and recreational establishments.” He urges his fellow revivalists to try “to have your small society within the larger society” and “your own ‘Muslim ghetto.’” Qaradawi clearly sees the Islamist movement playing a crucial role in creating these separated Muslim communities and thereby providing it with an unprecedented opportunity to implement its vision, at least partially. Its local affiliates will run the mosques, schools, and civic organizations that shape the daily life of the desired “Muslim ghettoes.”
What Qaradawi outlines in his treatise might, at first glance, appear to be nothing more than a fantasy. In reality, it corresponds to what the international network of the Muslim Brotherhood has been doing in the West for the past fifty years. Since the end of World War II, in fact, members of the Muslim Brotherhood have settled in Europe and worked relentlessly to implement the goals stated by Qaradawi. In almost every European country, they founded student organizations that, having evolved into nationwide umbrella organizations, have become—thanks to their activism and to the financial support from Arab Gulf countries—the most prominent representatives of local Muslim communities. They established a web of mosques, research centers, think tanks, charities and schools that has been successful in spreading their heavily politicized interpretation of Islam.
The consequences of their activities of radicalization of the Muslim population are particularly dangerous considering the tensions between Muslim minorities and the rest of society that are present in Holland and in virtually every European country. The “Muslim ghetto” that Qaradawi theorizes and the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to build in Europe is exactly what the Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst has repeatedly warned about. In its 2002 report Van Dawa tot Jihad, the AIVD specifically mentioned the disrupting effect that the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood can have on Dutch society. Openly stating that the Brotherhood is a group that “pursues a type of society that is completely different from the democratic legal order, using covert and non-violent means (covert Dawa),” the AIVD warned that, “rather than confronting the state power with direct violence, this strategy seeks to gradually undermine it by infiltrating and eventually taking over the civil service, the judicature, schools, local administrations, et cetera. Apart from clandestine infiltration, covert Dawa may also be aimed at inciting Muslim minorities to civil disobedience, promoting parallel power structures or even inciting Muslim masses to a revolt.”
The effects of the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, as described by the AIVD, can only magnify the already well known problems of radicalization of parts of the Dutch Muslim youth. In today’s tense environment, the continued emphasis of the Muslim Brotherhood on the superiority of Islam over any other religion and system of government can only exacerbate the already existing social tensions and jeopardize the Nederlandse samenleving. While the Western branches of the Muslim Brotherhood rarely directly involve themselves with violence (even though their financing of terrorist groups such as Hamas is well documented), their contribution to the creation of an “us versus them” mentality among Muslims is the first step towards violence. While stopping short of openly advocating violence in the West, continuously preaching about the evils of democracy and the alleged conspiracies of “infidels” against Islam can only create a fertile environment for those who want to make the next step and use violence.
Moreover, the Brotherhood’s renunciation of violence seems more opportunistic than genuine, considering that its European members use fiery rhetoric to endorse terrorist operations in the Middle East. While they are quick to condemn violence in the West to avoid becoming political pariahs, they do not refrain from approving of it elsewhere, notably in Palestine and Iraq, because they believe they can get away with it. It is not unreasonable to assume, therefore, that should it become convenient for them to do so, the ever-flexible Brotherhood would embrace violent tactics in the West as well.
A strong debate on the activities of the Brotherhood in Holland is sorely needed. The discourse needs to be accompanied by a firm understanding of the group’s real agenda, and the experience of some Middle Eastern countries can provide us with a good insight. Moderates throughout the Muslim world have repeatedly warned about the threat posed by the Brotherhood. Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab'I, the former minister of education of Kuwait, sternly stated: "The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology." Al-Rab'I is right in pointing out that the roots of all modern Islamist terrorist groups, from al Qaeda to rag-tag gangs such as the Hofstadgroep, lie in the teachings of Hassan al Banna and Sayyid Qutb, the top ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood. Today jihadi groups have decided to achieve their goals through violence, resorting to terrorism as their tactic of choice. The Muslim Brotherhood has opted for a more nuanced approach, tailoring its modus operandi to the time and the place. But while the tactics might differ, the final goals of the two currents are the same, and the two movements represent simply two sides of the same coin. The Brotherhood’s added danger lies in its ability to fake moderation, operate under our nose, and spread its divisive message undisturbed.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Thursday, April 05, 2007
America's Broken-Down Army by Mark Thompson
For most Americans, the Iraq war is both distant and never ending. For Private Matthew Zeimer, it was neither. Shortly after midnight on Feb. 2, Zeimer had his first taste of combat as he scrambled to the roof of the 3rd Infantry Division's Combat Outpost Grant in central Ramadi. Under cover of darkness, Sunni insurgents were attacking his new post from nearby buildings. Amid the smoke, noise and confusion, a blast suddenly ripped through the 3-ft. concrete wall shielding Zeimer and a fellow soldier, killing them both. Zeimer had been in Iraq for a week. He had been at his first combat post for two hours.
If Zeimer's combat career was brief, so was his training. He enlisted last June at age 17, three weeks after graduating from Dawson County High School in eastern Montana. After finishing nine weeks of basic training and additional preparation in infantry tactics in Oklahoma, he arrived at Fort Stewart, Ga., in early December. But Zeimer had missed the intense four-week pre-Iraq training—a taste of what troops will face in combat—that his 1st Brigade comrades got at their home post in October. Instead, Zeimer and about 140 other members of the 4,000-strong brigade got a cut-rate, 10-day course on weapon use, first aid and Iraqi culture. That's the same length as the course that teaches soldiers assigned to generals' household staffs the finer points of table service.
The Army and the White House insist the abbreviated training was adequate. "They can get desert training elsewhere," spokesman Tony Snow said Feb. 28, "like in Iraq." But outside military experts and Zeimer's mother disagree. The Army's rush to carry out President George W. Bush's order to send thousands of additional troops more quickly to Iraq is forcing two of the five new brigades bound for the war to skip standard training at Fort Irwin, Calif. These soldiers aren't getting the benefit of participating in war games on the wide Mojave Desert, where gun-jamming sand and faux insurgents closely resemble conditions in Iraq. "Given the new policy of having troops among the Iraqis," says Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon personnel chief, "they should be giving our young soldiers more training, not less." Zeimer's mother was unaware of the gap in her son's training until TIME told her about it on April 2. Two days later the Army disclosed that Zeimer may have been killed by friendly fire. "They're shipping more and more young kids over there who don't know what they're getting into," Janet Seymour said quietly after learning what her son had missed. "They've never seen war other than on the TV."
The truncated training—the rush to get underprepared troops to the war zone—"is absolutely unacceptable," says Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and opponent of the war who chairs the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. A decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam, Murtha is experiencing a sense of déjà vu. "The readiness of the Army's ground forces is as bad as it was right after Vietnam," Murtha tells TIME. Even Colin Powell—a retired Army general, onetime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Bush's first Secretary of State—acknowledges that after spending nearly six years fighting a small war in Afghanistan and four years waging a medium-size war in Iraq, the service whose uniform he wore for 35 years is on the ropes. "The active Army," Powell said in December, "is about broken."
Bush warned that if Democrats in Congress did not pass a bill to fund the war on his terms, "the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones." But they are already paying a price for decisions he has made, and the larger costs are likely to be borne for at least a generation. This is not only a matter of the U.S.'s ability to defend itself at home and protect its interests overseas, vital though those missions are. The Army is the heart of the U.S. military, practicing what democracies sometimes manage only to preach. All soldiers are created equal; race and class defer to rank and merit. Except for the stars, the general wears the uniform of the private in combat. The Army is the public institution that sets the pace for others to follow, makes the stakes higher, the demands greater. Its rewards are paid in glory and blood.
A volunteer Army reflects the most central and sacred vow that citizens make to one another: soldiers protect and defend the country; in return, the country promises to give them the tools they need to complete their mission and honor their service, whatever the outcome. It was Bush, on the eve of the 2000 election, who promised "to all of our men and women in uniform and to their parents and to their families, help is on the way." Besides putting Powell at State, the President reinforced his Administration with two former Defense Secretaries: Vice President Dick Cheney and, in the job for a second time, Donald Rumsfeld.
So it is no small irony that today's U.S. Army finds itself under the greatest strain in a generation. The Pentagon made that clear April 2 when it announced that two Army units will soon return to Iraq without even a year at home, compared with the two years units have traditionally enjoyed. One is headed back after 47 days short of a year, the other 81. "This is the first time we've had a voluntary Army on an extended deployment," says Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who advises his old service. "A lot of canaries are dropping dead in the mine."
The main consequences of a tightly stretched Army is that men and women are being sent into combat with less training, shorter breaks and disintegrating equipment. When those stories get out, they make it harder to retain soldiers and recruit them in the first place. "For us, it's just another series of never-ending deployments, and for many, including me, there is only one answer to that—show me the door out," wrote an officer in a private e-mail to Congressman Steve Rothman of New Jersey.
Army equipment is wearing out even faster than Army troops. Gear and weapons are usually left in the war zone to be used by newly arriving troops. That grinds the equipment into scrap up to 10 times as fast as in peacetime. The lack of guns and armor back home has a boomerang effect: many of the troops training in the U.S. are not familiar with what they'll have to depend on once they arrive in Iraq.
Today half the Army's 43 combat brigades are deployed overseas, with the remainder recovering from their latest deployment or preparing for the next one. For the first time in decades, the Army's "ready brigade"—a unit of the famed 82nd Airborne Division primed to parachute into a hot spot anywhere in the world within 72 hours—is a luxury the U.S. Army cannot afford. All its forces are already dedicated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Repeated combat tours have "a huge impact on families," General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told Congress in February. Those deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than once—170,000 so far—have a 50% increase in acute combat stress over those who have been deployed only once. And that stress is what contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an Army study. "Their wives are saying, I know you're proud of what you're doing, but we've got to get out of here," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general.
New Defense Secretary Robert Gates concedes there are readiness problems. He told Congress March 29 that next year's proposed $625 billion defense budget—the highest, adjusted for inflation, since World War II—will "make a good start at addressing the readiness" issues plaguing the Army. His first concern before taking the post in December was his suspicion "that our ground forces weren't large enough," and he has urged troop hikes starting next year.
THE WRONG KIND OF WAR
The Army's problems were long in the making, and the extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed them for all to see: more than a decade of underfunding for boots on the ground while cold war administrations from Richard Nixon's to Bill Clinton's spent lavishly on the Pentagon's high-tech wizardry. The first Gulf War didn't help. It lasted 100 hours on the ground, was fought mainly from the air and reinforced the impression that grunts matter less than geeks.
Today's Army was molded for peacetime missions, with occasional spasms of all-out war, not for the lengthy guerrilla campaigns it is waging. "Following Vietnam, a lot of thoughtful officers said, This is not the kind of war that we want to fight," explains Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, a Vietnam-era Army officer. Counterinsurgency wars didn't play to the U.S.'s strong suit—superior technology—and instead demanded patience, which is harder to come by in this culture. Even now, more than four years after invading Iraq, the Pentagon seems to be investing much of its current $606 billion budget in an effort to fight the wrong war. America's potential enemies around the world watched the first Gulf War and learned that the U.S. was unbeatable on a conventional battlefield. But the Defense Department lingered in a cold war hangover. The Air Force continues to buy $330 million fighters, and the Navy $2 billion submarines. (The Army is not free of this tendency. It wants to spend $160 billion on the Future Combat System, a network of 14 ground vehicles and drones of questionable value in the irregular warfare that's likely in the 21st century.) Gates has second-guessed the Pentagon's spending priorities and says he is studying whether the Defense Department is buying weapons "more tied to cold war needs than future needs." Even John Abizaid, the outgoing Army general who commanded the troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past three years, acknowledges that he never had the right tools for his mission. "This is not an Army that was built to sustain a long war," he told a Harvard audience last fall. The force was so stretched, he warned Congress at the time, that a 20,000-strong troop surge in Iraq could not be sustained. Now that Abizaid is no longer in command, Bush has ordered 30,000 more troops into the fight.
Those in charge deny there's a crisis. Schoomaker, the Army's top general, served in the Vietnam-era Army. "I know what an Army that's near broken smells like, what it looks like, how it acts," he said in January. "Drug problems, race problems, insubordination—all kinds of things going on. We're nowhere near anything like that." General George Casey, who will succeed Schoomaker as the Army's top officer April 10, said at his confirmation hearing that "the Army is far from broken." The top brass acknowledge that they have had to husband their resources, pushing soldiers and supplies into combat and shortchanging everything else left behind. But a detailed look at the Army's people and its gear shows that the institution is barely holding together.
THE TROOPS ARE TIRED
Nearly 5,000 soldiers and their supporters met recently in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at a gathering of the Association of the U.S. Army, a pro-Army group. A retired general spoke privately of a disconcerting change in recent months in the wounded soldiers he visits at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Ever since the war started, they'd be saying all they wanted to do was to get back to their buddies in Iraq to keep on fighting," he said. "Now it's more about getting out and wondering about civilian jobs. There's very little chatter about rejoining the unit."
That kind of frontline report unnerves the Army's high command. While they acknowledge that equipment shortfalls and faulty plans have plagued the Iraq campaign, they have always been able to parry such concerns by pointing to G.I.s—including those wounded in action—who believe in the war and are gung-ho to re-enlist.
The soldiers' change of heart is reflected in a poll by the independent Army Times. In December, for the first time, more troops surveyed disapproved of the President's handling of the war (42%) than approved of it (35%). Over the past two years, the number of troops surveyed who think victory is likely has fallen from 83% to 50%. Army suicides, an admittedly rough barometer of morale, show a steady increase, rising from 51 confirmed in 2001 to 91 (plus seven possible suicides still under investigation) last year. Desertions are climbing.
In the field, manpower shortages are everywhere. Captain David Eastburn's artillery company—part of the 2nd Infantry Division—arrived for its second tour in Iraq with only 72% of its personnel slots filled. "It just puts extra pressure on us," Eastburn, 30, says of his troops during a patrol in southeastern Baghdad. "They have to work longer, harder to make up for the lack of personnel." After training to fire the artillery's big guns at foes 15 miles away, his unit is pulling infantry duty. "I love the Army," the 12-year veteran, a native of Columbus, Ohio, says, "but I hate this war."
LOWERING THE STANDARDS
For its part, the Bush Administration boasts of its plan to permanently boost the Army by 65,000 troops, to 547,000, over the next five years. Gordon Sullivan, a retired Army chief of staff and head of the Association of the U.S. Army, says the service's size "should be approaching 700,000" to do the job the nation expects of it. But where will such numbers come from?
True, the Army is making its recruiting targets—but only by accepting less qualified people. Recruits from the least-skilled category have climbed eightfold, to nearly 4%, over the past two years. Just 81% had high school diplomas last year, a sharp drop from 94% in 2003. The past two years have been the first in a decade in which the Army missed the Pentagon goal of 90% with diplomas. (The rest have GEDs.) The Army has boosted the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42—but 12% of recruits over 35 drop out within six months, double the rate for younger soldiers. To boost its numbers, the Army has had to cut its standards. It granted recruits nearly twice as many waivers for felonies and other personal shortcomings in 2006 as it did in 2003. Such waivers allow prospects with criminal records, medical problems or poor aptitude scores to enlist. They climbed from 4,918 in 2003 to 8,129 last year, Pentagon data show.
One response to difficulties in recruitment: stop people from leaving. Sergeant Isaiah Santopoalo is one of 70,000 soldiers who have been barred from quitting the Army by a stop-loss order that keeps G.I.s in uniform beyond their retirement date or the end of their enlistment obligation. Since 2004, the Army has denied departures for troops headed to or already in Iraq or Afghanistan as a way to promote continuity in fighting units. "I definitely want to get out," says Santopoalo, 22, of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment outside Baqubah, 30 miles east of Baghdad. Three weeks before his enlistment was up last year, the Army ordered him to Iraq for a second tour. He had been planning to live with his wife in Chicago and attend film school by now. Instead, Santopoalo stalks Sunni insurgents through the palm groves. "You start to think about what life could be—sitting on a beach drinking a Corona," he says. "That's when it affects you."
The Army has been turning to its sister services for enlistees. About 20,000 "sandbox sailors" from the Navy and airmen from the Air Force are serving as "in lieu of" soldiers—driving trucks and providing security in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dedicating Air Force personnel to Army missions is hurting the Air Force, its leaders have told Congress. "The Air Force doesn't guard prisoners. We don't have prisoners," Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told Congress Feb. 28. "The Army guards prisoners." But the Air Force is guarding them now in Iraq because the Army doesn't have enough troops. The Army is even cannibalizing the other services' officer corps, recruiting 325 so far (in exchange for a $2,500 bonus), with 200 more expected to switch to Army green this year, now that the bonus has been raised to $10,000.
DOLING 0UT CASH AND PROMOTIONS
To keep soldiers in uniform, the Army is spending money like, well, a drunken sailor. It will pay out close to $1 billion this year and next to attract and keep them in the force. The Army is weighing special dwell-time bonuses for soldiers who spend less than two years at home between deployments. It's considering boosting, after one combat tour, the $225 monthly bonus soldiers get for serving in a war zone.
All these incentive campaigns are getting expensive. The service paid more than $600 million in retention bonuses in 2006, up from $180 million in 2003. (If that seems excessive, the Army notes in an internal document, "New York Yankees payroll: About $350 million," although it's actually closer to $190 million.) Nearly all soldiers deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait receive up to $15,000 for re-enlisting. Soldiers and retirees pocket a $2,000 bounty for identifying a prospective recruit who enlists. (Immediate family is exempt.) On March 15, the service extended the bonus offer to its 240,000 civilians.
There's more money to come. The Army is weighing a program that would offer soldiers a choice between a down payment for a new home or money to launch a small business—up to $45,000. "Home-buying assistance is being offered by other employers (e.g., Princeton)," the Army argues in an internal document detailing the proposal, although the Ivy League school isn't quite so generous. The Army expects the program "to be a major recruiting-market attraction—the next Army College Fund," says Lieut. General Michael Rochelle, the Army's top personnel officer.
Attracting and recruiting good men and women is a problem that goes up through the ranks. The Army will be at least 3,000 midlevel officers short through 2013 because of overly deep cuts made in the young officers' ranks a decade ago. It has only 83% of the majors it needs, for example, and has what it calls "critical shortfalls" in specialties such as aviation, intelligence, engineering and military police. To fill the gaps, the Army is promoting green officers more quickly. Captains are advancing to major after 10 years instead of 11; lieutenants can be pinned on as captains after 38 months instead of the usual 42. But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently warned that such fast promotion hurts officers' ability "to master their duties and responsibilities."
The war in Iraq hurts in other ways too. As the public increasingly turns against the war, what the Army calls its influencers—parents and teachers—are steering children away from military service. "Negative attitudes toward Army ROTC are increasing on college campuses because of opposition to operations in Iraq," the GAO said in a January report. Those attitudes—and budget cuts—meant there were only 25,100 ROTC cadets last year, 6,000 shy of the target. The U.S. Military Academy generated 846 freshly minted 2nd lieutenants in 2006, 54 short of its goal. West Point officials told the GAO that the reduction "may be the result of ongoing operations in Iraq." The war's toll can be seen in how many Army officers stay beyond their five-year required minimum term of service. Just 62% of West Pointers re-upped, about 25 percentage points lower than at the other service academies.
A SHORTAGE OF GEAR
The Army has also skimped on armor. "You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld famously told a grunt who complained of inadequate armor in 2004, "not the Army you might want." Lieut. General Stephen Speakes, the Army's top planner, recently recalled the shock Army leaders felt when Private Jessica Lynch and the 507th Maintenance Company stumbled into an ambush in Nasiriyah that left 11 of her comrades dead in the war's opening days. "We found to our horror that this was a logistics unit that had no ... [major] weapons, no night vision, none of the modern enablers for war," he said. "And we said, Well, they were never supposed to fight." The Pentagon war plan called for a neat conflict with well-defined front lines that support troops like Lynch could be safely stationed behind.
But in a guerrilla war, even those soldiers are on the front lines, and protecting them isn't cheap. A World War II G.I. wore gear worth $175, in today's dollars. By Vietnam, it cost about $1,500. Today it's about $17,000. Amazingly, the Army had only 32,000 sets of body armor when the Iraq war began. The Army now insists that troops don't go "outside the wire"—leave their heavily defended posts in Iraq—without adequate protection. But that's not what the Pentagon's inspector general reports. Some troops "experienced shortages of force-protection equipment such as up-armored vehicles, electronic countermeasure devices ... weapons and communications equipment," an unclassified summary of a still secret Jan. 25 report says. "As a result, service members were not always equipped to effectively complete their missions." Schoomaker, who declined an interview request, dismissed the inspector general's report at a February congressional hearing as "anecdotal in nature."
But even if they are simply anecdotes, they are not the only signs of a crisis in gear. Beyond the lack of weapons for stateside troops, Army stockpiles of equipment around the globe are shrinking as their contents are siphoned to Iraq, reducing the nation's ability to respond to the next crisis. And what is in Iraq is often not what is needed. The military badly miscalculated what the war would look like. It had plenty of monstrous M-1 tanks and thin-skinned humvees but not much in between. Yet 70-ton tanks don't win many friends in Baghdad streets, and the canvas doors of Army humvees offer scant protection against improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The Army said at the start of the war it would need 235 armored humvees; the number is 18,000 today—and each time the Army improves the armor on the truck, the insurgents improve their IEDs. The Army has packed on all the armor a humvee's transmission and axles can carry, so the military is rushing to buy 7,774 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles for an estimated $8.4 billion—more than $1 million each. Their V-shaped undercarriage is designed to deflect blasts from the soldiers on board.
HOW TO FIX IT
The Army and the Pentagon bought into the notions that the war was going to be quick and easy and that victory would come right after the next Iraqi elections or the ones after that. As such optimistic scenarios proved false, the problem of shortfalls in troops and matériel got worse each year. A Republican-controlled Congress, wary of challenging a G.O.P. President on the war's course, added some funds but not nearly enough. Next year the Army is seeking a 19% budget hike, including a 55% rise in procurement dollars, to $130 billion.
The only way to fix the Army's woes is to effect a change in money or mind-set or probably some of each. The Army has been starved for cash since the cold war's end. (Its leaders gripe that from 1990 to 2005, their service pocketed just 16% of the Pentagon's hardware budget, while the Air Force got 36% and the Navy 33%.) Diverting funds from some of those two services' high-tech—and costly—cold war weapons could help restore the Army's health. And the Army needs to change its preferred way of fighting—also a vestige of the cold war—pitting tanks against tanks along well-defined front lines. "The Army still tilts toward dealing with conventional threats, " says Krepinevich, the retired Army officer. "I keep telling them, There's no tank army out there for you guys to fight."
If the Pentagon or, just as likely, Congress prefers not to cut politically popular weapon systems, it could simply ratchet up the defense budget. Many defense experts say about a 4% slice of the GDP (currently $13 trillion a year) should be viewed as the nation's "insurance premium" and be dedicated to the Pentagon. (It is at 3.8% now and dipped as low as 3% from 1999 to 2001.) The downside: as the nation's economy continues to expand, taxpayers run the risk of paying too much for their military. The upside: any agreed-upon slice of the national economy would permit smarter budgeting, since the Pentagon could count on predictable funding. Finally, the U.S. could retool its military ambitions. Emphasizing diplomacy over war, and alliances over unilateral actions, could lead to a reduced need for defense dollars.
"One of my favorite sayings is, Experience is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again," Gates told a congressional panel March 29. "Five times in the last 90 years, the United States has disarmed after a conflict—World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and then the cold war." Gates noted that the U.S. spent 9.8% of GDP at the height of the Vietnam war, 11.7% during the Korean conflict and 4.4% in 1991, at the end of the cold war. But after enjoying peace dividends for several years following each war, the U.S. "discovered that the world hadn't really changed" and was forced to beef up military spending.
McCaffrey, the retired general, says the Joint Chiefs are responsible for the state of today's Army. They rubber-stamped Rumsfeld's plan to build a smaller, more agile force while fighting two wars. McCaffrey, a Vietnam veteran, recalls the scolding lesson of Dereliction of Duty. That 1997 book explained how the Vietnam-era Joint Chiefs' timidity in challenging Defense Secretary Robert McNamara allowed the U.S. to slide into that war. Written by H.R. McMaster, an Army colonel now in Iraq, the book has been required reading for many military officers. "Should there be a Dereliction of Duty II?" McCaffrey wonders aloud. "The answer is, Yes, of course."
Meanwhile, far away from Washington and from Iraq, Matthew Zeimer was buried Feb. 12 in the middle of a Montana snowstorm. Hundreds of mourners lined the route his hearse followed from Glendive's Sacred Heart Catholic Church to the hilltop Dawson County Cemetery. They stood in silent salute in the bitter 8° cold. Five members of an Army honor guard fired off volleys of three shots each. The Army bugler stepped from his warm car and played Taps into the biting wind. The Army honor guard carefully folded the flag that had covered Zeimer's coffin and presented it to his family. But a local priest had to conduct Zeimer's funeral and burial. The Army chaplain who was supposed to preside didn't make it in time. His car slid into a ditch about 100 miles west of town.
If Zeimer's combat career was brief, so was his training. He enlisted last June at age 17, three weeks after graduating from Dawson County High School in eastern Montana. After finishing nine weeks of basic training and additional preparation in infantry tactics in Oklahoma, he arrived at Fort Stewart, Ga., in early December. But Zeimer had missed the intense four-week pre-Iraq training—a taste of what troops will face in combat—that his 1st Brigade comrades got at their home post in October. Instead, Zeimer and about 140 other members of the 4,000-strong brigade got a cut-rate, 10-day course on weapon use, first aid and Iraqi culture. That's the same length as the course that teaches soldiers assigned to generals' household staffs the finer points of table service.
The Army and the White House insist the abbreviated training was adequate. "They can get desert training elsewhere," spokesman Tony Snow said Feb. 28, "like in Iraq." But outside military experts and Zeimer's mother disagree. The Army's rush to carry out President George W. Bush's order to send thousands of additional troops more quickly to Iraq is forcing two of the five new brigades bound for the war to skip standard training at Fort Irwin, Calif. These soldiers aren't getting the benefit of participating in war games on the wide Mojave Desert, where gun-jamming sand and faux insurgents closely resemble conditions in Iraq. "Given the new policy of having troops among the Iraqis," says Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon personnel chief, "they should be giving our young soldiers more training, not less." Zeimer's mother was unaware of the gap in her son's training until TIME told her about it on April 2. Two days later the Army disclosed that Zeimer may have been killed by friendly fire. "They're shipping more and more young kids over there who don't know what they're getting into," Janet Seymour said quietly after learning what her son had missed. "They've never seen war other than on the TV."
The truncated training—the rush to get underprepared troops to the war zone—"is absolutely unacceptable," says Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and opponent of the war who chairs the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. A decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam, Murtha is experiencing a sense of déjà vu. "The readiness of the Army's ground forces is as bad as it was right after Vietnam," Murtha tells TIME. Even Colin Powell—a retired Army general, onetime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Bush's first Secretary of State—acknowledges that after spending nearly six years fighting a small war in Afghanistan and four years waging a medium-size war in Iraq, the service whose uniform he wore for 35 years is on the ropes. "The active Army," Powell said in December, "is about broken."
Bush warned that if Democrats in Congress did not pass a bill to fund the war on his terms, "the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones." But they are already paying a price for decisions he has made, and the larger costs are likely to be borne for at least a generation. This is not only a matter of the U.S.'s ability to defend itself at home and protect its interests overseas, vital though those missions are. The Army is the heart of the U.S. military, practicing what democracies sometimes manage only to preach. All soldiers are created equal; race and class defer to rank and merit. Except for the stars, the general wears the uniform of the private in combat. The Army is the public institution that sets the pace for others to follow, makes the stakes higher, the demands greater. Its rewards are paid in glory and blood.
A volunteer Army reflects the most central and sacred vow that citizens make to one another: soldiers protect and defend the country; in return, the country promises to give them the tools they need to complete their mission and honor their service, whatever the outcome. It was Bush, on the eve of the 2000 election, who promised "to all of our men and women in uniform and to their parents and to their families, help is on the way." Besides putting Powell at State, the President reinforced his Administration with two former Defense Secretaries: Vice President Dick Cheney and, in the job for a second time, Donald Rumsfeld.
So it is no small irony that today's U.S. Army finds itself under the greatest strain in a generation. The Pentagon made that clear April 2 when it announced that two Army units will soon return to Iraq without even a year at home, compared with the two years units have traditionally enjoyed. One is headed back after 47 days short of a year, the other 81. "This is the first time we've had a voluntary Army on an extended deployment," says Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who advises his old service. "A lot of canaries are dropping dead in the mine."
The main consequences of a tightly stretched Army is that men and women are being sent into combat with less training, shorter breaks and disintegrating equipment. When those stories get out, they make it harder to retain soldiers and recruit them in the first place. "For us, it's just another series of never-ending deployments, and for many, including me, there is only one answer to that—show me the door out," wrote an officer in a private e-mail to Congressman Steve Rothman of New Jersey.
Army equipment is wearing out even faster than Army troops. Gear and weapons are usually left in the war zone to be used by newly arriving troops. That grinds the equipment into scrap up to 10 times as fast as in peacetime. The lack of guns and armor back home has a boomerang effect: many of the troops training in the U.S. are not familiar with what they'll have to depend on once they arrive in Iraq.
Today half the Army's 43 combat brigades are deployed overseas, with the remainder recovering from their latest deployment or preparing for the next one. For the first time in decades, the Army's "ready brigade"—a unit of the famed 82nd Airborne Division primed to parachute into a hot spot anywhere in the world within 72 hours—is a luxury the U.S. Army cannot afford. All its forces are already dedicated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Repeated combat tours have "a huge impact on families," General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told Congress in February. Those deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than once—170,000 so far—have a 50% increase in acute combat stress over those who have been deployed only once. And that stress is what contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an Army study. "Their wives are saying, I know you're proud of what you're doing, but we've got to get out of here," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general.
New Defense Secretary Robert Gates concedes there are readiness problems. He told Congress March 29 that next year's proposed $625 billion defense budget—the highest, adjusted for inflation, since World War II—will "make a good start at addressing the readiness" issues plaguing the Army. His first concern before taking the post in December was his suspicion "that our ground forces weren't large enough," and he has urged troop hikes starting next year.
THE WRONG KIND OF WAR
The Army's problems were long in the making, and the extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed them for all to see: more than a decade of underfunding for boots on the ground while cold war administrations from Richard Nixon's to Bill Clinton's spent lavishly on the Pentagon's high-tech wizardry. The first Gulf War didn't help. It lasted 100 hours on the ground, was fought mainly from the air and reinforced the impression that grunts matter less than geeks.
Today's Army was molded for peacetime missions, with occasional spasms of all-out war, not for the lengthy guerrilla campaigns it is waging. "Following Vietnam, a lot of thoughtful officers said, This is not the kind of war that we want to fight," explains Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, a Vietnam-era Army officer. Counterinsurgency wars didn't play to the U.S.'s strong suit—superior technology—and instead demanded patience, which is harder to come by in this culture. Even now, more than four years after invading Iraq, the Pentagon seems to be investing much of its current $606 billion budget in an effort to fight the wrong war. America's potential enemies around the world watched the first Gulf War and learned that the U.S. was unbeatable on a conventional battlefield. But the Defense Department lingered in a cold war hangover. The Air Force continues to buy $330 million fighters, and the Navy $2 billion submarines. (The Army is not free of this tendency. It wants to spend $160 billion on the Future Combat System, a network of 14 ground vehicles and drones of questionable value in the irregular warfare that's likely in the 21st century.) Gates has second-guessed the Pentagon's spending priorities and says he is studying whether the Defense Department is buying weapons "more tied to cold war needs than future needs." Even John Abizaid, the outgoing Army general who commanded the troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past three years, acknowledges that he never had the right tools for his mission. "This is not an Army that was built to sustain a long war," he told a Harvard audience last fall. The force was so stretched, he warned Congress at the time, that a 20,000-strong troop surge in Iraq could not be sustained. Now that Abizaid is no longer in command, Bush has ordered 30,000 more troops into the fight.
Those in charge deny there's a crisis. Schoomaker, the Army's top general, served in the Vietnam-era Army. "I know what an Army that's near broken smells like, what it looks like, how it acts," he said in January. "Drug problems, race problems, insubordination—all kinds of things going on. We're nowhere near anything like that." General George Casey, who will succeed Schoomaker as the Army's top officer April 10, said at his confirmation hearing that "the Army is far from broken." The top brass acknowledge that they have had to husband their resources, pushing soldiers and supplies into combat and shortchanging everything else left behind. But a detailed look at the Army's people and its gear shows that the institution is barely holding together.
THE TROOPS ARE TIRED
Nearly 5,000 soldiers and their supporters met recently in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at a gathering of the Association of the U.S. Army, a pro-Army group. A retired general spoke privately of a disconcerting change in recent months in the wounded soldiers he visits at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Ever since the war started, they'd be saying all they wanted to do was to get back to their buddies in Iraq to keep on fighting," he said. "Now it's more about getting out and wondering about civilian jobs. There's very little chatter about rejoining the unit."
That kind of frontline report unnerves the Army's high command. While they acknowledge that equipment shortfalls and faulty plans have plagued the Iraq campaign, they have always been able to parry such concerns by pointing to G.I.s—including those wounded in action—who believe in the war and are gung-ho to re-enlist.
The soldiers' change of heart is reflected in a poll by the independent Army Times. In December, for the first time, more troops surveyed disapproved of the President's handling of the war (42%) than approved of it (35%). Over the past two years, the number of troops surveyed who think victory is likely has fallen from 83% to 50%. Army suicides, an admittedly rough barometer of morale, show a steady increase, rising from 51 confirmed in 2001 to 91 (plus seven possible suicides still under investigation) last year. Desertions are climbing.
In the field, manpower shortages are everywhere. Captain David Eastburn's artillery company—part of the 2nd Infantry Division—arrived for its second tour in Iraq with only 72% of its personnel slots filled. "It just puts extra pressure on us," Eastburn, 30, says of his troops during a patrol in southeastern Baghdad. "They have to work longer, harder to make up for the lack of personnel." After training to fire the artillery's big guns at foes 15 miles away, his unit is pulling infantry duty. "I love the Army," the 12-year veteran, a native of Columbus, Ohio, says, "but I hate this war."
LOWERING THE STANDARDS
For its part, the Bush Administration boasts of its plan to permanently boost the Army by 65,000 troops, to 547,000, over the next five years. Gordon Sullivan, a retired Army chief of staff and head of the Association of the U.S. Army, says the service's size "should be approaching 700,000" to do the job the nation expects of it. But where will such numbers come from?
True, the Army is making its recruiting targets—but only by accepting less qualified people. Recruits from the least-skilled category have climbed eightfold, to nearly 4%, over the past two years. Just 81% had high school diplomas last year, a sharp drop from 94% in 2003. The past two years have been the first in a decade in which the Army missed the Pentagon goal of 90% with diplomas. (The rest have GEDs.) The Army has boosted the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42—but 12% of recruits over 35 drop out within six months, double the rate for younger soldiers. To boost its numbers, the Army has had to cut its standards. It granted recruits nearly twice as many waivers for felonies and other personal shortcomings in 2006 as it did in 2003. Such waivers allow prospects with criminal records, medical problems or poor aptitude scores to enlist. They climbed from 4,918 in 2003 to 8,129 last year, Pentagon data show.
One response to difficulties in recruitment: stop people from leaving. Sergeant Isaiah Santopoalo is one of 70,000 soldiers who have been barred from quitting the Army by a stop-loss order that keeps G.I.s in uniform beyond their retirement date or the end of their enlistment obligation. Since 2004, the Army has denied departures for troops headed to or already in Iraq or Afghanistan as a way to promote continuity in fighting units. "I definitely want to get out," says Santopoalo, 22, of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment outside Baqubah, 30 miles east of Baghdad. Three weeks before his enlistment was up last year, the Army ordered him to Iraq for a second tour. He had been planning to live with his wife in Chicago and attend film school by now. Instead, Santopoalo stalks Sunni insurgents through the palm groves. "You start to think about what life could be—sitting on a beach drinking a Corona," he says. "That's when it affects you."
The Army has been turning to its sister services for enlistees. About 20,000 "sandbox sailors" from the Navy and airmen from the Air Force are serving as "in lieu of" soldiers—driving trucks and providing security in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dedicating Air Force personnel to Army missions is hurting the Air Force, its leaders have told Congress. "The Air Force doesn't guard prisoners. We don't have prisoners," Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told Congress Feb. 28. "The Army guards prisoners." But the Air Force is guarding them now in Iraq because the Army doesn't have enough troops. The Army is even cannibalizing the other services' officer corps, recruiting 325 so far (in exchange for a $2,500 bonus), with 200 more expected to switch to Army green this year, now that the bonus has been raised to $10,000.
DOLING 0UT CASH AND PROMOTIONS
To keep soldiers in uniform, the Army is spending money like, well, a drunken sailor. It will pay out close to $1 billion this year and next to attract and keep them in the force. The Army is weighing special dwell-time bonuses for soldiers who spend less than two years at home between deployments. It's considering boosting, after one combat tour, the $225 monthly bonus soldiers get for serving in a war zone.
All these incentive campaigns are getting expensive. The service paid more than $600 million in retention bonuses in 2006, up from $180 million in 2003. (If that seems excessive, the Army notes in an internal document, "New York Yankees payroll: About $350 million," although it's actually closer to $190 million.) Nearly all soldiers deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait receive up to $15,000 for re-enlisting. Soldiers and retirees pocket a $2,000 bounty for identifying a prospective recruit who enlists. (Immediate family is exempt.) On March 15, the service extended the bonus offer to its 240,000 civilians.
There's more money to come. The Army is weighing a program that would offer soldiers a choice between a down payment for a new home or money to launch a small business—up to $45,000. "Home-buying assistance is being offered by other employers (e.g., Princeton)," the Army argues in an internal document detailing the proposal, although the Ivy League school isn't quite so generous. The Army expects the program "to be a major recruiting-market attraction—the next Army College Fund," says Lieut. General Michael Rochelle, the Army's top personnel officer.
Attracting and recruiting good men and women is a problem that goes up through the ranks. The Army will be at least 3,000 midlevel officers short through 2013 because of overly deep cuts made in the young officers' ranks a decade ago. It has only 83% of the majors it needs, for example, and has what it calls "critical shortfalls" in specialties such as aviation, intelligence, engineering and military police. To fill the gaps, the Army is promoting green officers more quickly. Captains are advancing to major after 10 years instead of 11; lieutenants can be pinned on as captains after 38 months instead of the usual 42. But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently warned that such fast promotion hurts officers' ability "to master their duties and responsibilities."
The war in Iraq hurts in other ways too. As the public increasingly turns against the war, what the Army calls its influencers—parents and teachers—are steering children away from military service. "Negative attitudes toward Army ROTC are increasing on college campuses because of opposition to operations in Iraq," the GAO said in a January report. Those attitudes—and budget cuts—meant there were only 25,100 ROTC cadets last year, 6,000 shy of the target. The U.S. Military Academy generated 846 freshly minted 2nd lieutenants in 2006, 54 short of its goal. West Point officials told the GAO that the reduction "may be the result of ongoing operations in Iraq." The war's toll can be seen in how many Army officers stay beyond their five-year required minimum term of service. Just 62% of West Pointers re-upped, about 25 percentage points lower than at the other service academies.
A SHORTAGE OF GEAR
The Army has also skimped on armor. "You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld famously told a grunt who complained of inadequate armor in 2004, "not the Army you might want." Lieut. General Stephen Speakes, the Army's top planner, recently recalled the shock Army leaders felt when Private Jessica Lynch and the 507th Maintenance Company stumbled into an ambush in Nasiriyah that left 11 of her comrades dead in the war's opening days. "We found to our horror that this was a logistics unit that had no ... [major] weapons, no night vision, none of the modern enablers for war," he said. "And we said, Well, they were never supposed to fight." The Pentagon war plan called for a neat conflict with well-defined front lines that support troops like Lynch could be safely stationed behind.
But in a guerrilla war, even those soldiers are on the front lines, and protecting them isn't cheap. A World War II G.I. wore gear worth $175, in today's dollars. By Vietnam, it cost about $1,500. Today it's about $17,000. Amazingly, the Army had only 32,000 sets of body armor when the Iraq war began. The Army now insists that troops don't go "outside the wire"—leave their heavily defended posts in Iraq—without adequate protection. But that's not what the Pentagon's inspector general reports. Some troops "experienced shortages of force-protection equipment such as up-armored vehicles, electronic countermeasure devices ... weapons and communications equipment," an unclassified summary of a still secret Jan. 25 report says. "As a result, service members were not always equipped to effectively complete their missions." Schoomaker, who declined an interview request, dismissed the inspector general's report at a February congressional hearing as "anecdotal in nature."
But even if they are simply anecdotes, they are not the only signs of a crisis in gear. Beyond the lack of weapons for stateside troops, Army stockpiles of equipment around the globe are shrinking as their contents are siphoned to Iraq, reducing the nation's ability to respond to the next crisis. And what is in Iraq is often not what is needed. The military badly miscalculated what the war would look like. It had plenty of monstrous M-1 tanks and thin-skinned humvees but not much in between. Yet 70-ton tanks don't win many friends in Baghdad streets, and the canvas doors of Army humvees offer scant protection against improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The Army said at the start of the war it would need 235 armored humvees; the number is 18,000 today—and each time the Army improves the armor on the truck, the insurgents improve their IEDs. The Army has packed on all the armor a humvee's transmission and axles can carry, so the military is rushing to buy 7,774 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles for an estimated $8.4 billion—more than $1 million each. Their V-shaped undercarriage is designed to deflect blasts from the soldiers on board.
HOW TO FIX IT
The Army and the Pentagon bought into the notions that the war was going to be quick and easy and that victory would come right after the next Iraqi elections or the ones after that. As such optimistic scenarios proved false, the problem of shortfalls in troops and matériel got worse each year. A Republican-controlled Congress, wary of challenging a G.O.P. President on the war's course, added some funds but not nearly enough. Next year the Army is seeking a 19% budget hike, including a 55% rise in procurement dollars, to $130 billion.
The only way to fix the Army's woes is to effect a change in money or mind-set or probably some of each. The Army has been starved for cash since the cold war's end. (Its leaders gripe that from 1990 to 2005, their service pocketed just 16% of the Pentagon's hardware budget, while the Air Force got 36% and the Navy 33%.) Diverting funds from some of those two services' high-tech—and costly—cold war weapons could help restore the Army's health. And the Army needs to change its preferred way of fighting—also a vestige of the cold war—pitting tanks against tanks along well-defined front lines. "The Army still tilts toward dealing with conventional threats, " says Krepinevich, the retired Army officer. "I keep telling them, There's no tank army out there for you guys to fight."
If the Pentagon or, just as likely, Congress prefers not to cut politically popular weapon systems, it could simply ratchet up the defense budget. Many defense experts say about a 4% slice of the GDP (currently $13 trillion a year) should be viewed as the nation's "insurance premium" and be dedicated to the Pentagon. (It is at 3.8% now and dipped as low as 3% from 1999 to 2001.) The downside: as the nation's economy continues to expand, taxpayers run the risk of paying too much for their military. The upside: any agreed-upon slice of the national economy would permit smarter budgeting, since the Pentagon could count on predictable funding. Finally, the U.S. could retool its military ambitions. Emphasizing diplomacy over war, and alliances over unilateral actions, could lead to a reduced need for defense dollars.
"One of my favorite sayings is, Experience is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again," Gates told a congressional panel March 29. "Five times in the last 90 years, the United States has disarmed after a conflict—World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and then the cold war." Gates noted that the U.S. spent 9.8% of GDP at the height of the Vietnam war, 11.7% during the Korean conflict and 4.4% in 1991, at the end of the cold war. But after enjoying peace dividends for several years following each war, the U.S. "discovered that the world hadn't really changed" and was forced to beef up military spending.
McCaffrey, the retired general, says the Joint Chiefs are responsible for the state of today's Army. They rubber-stamped Rumsfeld's plan to build a smaller, more agile force while fighting two wars. McCaffrey, a Vietnam veteran, recalls the scolding lesson of Dereliction of Duty. That 1997 book explained how the Vietnam-era Joint Chiefs' timidity in challenging Defense Secretary Robert McNamara allowed the U.S. to slide into that war. Written by H.R. McMaster, an Army colonel now in Iraq, the book has been required reading for many military officers. "Should there be a Dereliction of Duty II?" McCaffrey wonders aloud. "The answer is, Yes, of course."
Meanwhile, far away from Washington and from Iraq, Matthew Zeimer was buried Feb. 12 in the middle of a Montana snowstorm. Hundreds of mourners lined the route his hearse followed from Glendive's Sacred Heart Catholic Church to the hilltop Dawson County Cemetery. They stood in silent salute in the bitter 8° cold. Five members of an Army honor guard fired off volleys of three shots each. The Army bugler stepped from his warm car and played Taps into the biting wind. The Army honor guard carefully folded the flag that had covered Zeimer's coffin and presented it to his family. But a local priest had to conduct Zeimer's funeral and burial. The Army chaplain who was supposed to preside didn't make it in time. His car slid into a ditch about 100 miles west of town.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Apple's iTunes store to be the first online music store to sell EMI's new downloads
EMI Music today announced that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI's existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality. EMI is releasing the premium downloads in response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI's new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.
Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, said, "Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans. We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music.
"Apple have been a true pioneer in digital music, and we are delighted that they share our vision of an interoperable market that provides consumers with greater choice, quality, convenience and value for money."
"Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "EMI has been a great partner for iTunes and is once again leading the industry as the first major music company to offer its entire digital catalogue DRM-free."
Apple's iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) is the first online music store to receive EMI's new premium downloads. Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/€0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.
EMI is introducing a new wholesale price for premium single track downloads, while maintaining the existing wholesale price for complete albums. EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice. Music fans will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free digital music for personal use, and listen to it on a wide range of digital music players and music-enabled phones.
EMI's move follows a series of experiments it conducted recently. Norah Jones's "Thinking About You", Relient K's "Must've Done Something Right", and Lily Allen's "Littlest Things" were all made available for sale in the MP3 format in trials held at the end of last year.
EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services (where users pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music), super-distribution (allowing fans to share music with their friends) and time-limited downloads (such as those offered by ad-supported services).
Nicoli added: "Protecting the intellectual property of EMI and our artists is as important as ever, and we will continue to work to fight piracy in all its forms and to educate consumers. We believe that fans will be excited by the flexibility that DRM-free formats provide, and will see this as an incentive to purchase more of our artists' music."
The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI's existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality. EMI is releasing the premium downloads in response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI's new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.
Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, said, "Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans. We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music.
"Apple have been a true pioneer in digital music, and we are delighted that they share our vision of an interoperable market that provides consumers with greater choice, quality, convenience and value for money."
"Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "EMI has been a great partner for iTunes and is once again leading the industry as the first major music company to offer its entire digital catalogue DRM-free."
Apple's iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) is the first online music store to receive EMI's new premium downloads. Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/€0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.
EMI is introducing a new wholesale price for premium single track downloads, while maintaining the existing wholesale price for complete albums. EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice. Music fans will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free digital music for personal use, and listen to it on a wide range of digital music players and music-enabled phones.
EMI's move follows a series of experiments it conducted recently. Norah Jones's "Thinking About You", Relient K's "Must've Done Something Right", and Lily Allen's "Littlest Things" were all made available for sale in the MP3 format in trials held at the end of last year.
EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services (where users pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music), super-distribution (allowing fans to share music with their friends) and time-limited downloads (such as those offered by ad-supported services).
Nicoli added: "Protecting the intellectual property of EMI and our artists is as important as ever, and we will continue to work to fight piracy in all its forms and to educate consumers. We believe that fans will be excited by the flexibility that DRM-free formats provide, and will see this as an incentive to purchase more of our artists' music."
ZFS and OS X, growing closer all the time by Erik Kennedy
Over the past couple of years, there's been a lot of talk about bringing ZFS, Sun's open source high-performance file system, to Mac OS X. Our man Siracusa first pointed out a message from an Apple developer last year expressing a desire to work on porting the file system to Apple's OS, and talked more about its possible ties (or lack thereof) to Time Machine not long after. Even more recently, ZFS became accessible under OS X thanks to the MacFUSE project. Still, there's been little word on the state of ZFS for OS X recently.
Now, it looks as though the port is not just wishful thinking, but an active project. Take a look at this excerpt from a bug entry filed by the OpenSolaris team. Notice anything unusual in the synopsis?
SYNOPSIS: zfs_rmdir() can return EEXIST on an empty directory when spotlight is messing with it
DESCRIPTION: zfs_dirempty() can return EEXIST even if its empty if there are other threads (say a lookup) active on that directory. This is due to dzp->z_dirlocks != 0.
Some possible solutions:
1) add a new "remove" reader/writer lock that blocks out new zfs_dirent_lock() requests when grabbed as WRITER.
2) Simply delay and retry if the directory is really empty (dzp->z_phys->zp_size == 2), but there are lookers (dzp->z_dirlocks != 0)
3) Set some flag in the dzp saying its removed, deny future creates, and immediatley return success to user. Real cleanup is delayed until final looker finishes.
1) currently seems like the best approach. 2) can conceivable loop forever. 3) this one might add some code/interface ugliness.
Sure looks like an indication that work is progressing on that OS X port, unless Sun has suddenly decided to adopt Apple's search technology, which of course is known for its rather extensive lookups of directories. Although this does not mean we're guaranteed to see ZFS as a formatting option in Leopard's version of Disk Utility, it's a good sign that we're eventually going to benefit from Sun's work on the next-generation of file systems.
Now, it looks as though the port is not just wishful thinking, but an active project. Take a look at this excerpt from a bug entry filed by the OpenSolaris team. Notice anything unusual in the synopsis?
SYNOPSIS: zfs_rmdir() can return EEXIST on an empty directory when spotlight is messing with it
DESCRIPTION: zfs_dirempty() can return EEXIST even if its empty if there are other threads (say a lookup) active on that directory. This is due to dzp->z_dirlocks != 0.
Some possible solutions:
1) add a new "remove" reader/writer lock that blocks out new zfs_dirent_lock() requests when grabbed as WRITER.
2) Simply delay and retry if the directory is really empty (dzp->z_phys->zp_size == 2), but there are lookers (dzp->z_dirlocks != 0)
3) Set some flag in the dzp saying its removed, deny future creates, and immediatley return success to user. Real cleanup is delayed until final looker finishes.
1) currently seems like the best approach. 2) can conceivable loop forever. 3) this one might add some code/interface ugliness.
Sure looks like an indication that work is progressing on that OS X port, unless Sun has suddenly decided to adopt Apple's search technology, which of course is known for its rather extensive lookups of directories. Although this does not mean we're guaranteed to see ZFS as a formatting option in Leopard's version of Disk Utility, it's a good sign that we're eventually going to benefit from Sun's work on the next-generation of file systems.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Al Qaeda Is Seen as Restoring Leadership by Mark Mazzetti
As Al Qaeda rebuilds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a new generation of leaders has emerged under Osama bin Laden to cement control over the network’s operations, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.
The new leaders rose from within the organization after the death or capture of the operatives that built Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, leading to surprise and dismay within United States intelligence agencies about the group’s ability to rebound from an American-led offensive.
It has been known that American officials were focusing on a band of Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan’s remote mountains, but a clearer picture is emerging about those who are running the camps and thought to be involved in plotting attacks.
American, European and Pakistani authorities have for months been piecing together a picture of the new leadership, based in part on evidence-gathering during terrorism investigations in the past two years. Particularly important have been interrogations of suspects and material evidence connected to a plot British and American investigators said they averted last summer to destroy multiple commercial airliners after takeoff from London.
Intelligence officials also have learned new information about Al Qaeda’s structure through intercepted communications between operatives in Pakistan’s tribal areas, although officials said the group has a complex network of human couriers to evade electronic eavesdropping.
The investigation into the airline plot has led officials to conclude that an Egyptian paramilitary commander called Abu Ubaidah al-Masri was the Qaeda operative in Pakistan orchestrating the attack, officials said.
Mr. Masri, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan, is believed to travel frequently over the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was long thought to be in charge of militia operations in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, but he emerged as one of Al Qaeda’s senior operatives after the death of Abu Hamza Rabia, another Egyptian who was killed by a missile strike in Pakistan in 2005.
The evidence officials said was accumulating about Mr. Masri and a handful of other Qaeda figures has led to a reassessment within the American intelligence community about the strength of the group’s core in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and its role in some of the most significant terrorism plots of the past two years, including the airline plot and the suicide attacks in London in July 2005 that killed 56.
Although the core leadership was weakened in the counterterrorism campaign begun after the Sept. 11 attacks, intelligence officials now believe it was not as crippling as once thought.
That reassessment has brought new urgency to joint Pakistani and American intelligence operations in Pakistan and strengthened officials’ belief that dismantling Al Qaeda’s infrastructure there could disrupt nascent large-scale terrorist plots that may already be under way.
In February, the deputy C.I.A. director, Stephen R. Kappes, accompanied Vice President Dick Cheney to Islamabad to present Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, with intelligence on Al Qaeda’s growing abilities and to develop a strategy to strike at training camps.
Officials from several American intelligence agencies interviewed for this article agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because the Qaeda assessments are classified.
Many American officials have said in recent years that the roles of Mr. bin Laden and his lieutenants in Pakistan’s remote mountains have diminished with the growing prominence of the organization’s branch in Iraq, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and with the emergence of regional terrorism networks and so-called home-grown cells.
That view, in part, led the C.I.A. in late 2005 to disband Alec Station, the unit that for a decade was devoted to hunting Mr. bin Laden and his closest advisers, and to reassign analysts within the agency’s Counterterrorist Center to focus on Al Qaeda’s expanding reach.
Officials say they believe that, in contrast with the somewhat hierarchical structure of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, the group’s leadership is now more diffuse, with several planning hubs working autonomously and not reliant on constant contact with Mr. bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, his deputy.
Much is still not known about the backgrounds of the new Qaeda leaders; some have adopted noms de guerre. Officials and outside analysts said they tend to be in their mid-30s and have years of battlefield experience fighting in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya. They are more diverse than the earlier group of leaders, which was made up largely of battle-hardened Egyptian operatives. American officials said the new cadre includes several Pakistani and North African operatives.
Experts say they still see Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as largely independent of Al Qaeda’s hub in Pakistan but that they believe the fighting in Iraq will produce future Qaeda leaders.
“The jihadis returning from Iraq are far more capable than the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets ever were,” said Robert Richer, who was associate director of operations in 2004 and 2005 for the C.I.A. “They have been fighting the best military in the world, with the best technology and tactics.”
Officials said other operatives believed to be plotting internationally are Khalid Habib, a Moroccan, and Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi. Mr. Iraqi, a Kurd who served in Saddam Hussein’s army, moved to Afghanistan to fight Soviet occupiers. Officials believe that he was dispatched to Iraq by Mr. bin Laden to deal with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose terrorist group allied with Mr. bin Laden. It took the name Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia before Mr. Zarqawi was killed in an American bombing in June of last year. American officials say they believe that Mr. Iraqi is now back operating inside of Pakistan.
American officials say they still know little about how operatives communicate with Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri.
“There has to be some kind of communication up the line, we just don’t see it,” one senior intelligence official said.
American counterterrorism officials said they did not believe that any one figure had taken over the role once held by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the operations chief who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
During a recent legal hearing, Mr. Mohammed claimed responsibility for planning dozens of attacks over more than a decade.
One reason that Mr. Mohammed proved so valuable to Al Qaeda was his experience as a college student in the United States, which allowed him to train several Sept. 11 hijackers to assimilate into American society.
American officials said the seeming elevation of a California-born operative named Adam Gadahn to a more prominent role might be an effort to replicate Mr. Mohammed’s experience.
Mr. Gadahn has appeared on several Qaeda videos in recent years. The United States offers a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture. But American officials are divided about how important a role he plays, or whether top Qaeda leaders are merely using him for propaganda.
Officials are also divided and somewhat puzzled about Iran’s role in pursuing Qaeda figures.
Intelligence officials say they believe that the Iranian government has in some cases been quite active in the hunt and has put under house arrest a number of top operatives who fled from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, including the Egyptian operations chief Saif al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, one of the Qaeda leader’s sons.
But officials say they believe that several other important Qaeda figures may be operating in Iran, including an Egyptian known as Abu Jihad al-Masri and a Libyan explosives expert named Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who is thought to travel between Iran and Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Top American officials said that, despite the damage to the structure of Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks, concern is still high that the group is determined to attack globally.
“We have been very concerned that over time the leaders of Al Qaeda would try to rebuild a chain of command and an organizational structure,” said Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I, in a statement provided for this article.
Mr. Mueller said Al Qaeda was clearly committed to carrying out “major complex operations.” Some experts who have studied the group since its inception said American officials had in the past too readily assumed that Al Qaeda’s decision to wait long periods of time between attacks was a sign of weakness.
“To say that Al Qaeda was out of business simply because they have not attacked in the U.S. is whistling past the graveyard,” said Michael Scheuer, a former head of the bin Laden tracking unit at the C.I.A. “Al Qaeda is still humming along, and with a new generation of leaders.”
The new leaders rose from within the organization after the death or capture of the operatives that built Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, leading to surprise and dismay within United States intelligence agencies about the group’s ability to rebound from an American-led offensive.
It has been known that American officials were focusing on a band of Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan’s remote mountains, but a clearer picture is emerging about those who are running the camps and thought to be involved in plotting attacks.
American, European and Pakistani authorities have for months been piecing together a picture of the new leadership, based in part on evidence-gathering during terrorism investigations in the past two years. Particularly important have been interrogations of suspects and material evidence connected to a plot British and American investigators said they averted last summer to destroy multiple commercial airliners after takeoff from London.
Intelligence officials also have learned new information about Al Qaeda’s structure through intercepted communications between operatives in Pakistan’s tribal areas, although officials said the group has a complex network of human couriers to evade electronic eavesdropping.
The investigation into the airline plot has led officials to conclude that an Egyptian paramilitary commander called Abu Ubaidah al-Masri was the Qaeda operative in Pakistan orchestrating the attack, officials said.
Mr. Masri, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan, is believed to travel frequently over the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was long thought to be in charge of militia operations in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, but he emerged as one of Al Qaeda’s senior operatives after the death of Abu Hamza Rabia, another Egyptian who was killed by a missile strike in Pakistan in 2005.
The evidence officials said was accumulating about Mr. Masri and a handful of other Qaeda figures has led to a reassessment within the American intelligence community about the strength of the group’s core in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and its role in some of the most significant terrorism plots of the past two years, including the airline plot and the suicide attacks in London in July 2005 that killed 56.
Although the core leadership was weakened in the counterterrorism campaign begun after the Sept. 11 attacks, intelligence officials now believe it was not as crippling as once thought.
That reassessment has brought new urgency to joint Pakistani and American intelligence operations in Pakistan and strengthened officials’ belief that dismantling Al Qaeda’s infrastructure there could disrupt nascent large-scale terrorist plots that may already be under way.
In February, the deputy C.I.A. director, Stephen R. Kappes, accompanied Vice President Dick Cheney to Islamabad to present Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, with intelligence on Al Qaeda’s growing abilities and to develop a strategy to strike at training camps.
Officials from several American intelligence agencies interviewed for this article agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because the Qaeda assessments are classified.
Many American officials have said in recent years that the roles of Mr. bin Laden and his lieutenants in Pakistan’s remote mountains have diminished with the growing prominence of the organization’s branch in Iraq, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and with the emergence of regional terrorism networks and so-called home-grown cells.
That view, in part, led the C.I.A. in late 2005 to disband Alec Station, the unit that for a decade was devoted to hunting Mr. bin Laden and his closest advisers, and to reassign analysts within the agency’s Counterterrorist Center to focus on Al Qaeda’s expanding reach.
Officials say they believe that, in contrast with the somewhat hierarchical structure of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, the group’s leadership is now more diffuse, with several planning hubs working autonomously and not reliant on constant contact with Mr. bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, his deputy.
Much is still not known about the backgrounds of the new Qaeda leaders; some have adopted noms de guerre. Officials and outside analysts said they tend to be in their mid-30s and have years of battlefield experience fighting in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya. They are more diverse than the earlier group of leaders, which was made up largely of battle-hardened Egyptian operatives. American officials said the new cadre includes several Pakistani and North African operatives.
Experts say they still see Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as largely independent of Al Qaeda’s hub in Pakistan but that they believe the fighting in Iraq will produce future Qaeda leaders.
“The jihadis returning from Iraq are far more capable than the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets ever were,” said Robert Richer, who was associate director of operations in 2004 and 2005 for the C.I.A. “They have been fighting the best military in the world, with the best technology and tactics.”
Officials said other operatives believed to be plotting internationally are Khalid Habib, a Moroccan, and Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi. Mr. Iraqi, a Kurd who served in Saddam Hussein’s army, moved to Afghanistan to fight Soviet occupiers. Officials believe that he was dispatched to Iraq by Mr. bin Laden to deal with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose terrorist group allied with Mr. bin Laden. It took the name Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia before Mr. Zarqawi was killed in an American bombing in June of last year. American officials say they believe that Mr. Iraqi is now back operating inside of Pakistan.
American officials say they still know little about how operatives communicate with Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri.
“There has to be some kind of communication up the line, we just don’t see it,” one senior intelligence official said.
American counterterrorism officials said they did not believe that any one figure had taken over the role once held by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the operations chief who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
During a recent legal hearing, Mr. Mohammed claimed responsibility for planning dozens of attacks over more than a decade.
One reason that Mr. Mohammed proved so valuable to Al Qaeda was his experience as a college student in the United States, which allowed him to train several Sept. 11 hijackers to assimilate into American society.
American officials said the seeming elevation of a California-born operative named Adam Gadahn to a more prominent role might be an effort to replicate Mr. Mohammed’s experience.
Mr. Gadahn has appeared on several Qaeda videos in recent years. The United States offers a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture. But American officials are divided about how important a role he plays, or whether top Qaeda leaders are merely using him for propaganda.
Officials are also divided and somewhat puzzled about Iran’s role in pursuing Qaeda figures.
Intelligence officials say they believe that the Iranian government has in some cases been quite active in the hunt and has put under house arrest a number of top operatives who fled from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, including the Egyptian operations chief Saif al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, one of the Qaeda leader’s sons.
But officials say they believe that several other important Qaeda figures may be operating in Iran, including an Egyptian known as Abu Jihad al-Masri and a Libyan explosives expert named Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who is thought to travel between Iran and Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Top American officials said that, despite the damage to the structure of Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks, concern is still high that the group is determined to attack globally.
“We have been very concerned that over time the leaders of Al Qaeda would try to rebuild a chain of command and an organizational structure,” said Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I, in a statement provided for this article.
Mr. Mueller said Al Qaeda was clearly committed to carrying out “major complex operations.” Some experts who have studied the group since its inception said American officials had in the past too readily assumed that Al Qaeda’s decision to wait long periods of time between attacks was a sign of weakness.
“To say that Al Qaeda was out of business simply because they have not attacked in the U.S. is whistling past the graveyard,” said Michael Scheuer, a former head of the bin Laden tracking unit at the C.I.A. “Al Qaeda is still humming along, and with a new generation of leaders.”
Sunday, April 01, 2007
The Side I've Alawys Been On by Thomas Barnett
A lot of readers, most notably those we've picked up from Hewitt, wonder why I don't stick firmly with Bush/Petraeus during the surge. They wonder why I would argue that it's a good thing for Dems to tie Bush's hands in his remaining time.
So let me reiterate to be clear:
I supported Bush's Big Bang decision to topple Saddam. To me, it was never about WMD, which is an overblown fear (it's not the ultimate Rubicon now that global war is off the agenda, it's just a super-weapon that we must deal with). To me, it was about a rule-set breaker who flouted the will of the global community for years on end. We got up the nerve to stop him in the early 1990s, and then, true to our Powell Doctrine roots at that time, we refused to finish the job.
9/11 happens and we respond to the apparent source in Afghanistan. Then Bush and neocons get up the nerve to finish the job in Iraq, ending the horror of the sanctions regimes, finally rescuing the courageous Kurds (well on their way to nationhood thanks to the northern fly zone), and giving the Shiia a chance to avenge the genocidal warfare rained upon them by Saddam with our implicit okay in the early 1990s (our southern no-fly zone eventually ends that). The Sunni Serbs responded as expected, Al Qaeda and others take advantage, and the insurgency begins.
The insurgency need not have grown so formidable, but the Ford reruns of this administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld) knew what they knew: 1) don't do Vietnams and 2) restore the presidency destroyed by Watergate. So they planned a truly brilliant war (Just Cause on steroids) and then with almost criminal neglect they didn't bother to plan for the peace, and stubbornly fought the postwar's entire unfolding.
Bush, so decisive in the first term when it came to kinetics, is lost when it comes to the non-kinetics. Saddled with two amazingly weak SECSTATES, both of whom were picked to be exactly that (weak, talking-point deliverers and nothing more), this administration has been adrift the entire second term, just as I feared (thus my call for Kerry). Bush was effective in changing the rule sets and putting the Middle East's board in play, but he's been amazingly ineffective when it comes to convincing others to adhere to that new rule set, in large part because he lacks--along with his entire administration--any significant strategic imagination.
Bush refused to take advantage of the changes he himself set so effectively in motion in the region. There was a huge groundswell of change across the Middle East the first 18 months following the war. When he had the chance to start regional dialogues that addressed the real fights of the region (Iran v Israel, Iran v Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda v House of Saud), he did not. He stubbornly stayed the course in Iraq, pretending an internal solution was possible in what quickly and logically became a regional conflict that all players on all sides are effectively conflating in a host of asymmetrical ways.
Bush's first great answer was to rerun the entire WMD drama on Iran.
Bush's second great answer was the surge. As I wrote several times earlier: the surge with serious regional diplomacy--that I would gladly support.
But the surge without serious regional and international diplomacy--that I do not support.
I do not support it because it is designed to fall.
I do not support it because I think it's Bush's ruse to Iranify the Long War.
I think that if Bush attacks Iran on his watch, he'll screw up the Big Bang permanently and could quite easily trigger a long-term rivalry with Russia and China in the region.
I find these pathways beyond stupidity, and so I do not support them.
People who act like you either support Bush's mismanagement of this postwar or you're un-American are myopic in the extreme. They're acting like we should put our entire team on the field for the extra point when we need to score a couple more touchdowns before the game clock runs out.
We are told: Why negotiate with people who don't want us to win?
I will tell you why: because we're not going to win--or lose. We're either going to keep the Big Bang rolling or we're going to let it die and let the region go right back to what it was. Not every play in this game is going to be for positive yardage. Sometimes we'll punt and play for field position.
And yeah, when we screw up royally, we'll take our medicine.
We've screwed up Iraq (outside of Kurdistan) and if we want to cut down our exposure, we'll have to accept many compromises. You can get mad about that and blame Bush or you can get mad about that and pretend the Left "stabbed us in the back." But stubborn is as stubborn does and Bush made all the big decisions, so whine about that or move along, because when the Dems tie his hands now it's not about preventing some illusory "win" in Iraq, it's about stopping a strategically idiotic war with Iran, which won't fix Iraq but make our entire effort there to date a complete waste of blood and treasure.
Bush, in my mind, has no idea how to win at this point. He pretends we can screw up and then take no pain for our efforts, so he eschews negotiations with people who have no intention of helping anyone but themselves (duh!). So both they, and everyone else involved in Iraq will continue to screw us, and both our blood and our treasure will continue to go largely wasted until Bush loses the stubbornness or simply leaves office.
I have no anticipation of Bush gaining strategic smarts any time soon, nor Cheney, whose Manichean world view makes him far more of a menace to America than any of our enemies. So I want the clock to run out on them with no further damage being inflicted on our strategic position.
I want to win. I just don't pretend we can come back on a single drive from being behind several scores.
As for those who do, they're free to have their own opinions.
But I can't peddle that sort of crap. It just won't get me in front of audiences like the 250 senior officers of CENTCOM I briefed on Monday. I just would never get those chances with that mindset. And you know why? They're totally interested in winning, not who gets the credit, so politics doesn't interest them one bit.
The point right now is how we move ahead, not how we save this presidency.
I believe in the United States, not in any one leader.
And I want to win in the end, not on the next play.
So let me be clear as crystal: my guys never leave office. They are there administration after administration. They know exactly what I'm about and I know exactly what they're about, and we get along just fine.
The politicians, meanwhile, get exactly what they deserve.
So let me reiterate to be clear:
I supported Bush's Big Bang decision to topple Saddam. To me, it was never about WMD, which is an overblown fear (it's not the ultimate Rubicon now that global war is off the agenda, it's just a super-weapon that we must deal with). To me, it was about a rule-set breaker who flouted the will of the global community for years on end. We got up the nerve to stop him in the early 1990s, and then, true to our Powell Doctrine roots at that time, we refused to finish the job.
9/11 happens and we respond to the apparent source in Afghanistan. Then Bush and neocons get up the nerve to finish the job in Iraq, ending the horror of the sanctions regimes, finally rescuing the courageous Kurds (well on their way to nationhood thanks to the northern fly zone), and giving the Shiia a chance to avenge the genocidal warfare rained upon them by Saddam with our implicit okay in the early 1990s (our southern no-fly zone eventually ends that). The Sunni Serbs responded as expected, Al Qaeda and others take advantage, and the insurgency begins.
The insurgency need not have grown so formidable, but the Ford reruns of this administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld) knew what they knew: 1) don't do Vietnams and 2) restore the presidency destroyed by Watergate. So they planned a truly brilliant war (Just Cause on steroids) and then with almost criminal neglect they didn't bother to plan for the peace, and stubbornly fought the postwar's entire unfolding.
Bush, so decisive in the first term when it came to kinetics, is lost when it comes to the non-kinetics. Saddled with two amazingly weak SECSTATES, both of whom were picked to be exactly that (weak, talking-point deliverers and nothing more), this administration has been adrift the entire second term, just as I feared (thus my call for Kerry). Bush was effective in changing the rule sets and putting the Middle East's board in play, but he's been amazingly ineffective when it comes to convincing others to adhere to that new rule set, in large part because he lacks--along with his entire administration--any significant strategic imagination.
Bush refused to take advantage of the changes he himself set so effectively in motion in the region. There was a huge groundswell of change across the Middle East the first 18 months following the war. When he had the chance to start regional dialogues that addressed the real fights of the region (Iran v Israel, Iran v Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda v House of Saud), he did not. He stubbornly stayed the course in Iraq, pretending an internal solution was possible in what quickly and logically became a regional conflict that all players on all sides are effectively conflating in a host of asymmetrical ways.
Bush's first great answer was to rerun the entire WMD drama on Iran.
Bush's second great answer was the surge. As I wrote several times earlier: the surge with serious regional diplomacy--that I would gladly support.
But the surge without serious regional and international diplomacy--that I do not support.
I do not support it because it is designed to fall.
I do not support it because I think it's Bush's ruse to Iranify the Long War.
I think that if Bush attacks Iran on his watch, he'll screw up the Big Bang permanently and could quite easily trigger a long-term rivalry with Russia and China in the region.
I find these pathways beyond stupidity, and so I do not support them.
People who act like you either support Bush's mismanagement of this postwar or you're un-American are myopic in the extreme. They're acting like we should put our entire team on the field for the extra point when we need to score a couple more touchdowns before the game clock runs out.
We are told: Why negotiate with people who don't want us to win?
I will tell you why: because we're not going to win--or lose. We're either going to keep the Big Bang rolling or we're going to let it die and let the region go right back to what it was. Not every play in this game is going to be for positive yardage. Sometimes we'll punt and play for field position.
And yeah, when we screw up royally, we'll take our medicine.
We've screwed up Iraq (outside of Kurdistan) and if we want to cut down our exposure, we'll have to accept many compromises. You can get mad about that and blame Bush or you can get mad about that and pretend the Left "stabbed us in the back." But stubborn is as stubborn does and Bush made all the big decisions, so whine about that or move along, because when the Dems tie his hands now it's not about preventing some illusory "win" in Iraq, it's about stopping a strategically idiotic war with Iran, which won't fix Iraq but make our entire effort there to date a complete waste of blood and treasure.
Bush, in my mind, has no idea how to win at this point. He pretends we can screw up and then take no pain for our efforts, so he eschews negotiations with people who have no intention of helping anyone but themselves (duh!). So both they, and everyone else involved in Iraq will continue to screw us, and both our blood and our treasure will continue to go largely wasted until Bush loses the stubbornness or simply leaves office.
I have no anticipation of Bush gaining strategic smarts any time soon, nor Cheney, whose Manichean world view makes him far more of a menace to America than any of our enemies. So I want the clock to run out on them with no further damage being inflicted on our strategic position.
I want to win. I just don't pretend we can come back on a single drive from being behind several scores.
As for those who do, they're free to have their own opinions.
But I can't peddle that sort of crap. It just won't get me in front of audiences like the 250 senior officers of CENTCOM I briefed on Monday. I just would never get those chances with that mindset. And you know why? They're totally interested in winning, not who gets the credit, so politics doesn't interest them one bit.
The point right now is how we move ahead, not how we save this presidency.
I believe in the United States, not in any one leader.
And I want to win in the end, not on the next play.
So let me be clear as crystal: my guys never leave office. They are there administration after administration. They know exactly what I'm about and I know exactly what they're about, and we get along just fine.
The politicians, meanwhile, get exactly what they deserve.
Italy: the strange Islamist/Communist alliance by Lorenzo Vidino
In June 2005 David Kaplan reported on US News about Ten Euros for the Resistance/Iraq Libero, a campaign led by an odd collection of European (mostly Italian, German and Austrian) “Marxists and Maoists, sprinkled with an array of Arab emigres and aging, old-school fascists,” to raise money for the “Iraqi resistance.” While never raising big sums, the informal network was active in organizing meetings and setting up stands in various European cities. The story generated quite a bit of attention and in the following weeks 44 members of Congress sent a letter to Italy's ambassador to the United States, expressing "concern" about the Ten Euros campaign. Moreover the network’s main website was shut down and a few addresses in Italy were raided.
Almost two years later, the Iraq Libero network is more than active and last weekend it organized a conference in Chianciano, a charming Tuscan town. The main organizers are the Committees for the Support of the Resistance for Communism (CARC), whose website shows various anti-American initiatives. In the communiqué announcing the Chianciano conference, the CARC express “our determination to support, with the resources at our disposal, the resistance of the popular masses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon against the aggressions of the imperialists of the USA and of any other country.”
Among the speakers in Chianciano, beside self-proclaimed leaders of the Iraqi resistance, we find Hamza Piccardo, the Secretary General of the UCOII (Unione delle Comunità e Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia), the Italian branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood network. Addressing an audience filled with Communist militants, Piccardo gave a powerful and telling speech. “The young Muslims of Europe,” said the 55-year-old UCOII leader in a speech broadcasted by Italian TV, “can be companions of street and of struggle and we saw it in a remarkable way in France, two years ago. Those that set on fire 36.000 cars in a few days. This is a strength that immigrant communities have in them, their demographic strength, their courage. With this strength, with these youths, we must interact. Anti-Imperialism is in them.”
Piccardo’s speech seems that of a Communist leader, rather than that of the leader of one of Italy’s most important Muslim organization. An explanation can be found in Piccardo’s past involvement in the militant Communist underworld. Before his conversion to Islam in 1975, Piccardo had been a member of Autonomia Operaia, one of Italy’s most radical leftist formations during the 1970s. Piccardo, like other UCOII members that come from the radical left, dreams of a fusion of Communist and Islamist ideologies, with anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism as the glues for this odd marriage. The UCOII case is not an isolated example of the alliance between far left and radical Islam in Europe. Another notorious example is Respect, the unlikely political formation borne out of the alliance between the Brotherhood-linked Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and fringe leftist groups headed by George Galloway. The phenomenon needs to be monitored, as the repercussions for both the security and the social cohesion of Europe can be serious.
Almost two years later, the Iraq Libero network is more than active and last weekend it organized a conference in Chianciano, a charming Tuscan town. The main organizers are the Committees for the Support of the Resistance for Communism (CARC), whose website shows various anti-American initiatives. In the communiqué announcing the Chianciano conference, the CARC express “our determination to support, with the resources at our disposal, the resistance of the popular masses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon against the aggressions of the imperialists of the USA and of any other country.”
Among the speakers in Chianciano, beside self-proclaimed leaders of the Iraqi resistance, we find Hamza Piccardo, the Secretary General of the UCOII (Unione delle Comunità e Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia), the Italian branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood network. Addressing an audience filled with Communist militants, Piccardo gave a powerful and telling speech. “The young Muslims of Europe,” said the 55-year-old UCOII leader in a speech broadcasted by Italian TV, “can be companions of street and of struggle and we saw it in a remarkable way in France, two years ago. Those that set on fire 36.000 cars in a few days. This is a strength that immigrant communities have in them, their demographic strength, their courage. With this strength, with these youths, we must interact. Anti-Imperialism is in them.”
Piccardo’s speech seems that of a Communist leader, rather than that of the leader of one of Italy’s most important Muslim organization. An explanation can be found in Piccardo’s past involvement in the militant Communist underworld. Before his conversion to Islam in 1975, Piccardo had been a member of Autonomia Operaia, one of Italy’s most radical leftist formations during the 1970s. Piccardo, like other UCOII members that come from the radical left, dreams of a fusion of Communist and Islamist ideologies, with anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism as the glues for this odd marriage. The UCOII case is not an isolated example of the alliance between far left and radical Islam in Europe. Another notorious example is Respect, the unlikely political formation borne out of the alliance between the Brotherhood-linked Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and fringe leftist groups headed by George Galloway. The phenomenon needs to be monitored, as the repercussions for both the security and the social cohesion of Europe can be serious.
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