Author: Patrick Lang

by W. Patrick Lang

"..Pollack, who was a staffer on President Clinton’s National Security Council, said he didn’t give the AIPAC staffers any classified information. Pollack also said the information that Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former director of foreign policy issues, is accused of passing on to a reporter could not have come from him. “I believe I am USGO-1,” Pollack told JTA on Monday, using a term in the indictment for U.S. Government Official No. 1. A second source, speaking on condition of anonymity, has verified the information. Neither Pollack nor the other unnamed government official — identified by sources as David Satterfield, a former deputy assistant secretary of state — has been charged with a crime. That has raised questions about the government’s case against Rosen, former AIPAC Iran analyst Keith Weissman and Larry Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst accused of passing classified information to the AIPAC staffers." (JTA)

COMMENTARY BELOW:

Intelligence: The Human Factor (Securing Our Nation) By Patrick Lang Editor: Larry C. Johnson

A Federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia has indicted two former foreign policy analysts (Rosen and Weissman) at AIPAC (THE Lobby for Israel in Washington) and a fairly senior civilian staffer in the office of the Secretary of Defense (Franklin) for playing fast and loose with US government secret information. Among other things they are accused of passing it to a foreign country’s diplomats (Israel, of course).  Franklin, the staffer is accused of illegally disclosing the information to Rosen and Weissman.

Satterfield (USGO-2 in the indictment) is now the Deputy Chief of Mission at the embassy in Baghdad.  In other words, he is Khalilzad’s deputy.  Savor that for a moment.  He is cited in the indictment for these three men as having given them US government secrets without authorization.

Pollack (USGO-1) is the author before the war of a famous book which strongly made the case for war with Iraq. the arguments cited by him in his book are largely "exploded" now by exposure to "sunlight" in country wide investigations of Iraq.  He has forthrightly said on TV that much of his argument was nonsense.  He now works for the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute.  Saban is funded with money from Middle Eastern sources.  The director of Saban is Martin Indyk whose meteoric rise to power and ability to land on his feet after "setbacks" are legend in Washington.   His career in Australian, and US Government includes service in the Australian equivalent of the National Security Council, followed by service at the US State Department, NSC, AIPAC, WINEP, as US Ambassador to Israel and now Director of the Saban Center.  Quite a career!

So, why weren’t Satterfield and Pollack indicted as well as the other three?  My conclusion, after talking to a number of people, is that they cooperated early and fully with the FBI in "nailing" the others, and were "immunized."

Nevertheless…..

Who is kidding who here?

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV (PDF)

by Col. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

Former Chief of Middle-East Intelligence, DIA

There are some really serious things going on in the United States Army. The Army is a unique institution.  It is part federal and part state.  It has always been an institution close to the people.  It is the oldest of the Armed Forces.

It is now experiencing a transformative period so profound that it will result in a very different Army from the one that was re-built after the end of the searing experience of the Vietnam War and the hostility  which the Army as an institution received from much of the American people. 

The post VN War Army was re-built as an army of volunteers, of family people, essentially middle class and oriented toward middle American "family values." Standards were made high for enlisted soldiers, and the force that emerged was filled with people who represent "mom and pop" America.  The combat arms came to be more filed with Caucasians from small cities and rural areas.  Anyone who looks at the pictures of the fallen in the news knows that to be true.  Smoking and drinking were strongly discouraged.  Drug use was virtually stamped out.  Sexual mores reminiscent of the Victorian Age were enforced to the point of absurdity. 

That Was Then:

CONTINUED BELOW:
That Was Then:

Now, in the age of Rumsfeld, we have a very different thing emerging.  I have pieced together my understanding of what is happening and would like to offer my observations.  These are informed by my 27 years in the Army and my the education as represented by diplomas from the Command and General Staff College and the Army War College.  I welcome informed comment.

Firstly, the Army is being made into a light force in which its primary combat units will be lightly armed Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) of about 3000 infantry soldiers rather than the 15000 to 17000 soldier Divisions which now exist (DIV).  These divisions contain a great many more troops divided into a number of functions.

A typical division today contains:  three ground maneuver brigades (tanks and infantry) , one artillery brigade, one aviation brigade and a large number of supply, maintenance, signal and othr support units.  This is a potent force whgich can sustain itself in the field logistically for a long time and which has a lot of buit-in firepower to defeat enemies who have something other than IEDs, car bombs and rifles with which to fight. 

In Rumsfeld’s Army the force will be made up of many small BCT in which there will be little in the way of organic (built in) artillery and tanks.

Artillery is the big killer on the battlefield.  Artillery (with guns of caliber above 100mm) can fire day and night with great dependability and accuracy at targets so distant they can not see from the guns, and unlike aircraft are available all the time.  In Rumsfeld’s Army there will be much less artillery.

Tanks.  Rumsfeld evidently does not like tanks.  He thinks they are too heavy, too expensive and an example of the kind of "old thinking" that he is trying to get rid of.  He thinks this in spite of the fact that the Abrams tank was an indispensible element in the ligthning advance to Baghdad and the additional fact that our troops in Iraq would be severely endangered in the absence of tanks. In Rumsfeld’s "New Model" army the armored vehicle of choice will be the "Stryker" wheeled armored vehicle.  This is essentially an "armored car."  Any Tanker wil tell you that a "Stryker" is a poor substitute for an Abrams Tank.

Army Aviation.  Rumsfeld thinks there is too much of this as well.  It is too expensive, too maintenance dependent, and requires too much cubic space in aircraft to be as deployable as he would want.

Bottom Line:  Rumsfeld brought Peter Schoomaker back from retirement to implement this concept.  Schoomaker is a Special Operations Forces officer whose greatest achievement during his career was to command the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).  This is America’s SWAT Team.  Light troops, lightly armed with no tanks or artillery.  They are used in air deployments overseas in small groups for short periods of time against lightly armed terrorist forces. 

Get the connection?  The right man in the right job.

At the same time, Rumsfeld is re-making the leadership of the Army in the same way by personally vetting all senior officer promotions and assignments.  He interviews them himself.  This is unheard of.  Well, you can be sure that there will be no more men like General Shinseki to trouble him.

What’s the problem with this?  Is this not the age of superior technology and intelligence in which the civilian academic’s theories and dreams of small forces, acting on perfect intelligence, in "surgical" attacks dependent on perfect technology has come at last?

No.  We could be defeated in some future struggle.

Enemies embarrassingly do not do what you want them to do and often show up for the party in awkward numbers. 

As a rule, technology usually fails at the most difficult moment possible and the more advanced it is, the more likely it is to fail.

Intelligence analysis is never perfect.  It alwus done perforce on the basis of incomplete information and there for is always at least a little wrong.  This usuually leaves the "grunts" holding the bag for its flawed predictions.

We will be OK so long as we don’t fight any enemies who are; numerous, continue fighting for long periods, or have tanks or artillery.

Let’s think twice before we take on someone like Iran, China or North Korea.

There is another whole side of this story in the effect that Rumsfeld’s plans for re-positioning the new force will have on the people of the Army.  Tomorrow, maybe.

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio

This evening David Brooks of the New York Times offered the opinion that in Vietnam our Army “At last” got it right at the end of the war and began to concentrate on what the French used to call the “oil spot” technique (tache de huile) in which one secures inhabited villages, towns, etc. and gradually expands the area of control into the spaces between until the oil spots meet and, voila! No more guerrilas. The French fastened on this method through the efforts of some very bright and creative French officers, most notably, Colonel Roger Trinquier as expressed in his masterpiece, “Modern War” (La Guerre Moderne) which was required reading in 1964 at the “US Army Special Warfare School’s” “Counterinsurgency Staff Officer” course.

This theory worked quite well for the French in Indochina and Algeria. They essentially defeated the guerrillas in both countries, but lost the wars anyway. In Vietnam they lost to the main field forces of the Viet Minh who were a real army with regiments, divisions, uniforms, artillery, tanks ,etc. The French chose to fight their war on Indochina “on a shoestring” and in the big battles, like Dien Bien Phu, they were often badly outnumbered and outgunned. In Algeria, the French Army eventually pacified most of the country, but after a quiet couple of years, DeGaulle was elected and simply made the wise political decision to leave Algeria. He felt that the time had passed for such things as “Algerie Francaise.” He was right.

:::flip:::

Why do I know so much about the “oil spot” method? I know it because it worked for us also in Vietnam. I worked in the application of this method. I am not sure what year Brooks thinks was “at the end of the war,” but from 1967 on the US was busily trying to apply this method under the major part of the US Mission called “Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support” (CORDS). This effort united USAID, military training groups at all levels, Agricultural, Educational, Civil Police, Medical, etc. all into one effort with a national, regional and provincial, and district planning and operations policy. I worked at the District and Provincial levels. This went on until US forces completed their withdrawal process under Nixon’s Vietnamization Policy” in early 1973. I was on one of the last planes to leave. By that time most of the heavily inhabited areas of the country were pretty much under government control. How it is that Brooks thinks that we adopted this kind of strategy late in the war is a mystery to me.

Like the French the US faced the main battle forces of the Viet Minh as well as the local force guerrillas, and shadow government that CORDS was occupied with. After gaining control of Tonkin in 1954-55 the Vietnamese communists had renamed themselves as a national army and so we knew them as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). It was the same army. The divisions and regiments which had fought the French at Na San in 1953 and Dien Bien Phu in 1954 fought us in our war. I remember talking to PWs captured by us who had actually been in the same units at DBP.

We brought our main forces into the country in the mid 60s to meet the very real threat to our early pacification programs posed by the introduction of the NVA regular army into South Vietnam. As a result our regular forces fought the NVA’s regular forces all over the country and almost all the time out in the woods where the civilian population was pretty thinly scattered. In 1965-1967 it was “force on force” in the “Iron Triangle,” “The Ashau Valley, “The Michelin Rubber Plantation” and similar places. The infamous My Lai case occurred in the course of an American unit’s attempt to search a complex of villages which were thought to house the 48th VC Local Force Battalion. No one can deny that what resulted there was a grotesque crime perpetrated by a very poorly led unit.

From 1967 on the job of “heavy” US forces was to fight the NVA in SUPPORT OF the strategy that Brooks thinks was adopted “at the end of the war.” People like me who were located in Vietnamese towns and villages out in the country depended for our lives on the shield provided by US Regular units who would come to our rescue if the NVA attacked in strength. That happened a lot since they were not happy with what we were doing.

Unfortunately for the NVA we (and the South Vietnamese) were neither outnumbered or outgunned. Throughout the period under discussion we had something over half a million men in country As a result, they found themselves in a losing situation in which they could rarely win engagements against our side if our main forces were engaged. The only situations in whch they could prevail were fights against isolated units and in particular against small groups of CORDS advisers and their Vietnamese allies in the border regions. How did we losein the end? Just like the French in Algeria. People at home just got tired of the whole thing and pulled the plug. After a couple of years of “peace” under the armistice of 1972, the North Vietnamese government decided to test the system and attacked and captured a provincial capital on the Cambodian border. It fell and the reaction of the US media and Congress was to immediately declare that under no circumstances would ANY assistance be given to the South Vietnamese. Collapse then followed. There were NO American forces or advisers in the country then. There had not been for a long time.

Is this Vietnam example applicable in some way to Iraq? Not really, not at present strengths in Iraq. In Iraq we do not have the forces to go out and provide the protection for isolated coalition “development” teams all over the country. Neither do we have the policy generated structure to provide integrated teams of experts to occupy a large number of towns on a permanent basis. If we want to do that we will have to organize such an effort and put it in in place. It will be a major additional commitment. At the same time we will have to remember that these scattered groups will be very vulnerable and will need the the prospect of reinforcement by US Army or Marine units within a couple of hours. All this implies a very different deployment, a different commitment, and a lot more troops.

Can we pacify the country that way? Yes, we can if we are willing to pay the price in assets and invlovement over four or five years. The answer is also dependent on whether the various Iraqi groups do not start “competing” to see who can ask us to leave first.

In the meantime, David Brooks needs do some more reading

Pat Lang

By W. Patrick Lang

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Our hottest story tonight, the great escape. Using tools made from materials their own American guards allowed them, hundreds of Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bucca in Iraq almost pulled off a great escape, movie- style, by tunneling out of the prison. How did they pull it off? Tunnelling the length of a football field — you`re looking at it now — under the noses of their American guards. What does this tell us about the resolve, discipline and cohesiveness of these guys we are up against. [VIDEO: Hardball’s Chris Matthews gets the answer from Middle East expert Patrick Lang.]

Patrick Lang is a former defense intelligence official who specialized in the Middle East and worked in Iraq.

MATTHEWS:  Mr. Lang, I don`t know. We`re finally getting some answers tonight. The people we`re fighting in Iraq are overwhelmingly Iraqis. They`re the bad guys. They`re the members of the old regime, the hated murderous old regime of Saddam Hussein. But, as bad guys, they put together what looked like "The Shawshank Redemption" here.

Or maybe should I call it "The Great Escape" with Steve McQueen. How did they get the length of a football feel, 15 feet in the ground, with ventilating system, lighting systems, a sophisticated prison escape system and route?

PATRICK LANG, Former Chief of ME Intelligence, DIA: I think most of these guys who were involved in this are not at all from the jihadi side of things. These are guys who were once members of the Iraqi army, former Baath Party people, government people.

And when I used to travel to Iraq a lot during the Iran-Iraq war for the US Government, I was impressed that they had a lot of internal discipline and some of the officers showed initiative and knew a lot about engineering and things like this. So, I`m not actually all that surprised about this.

It is interesting that in a camp like this, they could still organize themselves into committees and plan the thing. … CONTINUED BELOW:

MSNBC Hardball transcript, Aug. 24, 2005

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio

by W. Patrick Lang

"What they are doing is to go for broader level of support because of political considerations, because of the need to build consensus, because of the need to isolate the insurgency from the Sunni population."  Khalilzad

Congratulations, Mr. Ambassador!!

It has been clear from the very beginning of the armed uprising in Iraq that the largely (but not altogether) Sunni Arab revolt could not exist, grow and continue to operate without some level of popular support.

A very simple and basic principle of insurgent warfare is that guerrillas have to have food, shelter, money, weapons, intelligence and a population which accepts their presence and does not report them to the security forces.  That support or cooperation can be freely given, coerced, or some combination of the two. 

The Bush Administration … CONTINUED BELOW:

The Bush Administration and the senior leadership of the US Armed forces has maintained throughout the war that the insurgents are:

-Baathist holdouts and "deadenders" who are not more than a handful and who are without popular support.

-Foreign and domestic mercenaries (often criminal) who are also without popular support.

-Iraqi Islamists (a handful) who have no popular support.

-Foreign Islamists smuggled in primarily from Syria (no support).

Right up until yesterday the egregious (but handsome) Dan Bartlett, White House Communications Director, was saying on the tube that those who are fighting the "progress of Democracy" in Iraq are a "tiny, indeed miniscule" percentage of the "Iraqi people."

In this context, the clear headed realism of Ambassador Khalilzad in telling Gwen Ifill of the Newshour that the new constitution must receive a lot of Sunni Arab support in order to "isolate the insurgency from the Sunni population" is highly significant.

What this tells us is that Khalilzad, and therefor probably the Bush Administration, has a much clearer understanding of the structure and numbers of the insurgencies than we had been led to believe.

Pat Lang

Reference: PBS Newshour

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio

By W. Patrick Lang

I am not a big fan of Senator John Kerry. His behavior in the US after his return from duty in VN eliminated any possibility that I would ever support him for anything.

Nevertheless, the process of relentless, remorseless, cruel denigration of his character, military record and general “style” which was carried on by the friends of the president was despicable. They attacked his wife for her “foreignness.” They attacked him for being able to speak French and being comfortable with his French relatives. They seem not to have known of Mr. Jefferson’s opinion that “every civilized man speaks two languages, his own, and French.” The assault on Kerry was reminiscent of the kind of fascist manipulation of the opinion of the masses that George Orwell warned us of in “1984.” Now it comes again.

Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is a Republican from a state filled with conservative, (not fascist) responsible citizens. Senator Hagel was once Sergeant (E-5) Hagel of the First Battalion, Forty Seventh Infantry Regiment, Ninth Infantry Division. He was a “grunt,” i.e., a Rifleman and a leader of Riflemen in a war in which Riflemen spent an average of 240 days in actual combat out of a year’s tour of duty. By contrast to this, Riflemen in the Pacific Theater of WW2, spent, on average, 40 days in combat during the whole war. CONTINUED BELOW:
In most wars, over 90% of all casualties (killed, wounded and missing) are absorbed by the Infantry. This was true in VN. The artillery does most of the killing in war, but it is the Infantry with their rifles and exposure to fire who are the great majority of the killed and maimed. Senator Hagel served with his brother in the same Rifle Platoon (44 men when I led one). I do not think that should have been permitted but there they were, together. The chance of their being killed together was considerable. Senator Hagel was wounded and decorated for his service and came home to continue to devote his life to the service of his countrymen.

Not surprisingly, Senator Hagel is still, and in some sense will always be, in Vietnam. An experience like that does not “go away.” It becomes an enduring part of the fabric of life. Senator Hagel still lives, every day, with his comrades of long ago. I saw a C-Span progran recently in which a couple of people from the Library of Congress were interviewing him for his “oral history” of the experience of war. It was evident from watching his carefully controlled responses just how much it still means to him.

Senator Hagel has made it clear that he questions the wisdom of the strategic conception of the Iraq intervention, the decision to intervene and the execution of the war. It would seem to me that he has earned the right to have an opinion in this or any other matter.

What has been the reaction from the Republican Party and its “flacks?” The Kerry character assasination machine has evidently been re-activated. Yesterday I watched as a pretty boy 35ish yuppy political hack from the crowd of sycophants with whom the president has surrounded himself described Hagel (with a sneer) as “someone who has lost his way.” He (the yup) went on to say that Hagel has no ideas worth listening to in the matter of the possible resemblance of the Vietnam War to the mess in Iraq. Actually, he said, Hagel no longer knows what the war in Vietnam was about.

Now, consider that. This kid was still crapping in his pants and crying for the pacifier when Hagel and his brother and Hagel’s “boys” were fighting to defeat the VC/NVA in the outskirts of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) but he, from the depths of his marvelous intellect knows better what VN was “about.” You can see where this is going. Are these swine going to spread the rumor that Senator Hagel was an agent and informer for the communist enemy in VN? That’s what they did to McCain in South Carolina.

The Yups should be careful. Senator “Grunt” has friends.

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio

by W. Patrick Lang

“According to Kurdish and Sunni negotiators, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, proposed that Islam be named “a primary source” and supported a wording which would give clerics authority in civil matters such as divorce, marriage and inheritance. If approved, critics say that the proposals would erode “women’s rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws.” The Guardian

How sad is that? The new constitution might lead to an erosion of “women’s rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws.”

Under existing laws!! That means the laws of the Saddamist state that we destroyed in the name of human rights.

It should have been clear in advance that the removal of one tyranny in a context like that of Iraq would likely lead to another with the “players” re-shuffled. The new “management” of Iraq just has a different agenda than the old one.

Yesterday, on the parade of “heads” that is Sunday Morning TV … CONTINUED BELOW:

we had the chance to hear Professor Laith Kubba, now adviser to the former “Dawa” leader, Jaafari. Jaafari is now the Iraqi PM. Kubba is an American citizen who teaches at an American university and whose nuclear family lives in London. He was speaking yesterday as an Iraqi government person, “We are re-building our country,” etc. Since I don’t think he was talking about tornado damage in the Mid-West, I deduce that he meant Iraq. This dual citizenship thing is getting out of hand.

Under questioning, Kubba gravely, and with a straight face, told us all that under the law code that will be based on the new constitution, families will have the option to choose whether questions of family law; divorce, inheritance, propert rights, the independence of women, the age of majority in children, etc. shall be decided before the courts on the basis of a secular European based law code or on the basis of some version of Sharia (Islamic law either Sunni or Shia). I suppose the Sunnis could choose to have their cases decided under Hanafi or Shafa’i law and the Shia would choose otherwise.

I suppose it is possible that a government dominated by Shia Divines might accept that Christians and others could be judged on the basis of an essentialy irreligious law code. That idea hasn’t worked well in other places run by Islamic zealots. Sudan and Afghanistan would be examples, but IT COULD HAPPEN.

Such people are small minorities in Iraq. The great majority are Muslims; Sunni (Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans) or Shia (Arabs). Are we really supposed to believe that a government under the influence of people who think that Islam is a “seamless garment” in which all aspects of life are properly subjected to the divine will, would accept to have MUSLIMS, who by definition have submitted to the will of God, decide their family life issues by CIVIL law?

Can it be that Laith Kubba believes that the Ayatollah Sistani would agree to having Muslims decide to have such cases judged on the basis of European law? Sistani has already told Jaafari that he “wishes” that no law should be made which conflicts with Islamic principles. We were also told yesterday by the speaker of the National Assembly that agreement had been reached on the principle that “no law shall be made which conflicts with Islam..” Today all will be made clear.

As for Kubba, one can only hope that he does not suffer the fate of so many liberal enablers of radical revolution. Exile.

PL – Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio

[From the diaries by susanhu.] “Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.
    But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam “the” — not “a” — main source of law and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.
    “We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi’ites,” he said. “It’s shocking. It doesn’t fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state. … I can’t believe that’s what the Americans really want or what the American people want.”
    U.S. diplomats, who have insisted the constitution must enshrine ideals of equal rights and democracy, declined comment. ”  The Washington Times

Are we really going to accept a measure of responsibility for a constitution like that hinted at in the WashTimes story above?  

Let us not kid ourselves, in a state which specifies in the constitution that laws must not “contradict” Islam, there will be profound change in the status of women, the status of non-Islamic religious groups, the status of what Americans think of as basic human rights.  Iraq would be a profoundly different place under such a legal regime.

Why? MORE BELOW:
Why? It is because Islam is a religion which takes its form with regard to law on the basis of the collective opinion of Islamic jurists, not on any kind of fixed document like our “Bill of Rights.”  The majoritarian balance of power in the new Iraq will evidently be that of the “Twelver” or “Imami” Shia.  This is the form of Shiism shared by both Iraqi Shia and Iranian Shia.  “Twelver” Shiism functions on the basis of the opinions of certified wise men called Ayatollahs.  There is great collegiality among these men whether they are in Iraq or Iran.  The legal opinions of senior clerics either on the bench or standing “behind” it in Iraq will be deeply affected by the legal opinions of their colleagues in Qom and other places in Iran.  That consensus now includes severe restrictions on the activities and status of women and minorities.

It is reported that Khalilzad, our ambassador in Baghdad, has been willing to compromise the rights of Iraqis, in his zeal to “close” on a draft constitution by tomorrow (22 August, 2005).  If this is true, then we need an ambassadorwho understands what America is about and for what purpose our soldiers have suffered death and mutilation.

I have known Khalilzad for a long time.  He was an advocate of the later withdrawn “Defense Policy Guidance” of the early ’90s which advocated the pre-emptive use of American power around the world to “do good.”  

To accept a regressive constitution which legitimizes discrimation before the law would hardly be “doing good.”

Democracy?  If a constutution is adopted which makes the coming of an Islamic state in Iraq inevitable, then there will be no more “purple thumb” days unless they are approved by the “fatwa” of clerical consensus.

Pat Lang

Washington Times

By Col. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

There is some thing strange about the case of Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer (USAR) and “Able Danger.”

His story, accepted thus far by the media, is that he was working in some Army or joint job as a reservist on active duty in 2000. While there (wherever there was) he says he was instrumental in causing a small Army intelligence project named “Able Danger” to be placed at the temporary disposal of the joint headquarters for Special Operations (USSOCOM)in Florida for a training exercise. Before 9/11 USSOCOM was a headquarters acting as a center for advocacy for the development of concepts, equipment and forces for the Special Operations (SOF) community. It did not direct combat operations. USSOCOM had been created by Congress as an advocate for the SOF forces.

In LTC Shaffer’s story the “Able Danger” project was a capability under development by Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) for the purpose of using computers, the internet and open data bases to “mine” information using software that had as its purpose a search for “links” or relationships between people and groups in all that data.

CONTINUED BELOW:

According to Shaffer, the project, in the course of searching for related persons connected to Al-Qa’ida, connected the dots among the four 9/11 hijackers and somehow related them to Brooklyn, NY. Why that connection to Brooklyn existed is not clear.

As the story goes on, the AD group, and possibly Shaffer, appealed to USSOCOM to release their results about the four to the FBI a year before the attacks in the US. Shaffer says that the Staff Judge Advocate (General Counsel) at USSOCOM and maybe DoD nixed that on the basis that these four characters were legal residents of the US whose right to privacy had to be respected and that this was the end of it until this year when the Navy asked for a revival of the project and he, Shaffer, looked at it again and felt upset about so little having been done with the results in 2000 and for that reason he, Shaffer, who now works at least part time at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), is making the rounds of the media to “expose” the situation.

LTC Shaffer also says that the 9/11 commission was told of the results of AD while holding hearings and did nothing with the material, in effect, burying it. The 9/11 commission denies this.

Shaffer also states that he has been in touch with “DoD leadership” in the last couple of days and implies that they have encouraged him in what he is doing.

He specifically mentions Steven Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

This is all quite strange.

It is possible that a small scale research project of the INSCOM could have been loaned to USSOCOM and could have produced such a result, but people with access to the history of government activity at that time concerning AQ say that they know nothing of this project and have never heard of it.

It is possible that the lawyers at USSOCOM could have taken such a position based on lawyerly caution and exagerated concern for the welfare of their client, CINC USSOCOM. Lawyers seem to generally know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Nevertheless, it is also true that if the CINC at USSOCOM had wanted to give the data to the FBI, he would simply have done so. What the lawyers would have been talking about would have been their collective opinions rather than a specific and clear statute and he could have simply ignored them. I know this from personal experience.

Lastly, what is a still acive US Army Reserve field grade officer doing running around giving briefings on TV and acting as a source for the “outing” of this or any other government program?

Is a “puzzlement.” Anyone who can fill in any blanks or supply any dots, please do so.

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio

"The major sticking points [for completing a draft of Iraq’s new constitution] — the role of Islam in determining Iraqi law, issues of self-rule and regional autonomy, and the sharing of oil revenue in a federal context — put the goal of consensus beyond the reach of the governing coalition of Kurds and Shiites and the Sunni Arab minority. Yet a short delay while working on key disputes is far better than ramrodding through the National Assembly a constitution that would elevate clerical leadership to a political role in a future Iraqi society, and that would disadvantage women, especially in the area of family law"  Fred Hiatt of the WashPost

A number of correspondents in Baghdad (where they mostly are) have commented since the delay was announced yesterday on the seriousness of this evidence of discord within the Iraqi "nation."  The Washington Post editorial page evidently does not share this view.  Too bad!

What the media corps in Baghdad is trying to tell people is that except for issues of government structure (1 president, 1 parliament, etc.) THERE IS NO AGREEMENT among the delegates to the constitutional convention in Baghdad on anything of real substance. 

Why is that?  Aren’t they all IRAQIS? Answers BELOW:

No, they are not, not in the sense that those who ask that question mean.  Just about all of them will tell you that they are "all Iraqis together."  Such responses are a natural reaction to the potentially dangerous questions of outsiders, but we are supposed to be smarter than to accept such statements at face value.  It is true that there are and have been a fairly large class of people in Iraq who became over the decades since independence in the 20’s Iraqi nationalists. For these people community differences are less important than for the majority and for them, personal or community interests "rank" far below national interests, but they are and were always a minority, if a substantial one.  Mr. Samara’i, a Sunni Arab, comes to mind.  He describes himself as a "Sushi" because he is a Sunni and his wife is a Shia.  There are many such.  Unfortunately for their present influence on the process of government, most such people belonged either to the Baath Party (a secular Arab nationalist party) or to some similar group.  In the presence of Shia religious party majorities in the political process, the effect of such people is minimal.

The majority of Iraqis are still more self-identifying with personal, clan, tribal and ethno-religious group interests than ahything else.

The Kurds are desparate to keep themselves as saparate as they can from Arab Iraq.

The religious Shia are busily trying to consolidate their power over as much of Iraq as they can while they still have American troop "cover" for their actions.  If they can’t do that then they have shown their intention to establish a separate "autonomous" zone in the south.

The nationalist Sunni Arab guerillas and tribals remain insistent on "national unity," but they and their secular friends in the other communities were always the main defenders of "Iraq" as an idea.

The Zarqawi led international Jihadis are in a separate category.  They are fighting their own war for their own goals and have little to do with the Iraq political process.

TEN DAYS?  I just heard NBC in Baghdad say that there are 50 major issues unresolved.

WHY?  Simple.  Iraq was a post-colonial "work in progress" in terms of "nation building" when we invaded it.  It was a "jar of worms" in terms of having a sense of nationhood.  We unscrewed the lid on the jar and the worms are crawling around according to their own agenda, not ours.

The geo-strategic geniuses like Zalmai Khalilzad should have know that.  He has always been a major advocate for the "creative" use of American power for world improvement.  As an Afghan Pushtun and supposed Muslim he should have know better, but he and others did not and now he bears the burden of his own dreams.

"and that would disadvantage women, especially in the area of family law." Excuse me!  Family and personal status law are just about invariably the areas of life reserved for Sharia or something close to Sharia law in Arab countries even ones that have mixed law codes (Western and Islamic).

The status of women?  I have the disadvantage of having been to Iraq a lot in the "old days."  I hasten to add that I went on US government business.  I clearly remember the European born wife of an American ambassador telling me in response to my question on this issue that. "the problem modernized Iraqi women have now is that they are expected to do too much.  They are expected to have professional careers, be perfect wives and mothers, and be ready to "pick up the slack" when their husbands start running around."  I remember that the General Manager of the Rashid Hotel (the best in town) was a good looking, smart, skilled Iraqi woman in her late thirties.  There were a lot like her.

Now the Shia majority in the government is going to "improve" her status.

Ten Days?  We’ll see..

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio