CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE ADDER, Iraq — Transition teams throughout southern Iraq attended a conference June 12, at Contingency Operating Base Adder.
The conference provided a forum for transition team leaders to establish new relationships, share best practices and receive guidance from the commander of 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. The BCT deployed to Iraq last month as the first “Advise and Assist” Brigade to complete specialized Stability Operations training and be given the job of helping train Iraqi Security Forces.
“You all have the hardest jobs,” said Col. Peter A. Newell, commander, 4th BCT, 1st Armored Div. “Our mission success is based on the ability of the Iraqi Security Forces to accomplish their mission. You are the tip of the spear in paving our way to going home.”
“Inside Iraq” is a blog updated by Iraqi journalists working for McClatchy Newspapers. They are based in Baghdad and outlying provinces. These are firsthand accounts of their experiences. Their complete names are withheld for security purposes.
Phi Beta Iota: We are impressed by McClatchy, and we are impressed by this Blog. We are reminded of the blogs in the early days, when US contractors would get $50 million no-bid contracts to fix things, and the Iraqi engineers who built the bridge/factory/road would come up in a blog and say they could do it faster, better, cheaper (one tenth to one one hundredth of the cost). No one listened. The “system” has become dysfunctionally stupid.
Commentary: Mr. President, take your time on Afghanistan
Joseph L. Galloway
Friday, November 13, 2009
The word is that none of the options contains what the president wants to see — an estimate of how many more years beyond the eight already invested would be needed and an exit strategy.
Bravo!
Simple question and a vital requirement: How much longer will it take, and how do we get out when that time is up?
Let's call that Military Planning 101 and, like the president, we're left to ponder why that basic first step in committing a nation and its military and its treasury to a war wasn't taken before now and was missing from all the alternatives offered at this critical junction in a war that's now in its ninth year?
Kilcullen: Send either lots of troops or none at all
November 12th, 2009
Some quick notes from Georgetown, where David Kilcullen has just addressed students and faculty at the Center for Peace and Security Studies. Highlights below:
The oft-touted 1:50 (or 20:1,000) ratio is “flawed.” It was based on post-war reconstruction studies done by the Rand Corporation, not on actual insurgencies. Successful COIN campaigns have employed ratios that vary widely. It also refers to total security forces, not just — in our case — American troops. Finally, it’s better to think about the military presence functionally, rather than numerically.
“Where local officials sleep” is a good indicator to track progress. In the film, I Am Legend, Will Smith must get home before the vampires come out to feast. Similarly, in Afghanistan today some 70% of provincial governors sleep in Kabul instead of the provinces they govern. This is bad.
TURN IN THESE CIA FUGITIVES : They’ll get 5-8 Years
By Carolyn Keuhn
NOV.4, 2009: Italy convicted 23 CIA rendition perps. All could be imprisoned if they leave the US.
An Italian judge on November 4, 2009, convicted 23 CIA agents and two Italian agents over their role in the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric. Milan judge Oscar Magi sentenced former Milan CIA station chief Bob Seldon Lady (on left in PHOTO with Luciano Pironi) to 8 years and 22 other agents (PHOTOS) to 5 years in prison for their role in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Also convicted was Air Force Colonel Joseph Romano (COLOR PHOTO), who was responsible for the CIA kidnapping team’s flight to Egypt from a U.S. air base in Italy.
WANTED: CIA Renditiones
CONTACT: Interpol, the international police agency, by email or at this FAX number in Switzerland: +33 4 72 44 71 63. (Refer to the warrant number given in the Robert Lady photo caption.) Or contact your local or national police.
The US is shielding the perps, whose names and PHOTOS are shown [at original source].
The recent closing of this five year award-winning newsletter by Mark Satin, author of the book Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now has yielded a marvelous “best of the best” series of links on a single page that we strongly recommend to anyone with a brain interested in democracy and the creation of a prosperous world at peace.
This article by two young scholars is a very good one, very provocative and persuasive. It lacks reference to other giants that have gone before, but stands as the best effort we have seen since WIRED did its own cover story on alternative and renewable energies in 2001, coming out the very week that Dick Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon to discuss the elective war on Iraq. Also available from the lead author:
Phi Beta Iota: We are often irritated by the young who represent their triumphant ideas as if arrived at by immaculate conception. No discussion of this topic is credible without reference to, at a minimum, Buckminster Fuller, Herman Daly, and Paul Hawken, among many others. Below are just three books among the many we have received pertaining to sustainable design, zero waste, and green to gold, and the most recent book to put all of this into proper perspective.
