Private Security Contractors get $1.2bn. KBR Sued

The United States is spending more money than ever on private security contractors in Iraq as thousands of troops return home amid steady declines in insurgent attacks." Over $1.2 billion will have been spent this year on "contractors, who protect diplomats, civilian facilities and supply convoys."

Its heartwarming news about the declines in attacks, but wouldn't this massive sum of money money be better spent on our own military?



Meantimes, a Washington law firm "filed a lawsuit yesterday against KBR, one of the largest U.S. contractors in Iraq, alleging that the company and its Jordanian subcontractor engaged in the human trafficking of Nepali workers." The firm says 13 Nepali men were recruited for kitchen work in Jordan only to have their passports seized upon arrival and "told they were being sent to a military facility in Iraq."

"Stay The Course" in Iraq (Or Leave?)

In a policy U-Turn, last Thursday, the U.S. Whitehouse endorsed a draft agreement with the Iraqi government that would remove "combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011." Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters that the 2011 date was an "aspirational timeline."



The Iraqis seem quite comfortable with the U.S. pulling out ... Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki explicitly disagreed with their characterization of the time frame as "aspirational." In a speech to tribal leaders yesterday, Maliki said that the U.S. and Iraq have reached an agreement on "a fixed date" for withdrawal. "No pact or an agreement should be set without being based on full sovereignty, national common interests, and no foreign soldier should remain on Iraqi land, and there should be a specific deadline and it should not be open," Maliki said, adding that "an open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces." While Maliki claims the U.S. has agreed to his demand, the White House said "no final deal had been reached."

Let's Not Forget Afghanistan

The U.S. military suffered its 101st death in Afghanistan this year when a soldier was killed last week, making it more likely that this year's death toll in Afghanistan will surpass last year's record of 111 soldiers.



The death comes a week after Taliban fighters "mounted their most serious attacks in six years of fighting," including "a coordinated assault by at least 10 suicide bomber against one of the largest American military bases in the country, and another by about 100 insurgents who killed 10 elite French paratroopers."

A New York Times editorial last week urged a change in strategy in Afghanistan, emphasizing that the war there "is not a sideshow. It is the principal military confrontation between America and NATO and the forces responsible for 9/11 and later deadly terrorist attacks on European soil." The Pentagon has declared its intention to send 12,000 to 15,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where troop levels have been hampered by the war in Iraq. In July, Adm. Mike Mullen said, "I don't have troops I can reach for...to send to Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq."

McCain: "In The 21st Century, Nations Don't Invade Other Nations". John, I couldn't agree more...

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:"in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."



It was the type of foreign policy rhetorical blunder that has regularly plagued the McCain campaign and could have diplomatic ripples as well. Certainly the comment was meant in innocence. But for those predisposed to the notion that the U.S. is an increasingly arrogant international actor, the suggestion by a presidential candidate that, in this day and age, countries don't invade one another -- when the U.S. is occupying two foreign nations -- does little to alleviate that negative perception.

There is another, less controversial undertone to McCain's remark. Since the Georgia-Russia hostilities have commenced, parallels have been drawn to U.S. intervention in Iraq. The two scenarios are highly different in all intents and purposes, both due to regional significance and the longstanding territorial disputes. But some still would dispute the idea, as McCain seemed to imply, that America's involvement in Iraq is any less an invasion than Russia's involvement in Georgia.

Later in his press conference, McCain was asked to address how the Georgian crisis -- which has ceded to a tenuous ceasefire -- was amplified on the campaign trail. The presumptive Republican nominee demurred from attempts to get him to engage with Barack Obama.

"This isn't a time for partisanship and sniping between campaigns," he said. "This is about hundreds of thousand of individuals whose lives are being taken... Maybe later on in the campaign let's have a back and forth about whose comments and statements... but now lets devote all our efforts to resolving a situation that is fraught with tragedy."

A subsequent questioner asked McCain whether this non-partisan window applied to Sen. Joseph Lieberman as well, who, at a townhall on Tuesday, suggested that Barack Obama had not always "put his country first." McCain's answer was classically evasive.

"Let me respond by just saying that I think that whatever we think at the moment that we can all reserve that for a future time. And I think that judgments will be made about how we handled this situation and approached the situation in Iraq and how much experience knowledge and background means in selecting who should be the next commander in chief, all I can say is there will be plenty of time for that and we can move forward. "

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:"in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

White House *Forged* Iraq/ al Qaeda Evidence?

According to a new book, "The Way of the World," by Pullitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind, the White House ordered the CIA in fall 2003 to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the head of Iraqi intelligence, to Saddam Hussein. The letter, according to Suskind, "was designed to portray a false link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war."



Suskind, quoting "two former CIA officials who claim to have seen a draft of the letter on White House stationery," writes that "the idea was to take the letter to Habbush and have him transcribe it in his own neat handwriting on a piece of Iraqi government stationery to make it look legitimate. CIA would then take the finished product to Baghdad and have someone release it to the media."

Habbush was reportedly paid $5 million afterwards. When the letter was first released in fall 2003 it was called "probably fake," as it contradicted "highly detailed" intelligence compiled by U.S. law enforcement officials. The White House attacked Pullitzer winner Suskind's new claims as "gutter journalism," while former CIA director George Tenet called the book "seriously flawed." Suskind responded on NBC's Today Show: "I think this is part of George's memory issue. ... I went to all the people around George, close to George, who remember because they were involved in the thing, and they remember what George says to them."

John Kerry Was Right

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry said that the U.S. should combat terrorism in the same manner that the RAND study and the new National Defense Strategy now advocate: with less military force and more intelligence, policing and cooperation with allies.


President Bush, however, smeared Kerry's strategy as "naive and dangerous" in 2004 and ran campaign ads that asked, "How can Kerry protect us if he doesn't even understand the threat?"

Yesterday, Kerry delivered a speech that reiterated his position from 2004: "We have to take our military-dominated 'war on terror' and remake it as the global counterinsurgency campaign that it always should have been." Quoting the RAND report, Kerry noted that "military action was the primary cause of a terrorist group meeting its final demise in just seven percent of the time." Kerry followed up his speech with an online discussion at TPM Cafe, where he outlined six key aspects of a successful global counterterrorism campaign and recommended that "everyone should read [CAPAF senior fellow] Brian Katulis' new book [The Prosperity Agenda] for a sense of how we win the war of ideas globally."

Katulis's book, co-authored with former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nancy Soderberg, argues that the Bush administration's so-called "Freedom Agenda" as a means to defeat terrorist groups has not worked, and the next U.S. administration needs to focus on a more comprehensive strategy focusing on the basic security needs of individuals.

President Bush's Failed Bin Laden Hunt

An article in yesterday's New York Times criticized the Bush administration for failing "to develop a comprehensive plan to address the militant problem" along the Afghan-Pakistan border, where Osama bin Laden is reportedly rebuilding the al Qaeda terror network. After expressing enthusiasm for capturing bin Laden shortly after the Sept.11 attacks, the Bush administration has since indicated that "bin Laden doesn’t fit" with its "strategy for combating terrorism" and is "not a top priority use of American resources." Beginning in 2002, the administration "shifted its sights...from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq" and outsourced the hunt for bin Laden to Pakistan. As a result, "the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world."



According to "current and former military and intelligence officials" interviewed by the Times, "the war in Iraq diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas" on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan and "drained away most of the CIA officers with field experience in the Islamic world." Intelligence officials have long warned the administration of the dangers of shifting resources prematurely. On Feb.19, 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks reportedly told then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), "We are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan" because "military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq." Similarly, an Army War College report published in December 2003 concluded that the Iraq war "diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable Al Qaeda." Where the specialists went, the equipment followed. Officials told the New York Times, for instance, that when they "requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq." As Graham pointed out, the removal of Predator drones from Afghanistan is "a clear case of how the Bush administration's focus on Iraq undermined the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

The Iraq war also bolstered the view "among Pakistanis that American forces in the tribal areas would be a prelude to an eventual American occupation" and made it difficult for the administration "to have insisted that American forces be allowed to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan." In fact, the Pakistani government "flatly refused" American proposals to allow Special Operations forces to establish operational bases along the border, and in 2003, "under pressure from Pakistan, the Bush administration decided…to end the American military presence on the ground." With the hunt for bin Laden virtually outsourced to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and the administration distracted by the "spiraling violence in Iraq," Bush backed Pakistan’s failed strategy of signing cease-fire agreements "with the Taliban inside Afghanistan." But rather than reducing "cross-border incursions," the agreements allowed al Qaeda to establish an even stronger foot hold in the Pakistan tribal regions. Thus while the Bush administration has propped up "the Muslim world’s most powerful military dictator as an essential ally," Pakistan has shown little commitment to capturing bin Laden. In fact, in January 2008, Musharraf admitted that "the 100,000 troops that we are using...are not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly."

The war in Iraq and Bush's over-reliance on Pakistan have allowed al Qaeda to regroup along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Intelligence sources interviewed by the Times suggest that "the makeshift training compounds" in Pakistan's tribal areas "now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago." The build-up of members has reshaped al Qaeda into a threat that is "comparable" to what the United States faced on Sept. 11, 2001. Similarly, according to the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, "Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives." Rather than reducing the terror threat, the Iraq conflict has become the "cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement," the report concluded.