perfidy

From Associated Press: US soldiers in Iraq have taken to using confiscated AK-47s instead of their standard-issue M16s. This is for several reasons: scarcity of M16s available, scarcity of ammo for M16s, and apparently superior performance by the Russian gun under desert conditions. Also, there's lots of them just lying around out there, and cases fulla ammo too.

The news is spinning this as "our troops have no guns!! They have to steal them!!" And I'm sure there's something to this. So far, while our troops have done an excellent job with what they have, I have been underwhelmed by the planning, support, and logistics infrastructures within which the grunts must operate. And yet, according to Don Rumsfeld, no additional troops are needed.

But there's maybe an upside to this-- Russia has always had the edge over the US in the durable equipment department. Their spacebound rockets can launch in Siberia, for chrissakes, with a support crew of a dozen, whereas ours launch from Florida and sometimes can't handle that too well, and require a support crew of hundreds. Likewise for the guns. AK's are favored all over the world not only because every tinpot 'Stan unloaded all their Red Army surpluses, but because they keep working forever. Or so I hear. I don't shoot. But maybe the US Army could build a gun that doesn't jam in a light mist.

So it occurs to me-- why can't Russia build a half-decent car? One that can do 45 mpg/city and stay under control with two tires blown out at 55? They can send a guy into space at the drop of a hat, but a car baffles them.

Buckethead, I believe this is your arena. pls advise.

There has been much discussion over what is the immediate future of the war on terror. There is general consensus on what nations are "on the list" - Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and North Korea. Which should be next leads to significant divergence of opinion. Some have argued that we should go for the biggest threat, regardless of the difficulties - or even that we should take on the strongest target first. Others argue that we should pick off the weakest and work our way up.

So far in the War on Terror, we have chosen two targets. In many respects, both were low hanging fruit. In fact, looked at one way, every nation on our list is low hanging fruit with the possible exception of North Korea. In the comments to this excellent Trent Telenko post, Iblis likens the War on Terror to the Island hopping strategy in WWII, and then draws the wrong conclusions from his analogy. 

He is wrong in suggesting that we should go immediately for the most difficult target. We did not go straight for Japan in WWII. That was the whole point of the Island hopping campaign. Just as in pool, each shot should leave you in a better position for your next shot. Afghanistan was our first shot, and helped us by putting an immediate hurt on Al Qaida, and reducing the chances of further attacks on US soil in the near term. Aside from the fact that Iraq was a sure win militarily, there are more important reasons why Iraq was next on the list.

I argued here a while back that the primary reasons that Iraq was chosen was because a) it was easiest and b) its central location would allow us to put pressure on so many other nations on our list. It would allow us to pursue an interior lines strategy, even though it is thousands of miles from home. (Also, the diplomatic situation made Iraq an easy target, due to the numerous and flagrant violations of UN resolutions.) While we can use that position to execute a flypaper strategy, that is merely a situational tactic; useful but not moving us dramatically forward.

When we think about our next target, North Korea is wrong for several reasons. First, how do we get the South Koreans to sign on for an invasion of the North? What possible benefit is there for them? The risks far outweigh the potential gains. The damage to their people, their economy and infrastructure could be very large, even in a quick allied victory. Second, (this follows from the first) without the support of the South, invading North Korea would be painful for us, considering the degree to which our military is overstretched. Third, our position in Iraq and Afghanistan gives us no leverage or advantage in North Korea. Fourth, there is the risk that they already have nuclear weapons. And fifth, considering how messed up the North is, if we can arrange a total embargo of food and fuel, it could collapse all by itself in the very near future. As I mentioned here, if the regime collapses, it could very well implode quietly, which would allow the South Koreans and us to move in and pick up the pieces.

There are three remaining targets on the list - Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. As Trent Telenko mentioned in an post on Winds of Change, the game against Saudi Arabia may have already begun. However, I don't think we will move openly too soon, if only because of Saudi Arabia's special place in the Islamic world. Other cautions include the fact that while we have been building up our strategic reserves of petroleum, and increasing the production in Iraq, neither of these processes have moved far enough to give us enough security from the Saudis gaming the international oil markets; and we don't have a direct casus beli.

Further, I don't think our next moves will involve direct military action, at least not on a large scale. It should be obvious by now that we are overstretched militarily, and committing to another invasion and occupation (at least before the North Korean situation is resolved) could be foolhardy. Or else we need to call up the National Guard in a big way.

Of the next two targets, Iran is clearly a larger threat to us, even if Syria might equal them in general terror sponsorship. Syria seems to have toned down its activities somewhat since the Iraq invasion, and does not seem to be actively trying to get nukes. Syria is the lesser threat, and while it would be easy in abstract terms to take it out, we simply don't have the available troops, especially for occupation duty.

Iran offers the most possibilities by far. There is an active resistance/revolutionary movement, which we could encourage, supply and support. With some help from us, we could possibly give the Mullahcracy the nudge it needs to go over the cliff into the dustbin of history. The regime seems nervous and unstable, and perhaps some clever psyops and "hearts and minds" type activities could reap great benefits. Targeted strikes on nuclear and other WMD facilities by Air and Special Forces could help contain the WMD threat during the chaos of the collapse. Similar strikes on regime targets could significantly aid the democracy movement in coming to power with less bloodshed. It seems to me that we can gain the most with the least effort by focusing our efforts on Iran.

The end of the Iranian government would make our occupation of Iraq easier, and would of course be of immeasurable benefit for the Iranians. A democratic Iran would create a broad swath of contiguous territory that is all Muslim, and all democratic. This would be a remarkable achievement, and one we should bend all our efforts toward.

[Side notes:] There are situations where I can foresee combat against Syria or North Korea. Both involve stupendous blunders on the part of their respective dictators. If either of these nations decide to tangle with us, they will have their heads on pikes before its over. The cost to us will be significant, but I don't think the outcome is in doubt.

Syria first: if Syria were to be caught with their flies open and their faces hanging out shipping weapons to regime loyalists, or hiding Saddam, or attacking American targets in Iraq, we could see the Fourth ID move westward. We would have the same problems occupying Syria as Iraq, though on a slightly smaller scale, as Syria is a smaller nation. Plus side, less ethnic divisions, end of large-scale support for terror in Israel and Lebanon, another nation freed from brutal dictatorship. Downside, another hundred or so American dead in the fighting, and likely another hundred or so in the occupation. And, a few billion dollars. We'd also have to find troops to replace those moving out of Iraq, and that would likely mean calling up National Guard troops. I think this is a low probability scenario – I think Bashar Assad is clever enough not to stick his willie into the meatgrinder.

North Korea: while I said earlier that there is a very good chance we could induce the collapse of the communist government by cutting off aid - an embargo, there is the chance that the stark raving lunatic nutbags in Pyongyang could say, "Fuck it, we're toast, let's see how many we can take with us!" In this case, we have many advantages that we would not have if we took the offensive. One, we're on the defensive. Moltke the elder back in Prussia commented on the advantages of the strategic offense, tactical defense. Put the North Korean nutters in a tight spot, and if they attack, they have to attack us where we're strong. We and the South Koreans have had decades to prepare for a North Korean invasion. While they could inflict severe damage to the city and residents of Seoul, I seriously doubt that any North Korean tank gets more than twenty miles from the DMZ. Meanwhile, American Air Force, Marine and Naval Aviation make their lives hell. Marines and Special Forces can maneuver behind enemy lines. Amphibious landings. Paradrops. Total mayhem. The complete destruction of the North Korean army. There are over a million men in the NK army. They are equipped with fifties era technology. The South Koreans are almost as well equipped as we are. This is not a serious contest.

I got this link from Winds of Change, the blog I was slobbering on a couple posts back. In this post, Caerdroia talks about two of my favorite things. War and Computers. Sad, isn't it? But the article is a very interesting look at how the way we have learned to look at life due to the computer revolution could have a very large and positive influence on how we go about defending our nation - not by voting away all our freedoms, but by sticking to what is at the core of our republic's strength - liberty.

From Wired News, we learn that Saddam's Vice President has been captured in Mosul. This was the idiot who suggested that Bush and Saddam fight a duel.

This happy news brings to mind the former American VP John Nance Garner's truism that the Vice Presidency wasn't worth a bucket of warm spit. Well in this case, it was the Vice President.

Seeing as no one was killed in this car bomb attack on the Baghdad headquarters of the UN, I can be facetious and say that it looks like the Iraqis have figured out who their real enemy is.

Michael Ledeen of the National Review has a good one up on the Iranian situation.

The behavior of our State Department has been suspect for the duration of the War on Terror. Deputy Assistant Undersecretaries, lackies, underlings and minions have consistently undermined the effort to fight, or even to mildly castigate terrorists and the state sponsors thereof.

That these ... individuals... would leak these stories in an effort to deter communication with the very people who are resisting the monstrous Iranian government so that careerist State department employees can continue their dialog with the leaders of the "Iranian Democracy" is abhorrent. We need a State Department that supports the war on terror, and moreover is capable of discriminating between a democracy and a fundamentalist islamic totalitarian state.

While President Bush has been relatively outspoken in support for the people of Iran, the rest of the government needs to get on board. As I have said here before, you can predict how much the people of a dictatorial country like America by how we deal with that country's leadership. Standing on principle has real, pragmatic benefits.

On a related note, Trent Telenko had an article. a little while back on what he perceives as the beginning of a campaign against Saudi Arabia. As it happens I agree, not to suck up to much. I've talked about this before, though not with quite the depth on SA that Trent gets into.

The New Scientist is reporting that a new kind of explosive is being developed by the DoD. This miracle explosive works by stimulating the release of energy from an excited isomer of Hafnium. By shooting some xrays at this highly energized form of matter, the nucleus is convinced to emit a large number of gamma rays. Early tests showed a release of energy 60 times that put in, and theoretically this could go much higher.

A shell with one gram of explosive Hafnium-178m2 (the excited, isomer of regular Hafnium) could store the energy of over 50kg of TNT. This means you could potentially have grenade sized shells with the explosive power of a WWII blockbuster bomb. Needless to say, the military has a hard on for this stuff. For the foreseeable future, making energized Hafnium will be expensive - it requires a partical accelerator and other expensive apparatus to pump regular Hafnium with the energy it needs. Costs would be thousands of dollars per kg even in full production, on the order of those for enriched Uranium.

The downside is that this reaction is a "nuclear" reaction. It doesn't involve fission or fusion, it's an isomer decay reaction; but some of the unexploded Hafnium would remain after the weapon detonates, leaving small amounts of radioactive Hafnium behind. When you combine the words "nuclear" and "radioactive" this causes certain elements to salivate. And then to scream bloody murder.

Some will fear that this will erode the barrier between conventional and nuclear weapons. The administration has already authorized studies (not production) of low yield nuclear weapons for use as bunker busters, and to attack bio and chemical stores without danger of spreading those agents by the blast. (Of course, the blast would spread fallout - which kind of defeats the purpose in my book.) The Hafnium explosives, at least from what the article states, would be exceedingly high energy with very little radioactive residue. Most of the danger from conventional nukes is from the Alpha and Beta decay, not the gamma decay which seems to be the sole form of energy that this explosive releases.

This would be useful, then, as a bunker buster. But if these weapons are developed, the potential is enormous, especially if the xray trigger could be sufficiently miniaturized, and the Hafnium residue minimized. How about conventional machine gun rounds with a quarter gram of Hafnium explosive - each bullet explodes with the force of a tank round. Imagine a soldier with a Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle, which has an extreme range of two miles. A couple grams of Hafnium explosive in the bullet would have a remarkable effect. Or imagine an Air Force plane dropping a cluster munition, like the CBU-87. Instead of 202 grenade like bomblets, each bomblet has the explosive force of a daisy cutter.

I don't know that this stuff will ever be in the hands of the individual soldier, but integrated into missiles, bombs and artillery shells, its impact would be enormous. One of the biggest problems with explosives is not accuracy but weight. They are difficult to move around. Considering how the average soldier likes to bomb the hell out of the enemy, you can go through stocks of munitions at a frightful rate. If we perfect this technology, there are a couple uses for very large hafnium bombs. But the greatest use would be to create much smaller bombs with the same spread of explosive power as the ones we have now. This would greatly ease the logistical strain of keeping the artillery, air force and navy well stocked with things that go boom. And further, storing the bombs could be significantly safer if an xray trigger is required to detonate them. Just don't put them near hospitals, I guess.

[Side note] The trend for the US Military is toward two things - ever more integrated communications and intelligence, and more and more firepower. This fits right in with that. Winds of Change's Trent Telenko has a very good article up on the communications side of that equation.

Here are links to Part One and Part Two.

Assume that the military has taken my advice, and increased the size of the Airlift command, and bought several Mobile Offshore Bases. Now, we can move troops and equipment anywhere in the world, faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Many defense analysts, and the Defense Secretary himself, have called for “transformation” of the armed forces. What this means is sometimes a little vague, but the general thrust of their argument is that we should focus on small, high-tech, adaptable and flexible, deployable and above all highly lethal forces. Cold War anachronisms like heavy armored divisions should slowly be phased out in favor of light, mobile, precision guided, networked, brilliant-weapon forces.

In principle, this is all well and good. It is traditionally American policy to sacrifice equipment (money) before the troops. As Patton said, “it’s not your job to die for your country, but to make the other sorry bastard die for his.” I think, though, that we have gone a leetle too far down the quality side, to the point where we are facing serious problems with quantity. The drastic military cuts of the Clin-ton years have forced the military to focus on high tech weaponry because we have no other choice. So to a large extent, Rumsfeld’s emphasis on transformation is putting the best face on a bad situation.

It is not enough to have sufficient forces to deal with x number of threats. You need significantly more than that, so that after a threat is dealt with, those units can return to the United States for rest and refit. That is the problem that we are facing in Iraq. The all volunteer army has done wonders, but if we abuse it, the volunteers will walk away when their terms of enlistment are up.

I believe that we need to change our focus somewhat. We now have the capacity to put nearly infinite force anyplace we choose. What we can’t do is put a lesser but still overwhelming force in two or three places at once. We need to seriously upgrade that ability.

As I mentioned in part one, the core of our lethality is our ability to communicate and coordinate. This should be the baseline for any new divisions. The army is in the process of switching its divisions to digital technology. The 4th ID, which didn’t get to Iraq in time to see action in regular combat, was the first division to go completely digital. The 1st cavalry is next in line, and will be followed by the others in turn. Any new division should start as a digital division. What this means is that they will have the complete set of communications and networking gear that was available to some but not all of the units in Iraq last spring.

C4ISR is the military acronym for this concept. It stands for Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. No one in the world does it as well as we do. Constant and realistic training allows our troops to get the most of this equipment. By starting from that base, we will have highly adaptable, flexible and lethal troops right out of the box. Then, we can equip them to meet projected needs.

The needs that I see coming in the near term fall into two categories – the need to hit hard, and hit quickly, relatively well equipped and decent sized armies; and to occupy the nations that were once guarded by those armies. (By relatively well equipped, I mean something on the order of the Iraqi army in Gulf War I – equipped largely with late soviet era equipment, with a sprinkling of more advanced weapons acquired from France, Germany or China.) Our current line up of divisions doesn’t quite meet those needs.

The Airborne divisions are fast reacting, and can be inserted nearly anywhere. But, they are lightly armed. (Their ability to rapidly and effectively call on Air Force firepower, seen in Afghanistan, mitigates this somewhat.) The 10th Mountain division is in a similar position. The Armored and Mechanized Infantry divisions are not air deployable. We need something in between, both in terms of response time and firepower.

The solution is a light armored division. Instead of the 70 ton Abrams tank, it would be equipped with a lighter, 20 to 30 ton tank. It would have a gun nearly as powerful as the 120mm cannon on the M1, with all the nifty targeting and communications gear of the M1, but with significantly less armor. During the Gulf War, American tanks were engaging Iraqi T72s a thousand yards outside the Russian tank’s effective range. This is likely to hold true in future conflicts. Armor that can protect the crew against small arms, shrapnel and smaller cannon is sufficient. Similarly, a simple 10 ton armored personnel carrier, with good speed and armor to protect the troops from small arms fire and shrapnel, and armed with a bushmaster cannon would be more useful than a Bradley. Speed, coordination and firepower would allow the division to overcome the typically poorly trained and ill-organized third world army.

The Army has already done much of the research for the light tank - the M8 Buford AGS, or armored gun system was tested in the early nineties. Something like that could be put into production easily. For the APC, the old M113A3 should be upgraded with more modern communications and navigation equipment, and given a larger gun.

The vehicles would give the division mobility and firepower that the airborne divisions lack. Yet, with the weights I mentioned, the division would be air deployable. Even the small C-130s could carry two of the APCs, or even one of the tanks if they were on the low end of the weight scale. A C-5 could carry at least six of the smaller tanks, instead of just two Abrams. (A small number of Abrams and Bradleys could stiffen the armored force without drastically reducing its deployability.) While a light armored division could not deploy as fast as the 82nd, it would be a lot faster than the 1st Armored.

The other need is for occupation troops. Again, they would be equipped with all the communications and networking gear as a regular division. They would have armored vehicles, armored humvees, and a few tanks for firepower. But they would train heavily for missions that an occupation force would deal with – urban warfare, counterinsurgency, intelligence and military police roles functions, and military engineering.

Having a division of occupation troops would free up the traditional combat troops for their actual mission. Instead of keeping the troops that did the invasion in country for two years, as soon as they crack the shell and put down major resistance, they rotate back to the states for rest and refit. Then, the occupation troops move in to settle things down. This would allow us to keep a larger proportion of our frontline combat troops ready to fight.

We should keep the divisions we already have just as they are. There is still a need for armored and mechanized infantry. And there certainly is a need for the airborne divisions. The light armored divisions would fill a large gap in our capabilities, and the occupation troops would allow us to preserve the edge of our combat troops, while doing a better job of nation building when that is necessary.

I have thought that another five divisions would get us out of our current mess – two each of the new light armored and occupation divisions, and another infantry division, along with the necessary support troops needed to keep them operational. This wouldn’t put us up to our cold war force levels, but it would make us vastly more able to deal with the threats that we do face, and will over the next ten years or so.

Right now, we have two armored divisions, several heavy mechanized infantry divisions, the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions, and the 10th Mountain division. If we added a couple more armored and heavy infantry divisions, would we be little better off than now. Certainly, we would have more troops, which would ease the pressure on the existing units. Prepositioned stocks of equipment ease somewhat the cost and delay of shipping heavy equipment to the battle zone.

But the primary problem we have faced since 9/11 is getting troops, and more importantly their equipment, close to the enemy. Adding more heavy divisions will not ease this problem, it will exacerbate it. There are two aspects to the logistical bottleneck. First, lack of transport. The Air Force has a finite capacity for airlift. The Navy has a functionally infinite capacity, but it can take months to get gear in place by sealift. Second, the size and weight of the Army and Marine gear that must be moved.

The M1 Abrams tank is far and away the most lethal main battle tank ever built. It is virtually invulnerable to most enemy tank guns, while its main gun can shoot through a Soviet tank lengthwise. It is fast, accurate and on the whole reliable. It also weighs 70 tons. Only the two largest Air Force transports can carry the M1. The C17 can carry one, and the C5 can carry two. There are 100 C5s in the Air Force, so they could transport all the tanks in an armored division anywhere in the world in ten days. Of course, they would not be able to carry anything else, like fuel, food, ammunition, humvees, guns, troops, or whatever for the army. And of course they would not be moving missiles or armaments for any of the other services either.

It has been said many times that amateur strategists study tactics, professional strategists study logistics. So, let’s pretend to be professional. A division is more than 16,000 soldiers and all the equipment, ammunition, fuel, food and water they need to fight. We have several types of divisions. The airborne and mountain divisions are the easiest to transport, because they have the least amount of vehicles. The 82nd has its own Air Force transport wing, and they train to make deployments quickly and efficiently. In theory, the entire division can deploy in under a week to anywhere in the world.

The heavy divisions are in exactly the opposite situation. During the cold war, they had complete equipment sets positioned in Germany, and all the divisions had to do was fly to Europe and match up with their gear. They would hold off the Soviets while the Navy and Merchant Marine began shipping over equipment in quantity. When these divisions are needed elsewhere, we face the monumental problem of getting all their stuff to where its needed. As mentioned above, airlift is a narrow but fast pipe, while sealift is a fat but slow one.

The military gets around this to some extent by setting up equipment depots around the world, to cut the time needed to ship stuff where we need it. Roll-on, Roll-off cargo ships have all the tanks, trucks, humvees, Bradleys, fuel and so on for an entire division. The Air Force has detailed plans to use its airlift capacity at maximum efficiency. If we are to not only increase the size, but increase the deployability of our forces, we need to increase the logistical throughput of our military.

The simplest method would be to first of all more Air Force transports. No new technology is required, the planes have already been designed and tested. We just buy more of them - small intra-theater transports like the C-130 Hercules, up to the large airlift planes like the C-17 Globemaster and the C-5 Galaxy. The Air Force has a institutional prejudice against “trash-hauling”, preferring high tech wonders like the B-2 Spirit bomber and the F-22 Raptor fighter. However, the Air Force already has the ability to crush, decisively, every other air force in the world, and to penetrate the tightest air defenses and deliver precision munitions. Transport is the biggest priority.

The Navy is responsible, strangely enough, for sealift. The biggest limitation with sealift is the requirement for basing rights for storage, and safe harbors with docking facilities to unload all the gear. The latter means either convincing a conveniently located nation with port facilities to help us, or using one of the Airborne divisions or the Marines to take one from the enemy and convert it to our use. Even long-term allies like Turkey have denied us the right to use their ports to unload our gear.

However, the Navy came up with a solution: the JMOB, or Joint Mobile Offshore Base. The concept is simple – using technology developed for mobile drilling platforms, create several thousand foot long cargo ship modules designed to connect to each other. Each module can sail independently to a hot spot, where it would link up with four other modules to create the JMOB. On the top of each module would be a runway, and when all five modules are connected, the JMOB becomes an airport capable of handling C-17 and C-5 transports, and all but the largest civilian cargo jets. Inside each module is storage, and lots of it. Space for fuel, food, vehicles and everything else the well equipped soldier needs. And each module has port facilities, so that material stored on the JMOB, or arriving by plane or cargo ship can be rapidly and efficiently loaded onto landing craft to be dispatched to the beach.

The beauty of this concept is that it totally eliminates the need to get basing rights from other nations. Carriers allow us to project air power almost anywhere in the world. Mid-flight refueling gives our Air Force the ability to strike anywhere in the world. JMOB would give this same power projection to even heavy armor divisions. It would give us entirely new capabilities, while vastly increasing the usefulness of things we already have, like roll-on, roll-off cargo ships, landing craft and armored divisions. No JMOB has yet been authorized for construction, and at a billion dollars a pop, the JMOB is not cheap; and we’d need several of them, at least. However, the freedom of operation that they would give us would be well worth the price.

Other smaller, but still needed improvements could also be made that would improve our ability to transport soldiers to the battlefield, but if these two steps were taken, half the logistics battle would be won.

The recent reports of troops being rotated home for two week leave highlight some of the problems that we have faced in maintaining military preparedness when the military is being asked to handle so very many jobs. I commented earlier on the extent to which our forces were committed, and the need to expand the military to meet even current requirements.

But how should we expand the military, and how much? In this post and its sequels, I will concentrate on the Army, and on Army logistical issues that affect the other services. I have more ideas for what to do with the other services, but that will have to wait for later.

In general, but especially for the last twenty years or so, the United States has emphasized quality over quantity. During most of the cold war, it was assumed that highly trained, lavishly equipped American soldiers would be able to stem the red tide should the Soviets ever decide to kick off WWIII. During the 80s, ever-greater sums were devoted to developing advanced weaponry to equip our forces for confrontation with their Soviet counterparts.

By the 90s, advances in American civilian technology began to greatly affect the types of weapons that the military could develop. Space and computer technology made possible the revolution in smart, brilliant, and jesus-that’s-smart weapons that we now see in the hands of our military. These wizard weapons allow soldiers to fight in the dark, our tanks to shoot completely through enemy tanks, Air Force pilots to target individual rooms in buildings, and so on. But the core of our amazing military effectiveness lies not in the panoply of wizard weapons our soldiers carry, but in the communications and logistics technologies that surround them.

Our military is wired for communications to a level unimaginable fifteen years ago. Military networks allow information and intelligence to be transmitted to troops in the field with remarkable rapidity. These networks allow units to coordinate their activities to the point where they can act almost like a single intelligence. This is what gives us our flexibility, adaptability and speed. This is the heart of our lethality.

When we think about what kinds of units we would like to add to the army, these are things that need to be kept in mind. But before we even think about adding more troops, we need to think about how to move them.

Robert Novak, whose political antennae are unusually acute, is reporting that there may be an announcement of the discovery of WMD in Iraq come september:

"Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

Kay has told his superiors he has found substantial evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, plus considerable missile development. He has been less successful in locating chemical weapons, and has not yet begun a substantial effort to locate progress toward nuclear arms."

Along similar lines, the British government, will soon announce that it has new evidence that Iraq had produced and subsequently concealed biological weapons.

This is welcome news for me, on several levels. First, we know for certain that the Iraqis had WMD of various types back in the late nineties. We don't know where they went, and that is not a good thing. The discovery of a Russian reconnaissance aircraft (derived from the Mig 25) in the desert indicates that the Iraqis were like squirrels, hiding the nuts of their warmaking capacity all over the desert. Given the size of that desert, it will be hard for us to dig it all up.

If we are beginning to discover the scope of the Iraqi WMD development program, there is a decent chance that over time we can assure ourselves that the most has been discovered or destroyed.

Of course, another benefit is that this will silence some of the more annoying criticisms of the war on terror. Not that I am against criticism in general, but this one always irritated me. Perhaps with the WMD issue behind them, Democrats and the left can engage in a more coherent and useful criticism of war policy.

This article, from the LA Times, shares some thoughts on America's role of Global Cop. In it, Mr. Spencer makes a useful distinction between the big peace, and little peace in individual countries around the world. America's position in the world dictates that it will be a, if not the, major player in assuring the peace of the world.

This big peace means keeping the seal lanes open for trade, deterring large scale aggression or territorial aggrandizement, and ending major threats. Assuring the peace inside any given country is at best optional unless the meltdown of that country has major repercussions outside its borders.

This to me sounds like a reasonable criterion for judging foriegn intervention. If we assume that the war in Iraq was part of a larger war on terror, it clearly fits into the big peace category. Our actions there were part of deterring or ending the threat fundamentalist or islamic terror represents to the peace of the world.

Liberia, on the other hand, is small peacekeeping. For all the horrific character of Liberia's civil war, the utter collapse of Liberia will have little effect on the rest of the world. National interest must come into play in order to set a lower bound to what makes us commit troops. Otherwise, we will become fatally overstretched.

Currently, the United States has exactly three uncommitted combat brigades. (for reference, a brigade is a third of a division, of which the United States Army has ten.) Approximately ten thousand troops are available for new missions, the rest are either in tasked to S. Korea, Europe, or are in refit/retraining on their way to being available once more. This means that if some great threat were to emerge that isn't the paranoid raving lunatics of North Korea, we're screwed. And we're even more screwed if a third of our available unallocated military strength is sent to Liberia.

At the end of the first Gulf War, the Army had 18 active duty divisions along with a number of independent brigades, and any number of support and logistics units. During the Clinton administration, with the acquiescence of the Republican congress, that was nearly cut in half. The Navy and Air Force suffered similar, though not quite so deep, cuts in their forces. Only the Marines, smallest of the four branches, survived nearly untouched.

The recent unpleasantness in Iraq has stretched our downsized military almost to the breaking point. During the conflict, we heard of the Carrier task forces that were on station for more than a year. The Army's third division just had its deployment in Iraq extended indefinitely. The reason that these forces were so overused is for one simple reason - there was nothing to replace them with.

While many have commented on the facts I just mentioned, few realize that overdeploying units have far reaching effects beyond the immediate morale of the troops in those units. The extension of the Third division's deployment basically was a decision to sacrifice one tenth of our army for immediate needs. Sure, we can use the 3rd now, but when the division eventually comes home, huge percentages of its soldiers will not reenlist. When these soldiers leave, they are not available to train the new soldiers who are assigned to the unit. It will be most of a decade if at all, before the 3rd is as effective as it was when it entered Iraq.

The civilian leadership of the DoD have spoken of reorganization as a possible solution, saying that by contracting out more logistical and administrative functions we can assign more uniformed personnel to combat units. This is probably true. But it cannot actually solve the problem.

There are only two solutions. Reduce the number and scale of military deployments by a) cutting back on peacekeeping and commitments to other nations and b) fighting far fewer wars; or increasing the size of the military to something close to what it was in 1991. (Alright, there's a third solution that is an average of the first two.)

For a variety of reasons, the first option can't solve all our problems. We can cut back on deployments by nibbling around the edges - the Sinai, cutting back in the Balkans and Central Europe, etc.; but there are certain core needs that must continue to be met. In most cases, American troops already in place are there for a good reason. Further, for all that you've heard me say that unilateralism is not necessarily a bad thing, I also feel that multilateralism is not necessarily a bad thing either. Cuttign back drastically on our military commitmentst to other nations will have deleterious diplomatic consequences, and possibly encourage aggression that is now deterred by the presence of American forces.

So, we need to not merely increase defense spending, we need to increase the number of combat troops that can be sent to the sharp end - so that we can meet the threats that the next couple decades may offer. If we burn up all of our combat strength now by overdeployment, we might have very little left by the end of the decade. Right now, we spend a little over 3% of GNP on defense. This is somewhat more than many other nations spend. Of course, the sheer size of the American economy makes that number seem very large when compared to others.

At the height of the cold war, we were spending double the percentage that we are now. Given our role of first team peacekeeper, spending say, 5% of GNP does not sound that unreasonable. Especially when that would give us six more army divisions, a couple carrier battle groups and several Air Force bomber and fighter wings. Which might even give us the real leeway to lower the bar for humanitarian interventions.

In this interview with John Gibson of Fox News, Hitchens discusses his recent trip to Iraq. In general, he belives that things are going well:

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

And so if no one is willing to take the gamble, as they see it, of saying actually that it's going a lot better than it is, but it is. It's quite extraordinary to see the way that American soldiers are welcomed. To see the work that they're doing and not just rolling up these filthy networks of Baathists and Jihaddists, but building schools, opening soccer stadiums, helping people connect to the Internet, there is a really intelligent political program as well as a very tough military one...

I felt a sense of annoyance that I had to go there myself to find any of that out.

More balanced mainstream reporting on Iraq and on the democracy movement in Iran would be welcome.

In this article, Charles Krauthammer offers a good prespective on what we've accomplished so far in the war on terror. The part I found most interesting was this, on the recent hooforah over the uranium thingie. (Thingie!):

The fact that the Democrats and the media can't seem to let go of it, however, is testimony to their need (and ability) to change the subject. From what? From the moral and strategic realities of Iraq. The moral reality finally burst through the yellowcake fog with the death of the Hussein brothers, psychopathic torturers who would be running Iraq if not for the policy enunciated by President Bush in that very same State of the Union address.

That moral reality is a little hard for the left to explain, considering the fact that it parades as the guardian of human rights and all-around general decency, and rallied millions to prevent the policy that liberated Iraq from Uday and Qusay's reign of terror.

This has amazed me for some time. The left is the champion of the downtrodden masses, the oppressed and suffering. Why did they try so hard to keep these particularly downtrodden, oppressed and suffering masses from being helped? Even if they believe that Bush is satan incarnate, an alliance of convenience to help the oppressed might have been a good idea, then go back to trying to overthrow the evil republicans.

Ralph Peters, an insightful military commentator (and former Army officer) said that the truism on military plans was reversed in the Iraq war - no Iraqi army was surviving contact with our battle plan.

The remarkable success of the war phase may have led to confidence that other plans were equally good. Of the things that Wolfowitz mentions, many could not have been easily foreseen, given the closed nature of Iraqi soceity before we arrived, and the precedent of the first gulf war.

Adaptability is key in winning wars, likewise in peacetime. As long as we don't delude ourselved, we will be able to adjust our plans and our thinking to meet problems as they are.

Once Iraqi oil starts flowing, that may reduce the financial burden somewhat. And 29.5 billion compared to the total US budget is not a deal killer.

Keep in mind though, Wolfowitz and others have often said that it would cost money, and problems would have to be detected and solved. This statement isn't the first. (Still welcome, though.)

Hopefully, the mudville nine will not fall over themselves criticizing the administration for problems that would have had to be solved regardless of whether they had been accurately foretold or not. Openness and accountability are all good, especially in this phase.

(As a side note, Clueless has a new post on why we never should have and still shouldn't reveal long term plans. This reasoning wouldn't apply to the civilian administration of Iraq, though.)

(Just kidding about that headline).

From CNN:

Pentagon admits Iraq mistakes

Back from a four-day whirlwind tour of Iraq, the Pentagon's number two civilian, Paul Wolfowitz, has admitted that many of the Bush administration's pre-war assumptions were wrong.

Among the things Wolfowitz says the U.S. guessed incorrectly was the assumption that some Iraqi Army units would switch sides; that the Iraqi Police would help maintain security; and that regime remnants would not resort to guerrilla tactics....

Speaking to reporters this week, Acting Army Chief Of Staff Gen. John Keane said it was entirely possible for the military to stretch its forces beyond the limits.

But, he says, "we don't want to do that -- so we're working very hard to avoid that."

The U.S. says it also had no idea how badly Iraq's infrastructure had been neglected over the past three decades.

The cost of putting the country back on its feet will be billions. According to the U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, it will take up to $13 billion "to rebuild and meet foreseeable power demands."

On top of that, he says, United Nations estimates indicate "we will have to spend $16 billion over the next 4 years just on water and getting decent water to the population."

My headline aside, I'm overjoyed that someone from the Bush Administration has the stones to address reality and the fact that it's Wolfowitz suggests that the NeoCon Leadership Coalition are finally willing to accept that they don't have all the answers. In any case, Wolfowitz's statement is miles better than the usual dissembling and selective amnesia. The best part is that the top brass admitting that mistakes were made means that the problems their mistakes created are being addressed.

The only bitter pill is the $13 billion dollar figure just for power, and the $16.5 billion dollar water bill. I guess by breaking the numbers down like that, they hope to keep us from adding them up.

But I'll put that aside for now. Despite my major problems with Bush's domestic agenda, I'm not so crazy that I wish for a continued cluster**** in Iraq just to spite the President. The faster Iraq gets back power, water, security, and stability, the happier I will be. Let's hope this only the first of many so-called 'honest' statements from Administration flacks that actually might deserve the name.

Mmmmmm... glasnost!

Mark Kleiman has been all over a disturbing and little-known story.

It's official: the Bush Administration deliberately blew the cover of a secret agent who had been gathering information on weapons of mass destruction, endangering the lives of her sources and damaging our ability to collect crucial intelligence. (And, not incidentally, committing a very serious crime.) The apparent motive: revenge on Joseph Wilson, her husband, for going public with the story of his mission to Niger, which blew a hole in the Yellowcake Road story.

The facts of the case seem legit. I sincerely hope this wasn't a Nixon-moment.
 

The Washington Post is reporting that US Forces in Iraq have dental record matches and several eyewitness IDs on the two sons of Saddam. 

Meanwhile, in In Baghdad, people break curfue to celebrate the news that Uday and Qusay were pushing up daisies. It seems that the most common regret was that because they were dead, no further harm could be done to them.

Good riddance.
 

The 101st Airborne and Special Operations troops killed Uday and Qusay in Mosul. Two other Iraqis were also killed, according to this Centcom News release.

Every news source in the world is reporting this, so I will randomly choose... ooooh, MSNBC:

"The likely death of Saddam Hussein’s two powerful and notorious sons, if confirmed, would represent a withering blow to Iraqi Baath Party loyalists who hope to wait out the American occupation and restore the regime to power.

That's great! It's taken Bush months to beat this level, and it's worse for him that he sometimes forgets to save his game. 

All that remains is the Big Boss Level. I hope Bush remembered to defeat the Tikriti Dragon and get the Spirit Key-- he's gonna need it!