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Two videos of Petraeus in Iraq

Fri, 06/26/2009 - 1:02pm

AEI apparently is branching into movie-making, with its first title being, of course, The Surge. But I still prefer this earlier video, believed to be of Petraeus conceiving his strategy in Iraq.

MICHEL MOUTOT/AFP/Getty Images

Thomas E. Ricks | Permalink |

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( filed under:

Middle East | Iraq | Military | U.S. Foreign Policy

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high flyer

by Don Bacon on Fri, 06/26/2009 - 6:06pm

Well that second video was surely good, and Davey didn't even raise a sweat. But my personal favorite from the high-flying David Petraeus was his presidential campaign contribution in 2004.

(General Petreaus was in charge of the training of Iraqi army battalions from Jun 2004 to Sep 2005.)

Sep 2004–Petreaus, in a WaPo Op-Ed): “Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations. . .Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. . . Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49283-2004Sep25.html

And then that spoil-sport Casey shot down Petraeus.

Sep 2005–Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said there are fewer Iraqi battalions at “Level 1" readiness than there were a few months ago. . . The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday.
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2005/tr20050930-secdef4002.html

But we see how that ended. Casey was sent to the minors as a chief of staff or something, and Petraeus is a god. Go figure.

NIEs and threats

by Don Bacon on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 6:09pm

National Intelligence Estimates, as I understand them, are routinely classified, but their contents are released for political purposes. The Iraq WMD NIE was Top Secret, until Bush declassified its erroneous contents. Iran -- released to get the CIA off the hook. Afghanistan -- is it in any NIE?

It seems to me that, in a democracy, threat estimates ought to be publicized.

And they ought to be realistic. One of my hobbies (okay, it's weird) is keeping track of US national emergencies, which are supposedly based on threats to US national security.

Bush had some ongoing national emergencies, and they expire unless they are renewed by their anniversary, because the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622 (d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date.

There are currently nineteen (19) ongoing national emergencies, with ten of the nineteen having been dutifully renewed by Obama on their anniversary. They include these "threats to US national security" (in order of renewal): Cote d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Iran, Syria, Burma, Iraq, Belarus, Russian Federation, Western Balkans and North Korea. There are nine more, which Obama will apparently renew also.

Here's an example: Cote d'Ivoire – "Because the situation in or in relation to Côte d'Ivoire continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, the national emergency declared on February 7, 2006, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond February 7, 2009."

Freeman: "Surveys show the average American to be supremely ignorant of the world beyond our shores." Some of these average Americans are in government, no?

nineteen concurrent national emergencies

by Walking Wounded on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 7:46pm

Is there a web-site? Have you plotted our contemporary NE's against TPM Barnett's Gap-map?

If I'm 'supremely ignorant', doesn't that make me above average in that regard?

One wonders what difference it might have made if several hundred (instead of maybe a dozen) senators and representatives had taken the time to be 'read in' to the 2002 WMD NIE and its appended dissents.

threats

by Don Bacon on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 7:48pm

There ought to be a web site, but I don't know of any. We ought to have a site concentrating on any real threats, not the hokey ones that are being promulgated.

Reminds me of paragraph One of the Ops Order: 1. SITUATION, a. Enemy Forces, Known or estimated strength, locations and actions that may effect the completion of the mission.

I dug up all this on my own. It's not easy, and even then I may have missed some "threats."

Gap-map? I missed it.

Core vs Gap

by Walking Wounded on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 12:24am

It does seem odd that if Ivory Coast is a declared US national emergency, and Palestine is not.

For reasons unclear, Dr. TPM Barnett's conflict/connectivity theory is the bomb elsewhere, but never mentioned here at Ricks' place. He describes his aha moment as when he mapped decades of US interventions for DOD, and noted they were mostly in semi-contiguous non-integrated 'Gap' areas, vs the globalized functioning 'Core" countries.

"New Rule Sets' and 'system peturbation' talk probably refers to his theories. Barnett is very comfortable with the idea that we are globalization's armed agent; less so with the quality of the heavy handed security and half baked nation building product we have been delivering. As an economic determinist, I think Barnett would predict continued instability for Iraq's income numbers, but i've not heard him address Iraq much directly. He charges for his analysis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Barnett

Skip the NIE - Go for the ICA

by Tyrtaios on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 12:37am

If you really want to find out the skinny. Focus on the country desk analytical policy level documents known as Intelligence Community Assessments (ICA), which are overshadowed by the NIE.

The ICA is also a product of the National Intelligence Council, but generally gives a more accurate picture and predictions, as well as written in less ambiguous language than documents that reach the decision policy level.

So, why have an NIE? Why not

by J Thomas on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 7:09am

So, why have an NIE? Why not instead have a summary that links to specifics in various ICAs, so that the details are easily available?

NIE versus ICA?

by Tyrtaios on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 7:54am

You would have to ask yourself the question as to why an intelligence professional finds his/her craft so difficult, while at the same time those end users at the national policy making end, i.e. the White House, never seem to have a problem evaluating what's put in front of them.

If you were to go back to the pre NIE concerning Iraq, and look also at the two ICA's that were also simultaniously offered forward, you would see the ICA were more on the correct track as opposed to the NIE - which overshadowed them.

That's all you get J Thomas. : - )

Palestine is not

by Don Bacon on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 11:10am

Here are the remaining nine "threats to national security" which are the basis for "national emergencies":
The former Liberian regime of Charles Taylor, Lebanon, Terrorism, Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism, Sudan, Weapons of mass destruction, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Middle East Terrorists (you might say Palestinians -- you know how they are) and Cuba.

Palestine, Mexico and others have not risen to that level.

UPI: Violence perpetrated by Mexican drug cartels is spilling over into the United States and represents a legitimate need for troops to back up border agencies, Homeland security officials and some U.S. governors say. There is a proposal to send 1,500 more National Guard troops to the border.

Mexico is not a threat, even though the US must send more troops to the border. Nope, doesn't measure up to The former Liberian regime of Charles Taylor as a threat.

n-n-n-nineteen

by Walking Wounded on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 11:43am

thx for filling out the list. Some of those seemed designed to function as blanket search warrants- to defend truth, justice, and the American Way of Life...

Here's a link to Barnett's map graphic, which he claims to be roughly predictive of future US military and covert ops.

http://thomaspmbarnett.com/pnm/map_index.htm

Re the 'ops order' thing you posted; The first item of military planning seems to be enemy order of battle, sizing the threat. Failing to do that's where the Wanat, Beiruit, or Ia Drang ops were shorted. On the strategic level, US credibility was the 'irreducable interest', the 'mission' that Johnson and Nixon sacrificed blood and treasure to secure, and lost.

Order of battle/'primary threat assessment' also seems to be the first thing stripped away in MSM coverage. The 'badness du jour' sucks up all the bandwidth, as if the rest of the world has gone on hold. For example, news and congressional hearings are hijacked at the cry 'Pirates- there are pirates!'

map

by Don Bacon on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 12:36pm

With just a quick look at the low-res map it seems clear that, according to Barnett, the US will only attack weak third-world countries. Well, yeah. Since even those have brought abysmal results why push it and attack a substantial force?

Nevertheless, since war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne wrote, the US must have its never-ending conflict, so go third world and claim it's, let's see, that's it -- it's for US national security and furthermore it's for their own good! And verily they blessed it, and called it COIN.

Well, yeah. Chicken or egg?

by Walking Wounded on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 5:19pm

With due respect DB, while noting Barnett's mock-casual acceptance of force and certainty of exploitation of 'Gap' generations during 'globalization', I think he deserves a serious listen/read. Brian Lamb takes a crack at it, linked here:

http://thomaspmbarnett.com/pnm/index.htm

There claims to be a hi-res version of the PNM 'gap map', but the low-res pdf reads well at 200% on my box.
http://thomaspmbarnett.com/pnm/map_index.htm

By my shallow read, Scheuer seems a more bloody-minded defender of empire. Isn't he saying 'cut the zionists loose, load the artillery, and let God sort the wogs out?' No offense to zionists or wogs intended.

You would have to ask

by J Thomas on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 10:44am

When you put it that way, it gets obvious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Estimate

Coordination of NIEs involves not only trying to resolve any inter-agency differences, but also assigning confidence levels to the key judgments and rigorously evaluating the sourcing for them.

Clearly, it's easy to be overconfident about your confidence levels, and who really looks at those anyway? The farther you step back from the actual data into abstractions from that data, the easier it is to ignore observer bias, the anthropic principle, etc.

The whole system dates back to the days when we needed ways to take whole filing cabinets full of data and boil them down to something simple and understandable. Statistical methods were developed for that purpose, including confidence intervals, but mostly it was only statisticians who understood them.

But now things have changed. Where before it would take a week to poke through somebody else's filing cabinet to look at raw data which wouldn't be very meaningful anyway, now it's no big deal to have 40 gigs organised on a thumb drive.

So we ought to do that. Put not just the estimates but the discussion about how to create the estimates and the data the discussion was based on, onto a thumb drive and let different people have different kinds of access to it. Specialists can access the broad generalisations and their own specialties. Elected officials get access as deep as they want. So they can check things if they choose to, or ignore the details if they prefere.

Also, there should be an easy obvious way to estimate confidence levels. Here's my suggestion -- Each statement that the NIC is 95% confident about, should be printed in bold and font size 18. For 90% confidence it should be font size 18 but not bold. For 85% confidence make it size 14, for 80% make it size 10, for 75% make it size 8, for 50% to 74% make it size 6, and for <50% make it font size 4.

Since intelligence data rarely gets better than 20% confidence, that would give our elected officials a much better sense of how seriously to take them.

After I thought about it, it makes perfect sense to create an NIE that says what the Vice President wants, and also make several ICAs that present various other cases. Then if the NIE turns out pretty good the others can be ignored, while if it is clearly wrong then one or more of the others can be pulled out to show that you were really right after all.

Elvis has Left the Building

by Tyrtaios on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 2:15pm

I thought it would grab you, J Thomas. I would also harken back to my earlier post mentioning about bringing margin notes back "briefly" for the new chief executive and his staff to get a feel on analyst batting averages during the first six or seven months of the new administration.

This used to be standard practice (still used at the lower raw level for fellow analysts) but was discontinued because if not crafted carefully it can get confusing - which could happen with your analogy.

Just a caveat "J," and I really must get some work done today! At the very busy end of the day, the President has to depend on the hopeful fact that he his being provided with the best product available - yes, Elvis has left the building. : - )