Fred Kaplan at Slate, whom we always enjoy reading even when we disagree, has an interesting article about Paul Yingling who took on higher command and their handling of the campaign in Iraq (in the broader context of leadership and the associated responsibilities).  As it turns out, Yingling has an interesting new duty - that of applying counterinsurgency inside of the prisons of Iraq.  More specifically, these prisons are where those who have been arrested during U.S. kinetic operations are being held, somewhat outside of the Iraqi judicial system.

These prisons are becoming breeding grounds for jihadists, and COIN techniques are seen as being very important in dealing with the prison problem, lest we eject 20,000 jihadists back into Iraqi culture.  Note, however, that we had noted the prison issue in The Nexus of Religion and Prisons in Counterinsurgency, five months ago.  The Captain’s Journal saw the importance of this.

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, commanding general of detainee operations in Iraq, is fighting what he has called “the battlefield of the mind.” He has instituted extensive screening of incoming prisoners and has made available about 30 training and education courses, including religion and civics, to the 25,188 prisoners under his control …

One result already seen, he said, is that moderates in the prisons are identifying extremists, thus facilitating their segregation from the rest of the population. At Camp Bucca, about 1,000 extremists were identified and pulled from among the 21,000 prisoners, and “that made a big difference,” he said.

It looks like Major General Stone who implemented this program, has a good commander in his corner.  We wish them success in this endeavor and expect good things.

More: Small Wars Journal Blog

It remains as important today as it was a year ago to understand why counterinsurgency was successful in the Anbar Province.  The tribal “awakening” was attempted in other parts of Iraq, most notably in the South with the release of Moqtada al Sadr in 2004 at the behest of Sistani and the British, in the hopes that he would lead his Shi’a faction into peace.  Why the difference in results?  The National Journal recently carried an article entitled Chess with the Sheiks that, while far reaching and sweeping in terms of our understanding of the importance of tribe, gives us an insight into the success in Anbar.  This is the money quote.

Westerners tend to think of fighting and negotiating as incompatible. Arabs tend to see them as complementary. The West’s great military theoretician, the 19th-century Prussian Carl von Clausewitz, is often quoted as saying, “War is a continuation of politics by other means,” as if normal politicking suddenly switched off when violence switched on. But Clausewitz’s actual point is more nuanced and more applicable to Iraq: “War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means.” American military officers reared on the short form of Clausewitz’s maxim are now learning the full principle and how to blend their two approaches to Iraq: the one they call “kinetic” — bullets and bombs — and the one they call “nonkinetic” — negotiations and deal-making.

This is not necessarily a kinder and gentler way of war. Although negotiation can sometimes forestall violence, in Iraq it is more often the case that violence is a necessary form of negotiation. “Of the seven or eight tribes in my area,” said Maj. Morgan Mann, a Marine reservist who commanded a company in Babil province, south of Baghdad, in 2004-05, “one was the primary financiers and coordinators of most of the enemy activity.” Much as Capt. Bout did a few months later, Mann targeted the leaders of the “enemy tribe” with relentless house searches, heavy patrolling, cordon-and-search operations that shut down entire neighborhoods, and “very aggressive counterfire” — that is, shooting back intensely at attacking insurgents. “It culminated in my arresting the grand sheik of this tribe,” Mann said. “That was one of the no-no’s, supposedly. But as a result of that, we were able to get that sheik and about 20 or 30 of the sub-sheiks of this large tribe into a meeting in Baghdad to discuss how we were going to work together.” One of the subordinate sheiks put it bluntly to Mann: “I’m not your friend, but it doesn’t make sense for me to fight you” — for now.

“It quieted down the zone considerably for the duration I was there,” Mann said, “which unfortunately was only about another month.” When Mann’s unit went home, its personal relationships and hardball tactics did not carry over to the follow-on unit. The result was a resumption of violence.

This resumption of violence occurred in Fallujah as well after the clearing operations in 2004, up until Operation Alljah in 2007 when it was finally put to rest.  The primary point here is that the picture painted above doesn’t exactly comport with that painted in FM 3-24.  Yet it was remarkably successful, and Anbar is the model province for peace today in Iraq.  Diplomacy with a gun was practiced throughout the Anbar province by the U.S. Marines.  In other words, the picture painted above by Major Mann is consistent with operations for three years and throughout the terrain in Anbar.  This model is sensitive to the fact that this region of the world had learned to respect diplomacy only when it was coupled with power, something missed in the South where counterinsurgency followed the approach laid out in Northern Ireland.

Concerning actions in Sadr City, we have noted before that the emplacement of concrete barriers was initially intended to prohibit the firing of mortar rounds into the Baghdad Green zone, and we recommended pressing the campaign forward into Sadr City proper.  There are further reports about the difficulty of completing the wall due to combat operations by the Sadrists in an attempt to prevent its construction.

U.S. troops and Shi’ite militants are clashing daily in Baghdad’s volatile Al-Sadr City as fighters tied to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr try to stop, or at least delay, construction of a 5-kilometer barrier to keep them from firing rockets on the International Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government.

The battleground is a section of Al-Quds Street, a garbage-strewn thoroughfare that separates the Jamilla and Tharwa neighborhoods from the northern heart of the Shi’ite enclave of 2.5 million people. The wall is intended to restrict access to the southern part of Al-Sadr City, from where militants launch rocket attacks on the International Zone.

“You go high, I’ll go low — on the count of three,” a soldier from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment, yelled to another on a recent afternoon.

The two were returning fire on snipers from al-Sadr’s Al-Mahdi Army who were hiding in a nearby building and firing on troops constructing the barrier.

Moments later, the two let loose with long volleys of rifle fire at the top and the bottom of a building as other soldiers moved a new section of barrier into place.

Fighting a day later along the wall was so heavy that construction halted — but only for a half-hour — as soldiers poured rifle, machine-gun, and cannon fire on snipers firing from nearby alleyways and building.

The wall consists of 3.7-meter-high concrete slabs, each weighing over 5 tons. Soldiers from the 64th Brigade Support Battalion, a National Guard unit that normally transports water, fuel, and other supplies to soldiers, ferry the barriers using forklift loaders from a nearby staging area and lower them into place with a crane. Soldiers from 1/68 provide security and also help guide the slabs into place. The first slab was placed on April 19, and despite daily ambushes by gunmen, more than 1,000 now stand, meaning the wall is nearly half-completed.

“This is a mission that has to get done, to stop these thugs from firing their rockets and stuff,” says First Sergeant Conrad Gonzales, of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment. “Every day we get attacked, every day we’re putting in barriers. The mission has to go on, it has to be accomplished and we can’t let anyone stop us.”

But regarding Sadr City proper and pressing the campaign forward, Baghdad is bracing for more combat and preparing its citizens to leave the affected areas.

The authorities in Baghdad say they are preparing for an exodus of thousands of people from eastern parts of the city.

Fighting between government and US troops on one side, and Shia militia on the other, has intensified recently.

Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area.

The government has warned of an imminent push to clear the areas of members of the MehdiArmy, loyal to the anti-American cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians.

The fighting so far in Sadr City has been fierce - street to street, and house to house.

Ed Morrissey presumes much when he says of the operation that “Maliki also wants to end Iran’s influence in Iraq, which caused Iran to cut off security talks with Maliki and the US.”  If this is so, then the plan should be fairly straight forward to implement.

We have noted before that many in the Badr organization (SIIC) still receive pension paychecks from Iran, more specifically from the IRGC.  In order to defeat Iran within Iraq, Maliki could implement at least (but not limited to) the following steps.

1. Force Badr to refuse the acceptance of any more paychecks from Iran.
2. Fully integrate them into the Iraqi Security Forces, and more specifically, with Sunni fighters.
3. Have the more knowledgeable members point out and target the Iranian smuggling lines by which weapons, money and Iranian intelligence assets are brought into Iraq.
4. Have Badr attack these lines and arrest known members of the IRG and Quds (the National Council of Resistance of Iran has a list of several thousand Iranians currently undermining the stability of Iraq,  by name).  No faction in Iraq will be in a better position to target Iranian forces than Badr.  Both numbers 3 and 4 must be results based, not intent based.  If results are not achieved, then Badr fails.
5. Have members of Badr publicly repudiate Iran and all that it stands for.

These simple actions would go a long way towards neutering the effectiveness of Iran within Iraq.  As for Basra which the Iraqi Security Forces were proudly said to “own” after the short campaign there a few weeks ago, perhaps the Sadrists should continue to be targeted, since they recently launched twenty Katyusha rockets towards the Basra airport where the British forces are still hunkered down protecting British forces (note that these rockets are the same as launched by Hezbollah against Israel in the last war - that is, the Hezbollah that is supported and armed by Iran).

Next, U.S. and Iraqi Security Forces can continue to target the Mahdi militia in Sadr City until the campaign is completed.  In other words, the campaign in Basra is no more complete than in 2004 when the Marines cleared Fallujah.  Fallujah required until 2007 to be completed.  Al Qaeda was stronger than the Mahdi militia, and so three years will not be required.  But a couple of weeks isn’t sufficient either, as twenty Katyusha rockets in Basra prove.  The campaign in Sadr City is just beginning, and proper counterinsurgency (take, hold, security, rebuild, proper governance) will most certainly take longer than weeks, and suggestions that it will be over soon do not comport with professional military doctrine.

Now.  Does Maliki really want to end Iran’s influence in Iraq?  Time will tell.  Patience.

We have previously briefly discussed the controversy surrounding the awarding of a $40 Billion contract for a new refueling tanker to a partnership between Northrop Grumman and the European parent of Airbus, putting a critical military contract partly into the hands of a foreign company.

After this article a flood of e-mail and commentary came out about the waste that had been avoided due to selection of the low cost bidder.  Some of this commentary was sent our direction, along with some more personal e-mail arguing in the same manner.  Contact your Congressman was the hue and cry!  Don’t let Boeing undo this pristine process through their various evil political machinations.

The Captain’s Journal will not step in between any defense contractor and accountability.  But we have been involved enough with RFQs (request for quotes), bid review, contractor oversight and followup and postmortem to know how this process goes.  A good (but ethically bankrupt) contractor knows how to work over the system to his own benefit in the low bid process.  The process itself can be the worst, most deceiptful ruse in business.

Businesses are always loath not to accept the low cost bid.  Contractors know this.  Later, holes in the process begin to develop.  The specifications aren’t restrictive enough for some clever engineer - or technology transfer isn’t as complete as the customer thought it would be - or there are cost overruns - or there are schedule delays - or the people are the worst sort of rogues, behaving with the worst possible manners - or the Army of lawyers inevitably deployed for corporate force protection makes it almost impossible to hold a contractor accountable - or you have to keep going back to the contractor for re-work or followup engineering or fabrication, at your own cost.

Better companies know how to avoid these contractors, but because of the awful, grotesque and hideous Sarbanes-Oxley, have to spend the time to craft a sole source justification.  The process is quite often burdensome, and for anyone has been through it several times, childlike faith in the process evaporates in favor of bleak realism.  Belief in the bidding system as the protector of free market capitalism shows a gullibility that is exceeded only by the density of our minds.

Now comes an even better reason to question the awarding of this contract to Airbus.

The lack of ease that accompanies the decision is hardly surprising; the catalogue of horrors at EADS reads like a “how not to” primer in a business-school ethics class. The company has a long and sordid history of bribing governments to purchase their airplanes, especially when competing with U.S. aerospace firms. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has called the practice rampant, and concluded that it was an integral part of EADS’ corporate culture. A European Parliament report in 2003 confirmed these corrupt practices, and that EADS has been embroiled in bribery scandals in Canada, Belgium, and Syria.

According to a New York Times report just last October, a French financial regulator turned over evidence of insider trading by senior EADS executives to prosecutors. The executives failed to inform the public about production delays in the A-380 jumbo jet while they quietly dumped their own stock. When the delays became public, unwitting shareholders watched their holdings plummet in value. The co-CEO and co-chairman of EADS resigned under pressure, and now some EADS executives may face indictments.

Even more worrisome is the power grab by Vladimir Putin, who is buying up the depressed shares of EADS like a corporate raider. The prospect of the authoritarian Russian leader, whose political opponents are harassed and jailed while prying journalists turn up missing or murdered, having a heavy hand in EADS affairs is deeply troubling. Russia opposed the invasion of Iraq and has sought to undermine U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The most troubling aspect of the tanker contract is the danger it poses to U.S. national security. According to a report by the Center for Security Policy, EADS has been a leading proliferator of weapons and technology to some of the most hostile regimes in the world, including Iran and Venezuela. When the U.S. formally objected to EADS selling cargo and patrol planes to Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez, EADS tried to circumvent U.S. law by stripping American-built components from the aircraft. Chavez is now building an oil refinery in Cuba to keep Castro’s failed Communist state afloat, funding terrorists seeking the violent overthrow of Colombia’s government, and recently meddled in the presidential election in Argentina with secretly smuggled cash contributions. If EADS had its way, Chavez would now be advancing his anti-American designs in the Western hemisphere with U.S. technology and components.

EADS entanglements with Venezuela make the Pentagon’s decision to waive the Berry Amendment, which prohibits the export of technology that might be developed during the building of the tanker to third parties, indefensible. Given the sophisticated radar and anti-missile capabilities of military tankers, this is no small matter. Such technology falling into the hands of state sponsor of terrorism would devastate our war fighters.

EADS entanglements with Venezuela make the Pentagon’s decision to waive the Berry Amendment, which prohibits the export of technology that might be developed during the building of the tanker to third parties, indefensible. Given the sophisticated radar and anti-missile capabilities of military tankers, this is no small matter. Such technology falling into the hands of state sponsor of terrorism would devastate our war fighters.

And such a scenario is hardly unreasonable. EADS executives recently attended an air show in Iran and were caught red-handed trying to sell helicopters with military applications. When confronted, an EADS executive said the company was not bound by the U.S. arms embargo against Iran. EADS also sold nuclear components vital to exploding a nuclear device to an Asian company that in turn sold them to an Iranian front operation.

That settles it for the Captain’s Journal.  Vladimir Putin is a liar, criminal and ex-KGB thug, and a duplicitous killer with a Napoleon complex.  Any currency flowing his direction as a result of this deal would be a catastrophe, notwithstanding the potentially horrible security concerns.  To be sure, the DoD may have to have a face-to-face with Boeing or some other contractor to reduce costs, or make the process more accountable.  But that doesn’t change our fundamental position.  Vladimir Putin can’t be held accountable in a U.S. court.  Boeing can.

We are open to serious argumentation in favor of awarding this contract to Airbus, but we haven’t seen any yet.  Informing us that they were the low cost bidder gives the Captain’s Journal a good belly laugh.  Someone has got to come up with a better argument than that.  After all - we didn’t come into town and fall off the turnip truck yesterday.  We’ve been around for a while.