The Intelligence Bulletin is an aggregation and commentary series, and this is the fourth entry in that series.
Intelligence Bulletin #4 covers the following subjects: [1] Petraeus addresses rules of engagement, [2] Iranian nuclear program, [3] Chlorine gas attacks in Iraq, [4] Continued insurgent activity inside Mosques, [5] Iranian and Syrian threats in the covert war, [6] Ongoing coverage of the covert war against the CIA, [7] Continuing coverage of Anbar tribesmen in their battles against AQI, [8] Insurgents use women and children as shields, [9] Sadr’s Long Game, and [10] Thoughts on Walter Reed scandal.
Petraeus Addresses Rules of Engagement
Glenn Reynolds informs us of a communication by General Petraeus to his reports concerning rules of engagement.
Rules of engagement (ROE), highly criticized as being too restrictive and sometimes endangering our troops, have been “clarified.” “There were unintended consequences with ROE for too long,” Petraeus acknowledged. Because of what junior leaders perceived as too harsh punishment meted out to troops acting in the heat of battle, the ROE issued from the top commanders were second-guessed and made more restrictive by some on the ground. The end result was unnecessary - even harmful - restrictions placed on the troops in contact with the enemy.
“I’ve made two things clear,” Petraeus emphasized: “My ROE may not be modified with supplemental guidance lower down. And I’ve written a letter to all Coalition forces saying ‘your chain-of-command will stay with you.’ I think that solved the issue.”
In our rules of engagement coverage, we have argued for seeing the problems with ROE under four rubrics: The written ROE, the communication of the ROE, the application of the ROE in a counterinsurgency where fighters hide behind the population, and the main stream media feeding frenzy every time another story hits the wires, true or not.
The communication by General Petraeus addresses only one of the four categories above. In our coverage we have cited:
[a] instances where NCOs have given us stories of lack of engagement that ultimately led to U.S. casualties:
… the ROE is vague and limiting. And every time “violationsâ€? of the ROE came up it caused our soldiers and marines to question their actions and sometimes cause casualties.
[b] intelligence gathering by insurgents whose car(s) happens to break down at strategically located points to observe FOB layout (and soldiers who knew what was happening and were prevented from taking action):
Just recently press coverage was given to a nonlethal weapon (ray gun that increases the temperature of the skin), and while the technology was interesting to most readers, there is a nugget of gold in the report that is far more important than the ray gun. It was reported that Airman Blaine Pernell, 22, said he could have used the system during his four tours in Iraq, where he manned watchtowers around a base near Kirkuk. He said Iraqis often pulled up and faked car problems so they could scout U.S. forces. “All we could do is watch them,� he said. But if they had the ray gun, troops “could have dispersed them.�
[c] and from David Danelo of insurgents who fired pre-staged weapons where U.S. forces could not act:
The vehicle commander, Corporal Ronnie Davis, is in front of me holding a pair of binos. Three other Marines peer down a street where Mujahideen have been firing at us from multi-story buildings scarred by gunfire and explosions. While we exchange fire with the Muj, other observation assets available to 1 st Battalion, 6th Marines are mapping enemy positions for future operations.
“That’s the same two guys. They’ve crossed back and forth four times,� Corporal Davis announces, referring to a pair of unarmed Iraqis who have run for cover. Because these men are unarmed, the Americans under the Rules of Engagement are not allowed to shoot at them—even though gunfire is coming at us from that direction.
While there are many more, this last example is perhaps the most interesting. The sophistication of the tactics should not escape our notice. The insurgents know that U.S. forces cannot fire upon unarmed persons, so weapons are apparently pre-staged, then fired, and then the insurgents relocate to another pre-staged weapon, and so on. The instance above had the Marines observing long enough to see the same two insurgents running for cover across the street four times; the Marines were fired upon, yet never engaged the enemy.
To see the reflexive reaction to charges that arise against U.S. troops, we need to look no further than recent combat action involving a Mosque.
The U.S. military, Iraqi government officials and witnesses here offered conflicting accounts Tuesday of whether several people killed during a Baghdad raid Monday night were armed insurgents or civilians gathered at a mosque.
According to a U.S. military statement, Iraqi soldiers assisting in a search for insurgents entered the Imam al-Abass mosque in Hurriyah, a formerly mixed Baghdad neighborhood that is now a stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army, before 9 p.m. Monday. About 50 people were detained as a search of the area continued. They were later released, the military said.
After the search, the statement said, a separate group of about 20 armed men attacked Iraqi and U.S. soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades and guns. The soldiers returned fire, killing three insurgents; three other armed men were detained, the military said. Military aircraft participated in the raid but did not fire, the statement said.
But Col. Mahmoud Abdul Hussein of Iraq’s Interior Ministry said six civilians were killed and seven wounded when U.S. helicopters fired on homes after coming under attack from armed men. Another ministry spokesman, Sami Jabarah, said late Tuesday that the casualties had risen to eight killed and 11 wounded.
Two witnesses described indiscriminate shooting, but no helicopter fire, by U.S. forces that resulted in the deaths of at least six civilians, including some armed guards.
Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, a military spokesman, said in response to an e-mail query that the military would “research” the incident.
The U.S. has always claimed that the differentiation between our military and those of the balance of the world is the philosophy of the non-commissioned officer. Indeed, the claim is made that this one approach is why the U.S. is militarily so powerful. Yet we deny the truthfulness of these words every time another investigation or incident research is started, implying that only a report by an officer can bring authoritative closure to issues of engagement. In the comments to our article Rules of Engagement and Pre-Theoretical Commitments (which was a catalyst for thoughtful and robust remarks concerning ROE), Theo Farrell, professor of war in the modern world at King’s College, London, commented:
I guess, given the Brit Army’s minimum force tradition, commands can feel confident that their soldiers will employ appropriate levels of restraint/force. And so, the real difference betw the Brit Army and USA/USMC may be down to differing org cultures rather than different ROEs.
But in this same article we detailed how Captain Robert Secher refused to fire indiscriminately. The U.S. troops have been cautioned about so-called ‘overdefense’ of themselves, and the real difference it seems is not that there is a difference in culture of training, behavior or expectations, but rather, a difference in trust. It also might be appropriate to point out that the British pullback from Basra has been confidently called a defeat, and the security situation in Basra has degenerated over the last couple of years.
It would appear that Petraeus has taken a good first step in the correction of the problems associated with ROE. More is needed.
Prior:
Iranian Nuclear Program
The powers in Iran apparently don’t care much anymore about having a commercial light water nuclear reactor.
Iran no longer seems to be interested in the construction of its first nuclear power plant which Russia is helping it build in Bushehr, the chief of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters in Italy’s southern port city of Bari, where Russian president Vladimir Putin held talks with Italy’s premier romano Prodi on Wednesday. “I’m taken aback,” Kiriyenko was quoted as saying by Russia’s Interfax news agency. “My impression is that the Iranian side has lost all interest in this project.”
“Not a single Kopeck has been transferred since the middle of January,” to end the 760-million-euro plant, said the head of Rosatom.
The Bushehr plant was scheduled to become operative at the end of this year but the project was repeatedly delayed over Iran’s failure to meet payment obligations.
See further coverage at World Nuclear News. Yet Iran says it is is still determined to pursue the nuclear program, saying that this is merely a politically motivated business dispute. But turning from the ruse to the real prize of enrichment, Iran adds that political pressure and meetings will end in failure. “We have achieved the nuclear fuel cycle. We won’t give it up under pressure. You can’t stop the Iranian nation from this path through meetings,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by state media.” This assertion is a reiteration of previous claims.
It is instructive to note that a poll conducted for Russian nuclear workers indicates what they feel will be the likely outcome of the current showdown with Iran. When asked for the most likely of four possible outcomes, they voted that ”Iran would quit the IAEA safeguards regime.” True to form, Iran stopped UN inspectors from visiting an underground bunker where it is building an industrial-scale plant to make enriched uranium.
Just to ensure that the message is not lost by any possible mis-speak from their puppet Ahmadinejad (although misinterpretation is hard to fathom), the Mullah’s have spoken and insist that they will strike out at their enemies who try to stop their enrichment program. The message could not be clearer. Commercial nuclear power is a sideline activity that holds no real interest for the Iranians. The real prize is the “nuclear fuel cycle,” or in this case, enrichment. But since commercial nuclear power holds no interest for the Iranians, the purpose of enrichment has no other purpose than to create weapons grade fissile material. Rather than enriching to 3.5 - 5.0 percent U-235 (appropriate for commercial pressurized water reactors), they are certainly targeting 90+ percent, something that is only necessary for making weapons or naval reactors. Iran has no naval reactors. Weapons-grade fissile material is the only remaining use.
Chlorine Gas Attacks in Iraq
In Enemy Operations in Baghdad and Fallujah, of the recent chlorine attacks we said:
The effects of acute exposure to chlorine inhalation can range from mild irritation to death, but given that explosive ordnance is far more effective in destruction and loss of life than chemical weapons, along with the fact that airborne contaminants disperse per Guass’s law with the square of the radius from the point of origin (with no wind), it is obvious that chlorine attacks are being used as an instrument of terror rather than for their usefulness as a weapon (and with wind, the contaminants still disperse according to meteorological theory, possibly in the unintended direction). While the force due to conventional explosive ordnance also decreases with the square of the radius, conventional ordnance can be delivered directly to the desired point (given the weapons currently available to the insurgents), whereas the trucks used to deliver the chlorine can be interdicted. If the insurgents continue to use these means, we predict that it will instill terror but yield meager tactical results.
Michael Fumento added his own observations on the gas attacks.
Insurgents launched three more chlorine truck attacks in Al Anbar province on March 17, killing two and sickening an additional 350. Is this a disturbing new trend? No. Had those trucks been filled with high explosives, each could have killed around 100 people. Instead, combined, they killed two. Probably all those sickened will recover with little or no lasting damage, as opposed to losing limbs and eyes. Chemicals have never lived up to their reputation as weapons.
That’s why even though the Germans invented Sarin gas, which is vastly more deadly than chlorine, they decided not to use it. Hitler didn’t forego its use because he was a nice guy. Rather, his generals convinced him that high explosives are far more effective in causing deaths, not to mention that all the poison gas in the world can’t destroy material objects. That said, gas is a good terror weapon because most people have a more innate terror of being gassed than of being blown up or shot. But that’s primarily or exclusively because gas is such a rare threat. The more the terrorists use chlorine, the less the terror effect will be.
We continue to believe that as long as the insurgents are wasting their time and energy on trying to make chemical weapons effective, they give coalition troops a deserved reprieve in the hunt and kill.
Continued Insurgent Activity Inside Mosques
The insurgent activity inside Mosques discussed above is not the only recent example of such tactics by the enemy. Maliki has directed robust action against Mosques and schools and the typical hiding places of the insurgents, and on January 12 there was combat action by U.S. forces against a Mosque, followed on by a statement from the Multi-National Force that the U.S. does not “enter mosques for the sole purposes of disrupting insurgent activities or conducting a show of force.” This statement was issued immediately after U.S. forces conducted a raid on a Mosque for the sole purpose of disrupting insurgent activities.
The instance of kinetic operations involving a Mosque cited above shows a pattern, and statements from the Multi-National Force that we do not enter Mosques but we do enter Mosques will be seen for the duplicity that they are as the security plan moves forward. The story needs to be straightened out and clarified. Maliki apparently has no problem threatening robust action against all hiding places of the insurgency. We should follow suit. In the end, a clear and robust policy concerning Mosques will save lives. If the insurgents know that a Mosque offers no protection and there are no apologies for kinetic operations to remove hostiles from Mosques, then the appeal of the Mosque as a safe haven will disappear.
Iranian and Syrian Threats in the Covert War
In The Covert War with Iran and Regional Wars in the Middle East we discussed the heatup of the intelligence wars in the Middle East, and it appears that Iran understands that the U.S. is not absent in the war. Iran has engaged in some saber-rattling of their own, saying that they are prepared to engage in international kidnapping to meet the threat.
Iran is threatening to retaliate in Europe for what it claims is a daring undercover operation by western intelligence services to kidnap senior officers in its Revolutionary Guard.
According to Iranian sources, several officers have been abducted in the past three months and the United States has drawn up a list of other targets to be seized with the aim of destabilising Tehran’s military command.
In an article in Subhi Sadek, the Revolutionary Guard’s weekly paper, Reza Faker, a writer believed to have close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned that Iran would strike back.
“We’ve got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks,� he said. “Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis.�
The threat to match kidnapping with kidnapping is showmanship at its finest. Even if the recent disappearances of senior Iranian intelligence and Quds officials was not voluntary, to imply that it was “kidnapping” to apprehend Jalal Sharafi on Iraqi soil while he was stirring up sedition along with Quds and the Badr Brigade is analogous to saying that a thief has a right to steal from your home. True to form, Iran continues its involvement in the fomenting of terror inside Iraq. On March 20 we learned that the Iranians have housed and trained Iraqi insurgents for several months.
Iran has been operating training programs for Iraqi Shi’ite militants at secret bases for several months as part of its efforts to destabilize Iraq, an opponent of the Iranian government said on Tuesday.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, who accurately disclosed important details about Iran’s nuclear program in 2002, said the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been running the camps with the full knowledge and approval of the Iranian government.
“Over the past few months the Iranian regime has stepped up its efforts to destabilize Iraq and further escalate the violence there,” Jafarzadeh said at a press conference.
Jafarzadeh provided names, dates and details of alleged training activities he said had been provided to him by Iranian opposition groups.
While at the camps, militants are instructed by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force and Lebanese members of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Islamic militant group, in unconventional warfare, explosives and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft weapons.
Syria is not innocent in the regional war, as they are prepared to strike back if the U.S. hits Iranian enrichment facilities.
An American biodefense analyst living in Europe says if the U.S. invades Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions, Syria is ready to respond with weapons of mass destruction – specifically biological weapons.
“Syria is positioned to launch a biological attack on Israel or Europe should the U.S. attack Iran,” Jill Bellamy-Dekker told WND. “The Syrians are embedding their biological weapons program into their commercial pharmaceuticals business and their veterinary vaccine-research facilities. The intelligence service oversees Syria’s ‘bio-farm’ program and the Ministry of Defense is well interfaced into the effort.”
Unless we are prepared to treat Operation Iraqi Freedom as the regional war that it is, it cannot be won.
Ongoing Coverage of the Covert War Against the CIA
In previous issues of the Intelligence Bulletin we have discussed the ongoing judicial and intelligence war against CIA agents in Italy and Germany. In a Reuters article strangely titled Italy Hopes to Mend U.S. Ties After CIA Indictments, it appears that Italy doesn’t really want to mend ties. Rather, Italy wants the U.S. to take actions to mend ties.
Italy hopes to mend strained U.S. relations over indictments against CIA agents for kidnapping and a U.S. soldier for murder, Italy’s foreign minister said, before meeting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday.
But Massimo D’Alema said Washington had more responsibility than Rome in overcoming the “turbulence” in bilateral relations and intelligence cooperation.
“These are two episodes that have created some turbulence in our relations and we want to work to overcome this turbulence,” D’Alema told Reuters in an interview hours before he was due to fly to Washington for a dinner meeting with Rice.
D’Alema said he would raise the issue with Rice and, asked what Italy could do to resolve the situation, said: “In truth, there would be several things that the United States should do, more than Italy”. He did not elaborate.
Continuing Coverage of Anbar Tribesmen in Their Battles Against AQI
A British general claims that the Anbar Province is reaping the benefits of the security plan.
The US-Iraqi offensive launched last month has put anti-government forces on the defensive in their former insurgent strongÂhold of Anbar, Britain’s top general in Iraq has told the Financial Times.
“We’re getting momentum … We’re seeing a number of points … which would imply that [anti-government militants] are being challenged,â€? said Lieutenant General Graeme Lamb, deputy commander of the multinational forces in Iraq.
Lt Gen Lamb said that US and Iraqi forces were recruiting hundreds of police for the first time in towns in the Anbar region and that the forces were working together in shared combat outposts.
The insurgency “didn’t do too well in Anbar … Their claims have failed to come to fruition,â€? he said, referring to the declaration by Islamist radicals that they had established a “caliphateâ€? encompassing much of western Iraq.
MEMRI has a lengthy analysis on this trend (only a small portion is reproduced below).
In late February and early March 2007, the London dailies Al-Hayat and Al-QudsAl-’Arabi reported on an escalation of the conflict in western Iraq between the local population and the Al-Qaeda in Iraq organization. Fierce battles were reported in Al-Amariyah and Al-Falluja between Al-Qaeda and the local Al-Anbar tribes, resulting in the death of dozens of Al-Qaeda fighters and in the weakening of Al-Qaeda in these areas.
In Important Undercurrents in Anbar we discussed the terror, houses of horror and torture tactics in use by AQI, and how these heavy handed tactics have gone so far as to be the very cause of lack of security. Even when the population acquiesces to their demands, they shoot from behind their women and children, fill the streets with sniper fire, and steal and kidnap innocent people for pleasure or ransom. The population is turning on AQI. In relative importance, security trumps everything else.
Insurgents Use Women and Children as Shields
That Hezballah used women and children in the war with the IDF as human shields, fought amongst the population and ultimately used civilian deaths to their political advantage is well documented.
Hizbullah stored ammunition and weapons in mosques, knowing that the IDF does not attack religious sites. Civilians were not allowed to leave so that Hizbullah could use them as cover. IDF officers said they ordered pilots not to strafe Bint Jbeil in order to spare civilian casualties.
A United Nations peace keeping officer from Canada told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that Hizbullah used the same tactic to draw fire on the UNIFIL post which resulted in the death of four U.N. observers. “This is their favorite trick,� he said. “They use the U.N. as shields.�
We see the same tactic being used in Iraq.
Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.
The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.
“Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back,” Barbero said.
The general said it was the first time he had seen a report of insurgents using children in suicide bombings. But he said Al-Qaeda in Iraq is changing tactics in response to the tighter controls around the city.
There is another report that the children lost their lives in this attack. The most significant asymmetry between the U.S. and the insurgents is not one of military might. It is of moral character.
Sadr’s Long Game
Martin Sieff (with whom we have significant disagreements most of the time) has an analysis and opinion piece up at UPI entitled Sadr’s Long Game. This one is worth the time to read entirely. Sieff connects the stand-down of the loyal Sadrists with their effort to wait out the “surge,” rebuild, and prepare to respond inside Iraq to a potential U.S. attack on Iran to destroy enrichment capabilities. We agree. As we have argued before, Sadr’s organization, however loosely coupled, must now be seen in international terms. In Intelligence Bulletin #3 we have further argued that:
… if Sadr returns to Iraq, his arrest or disappearance might incite such a firestorm of problems that the Baghdad security plan is brought to a halt. The Mahdi army doesn’t like even the presence of combat operation posts or bases in Sadr City. Sadr will never be convicted in a court in Iraq, and a show trial that exhonerates him would be the worst of all possible outcomes. The U.S. is tracking the whereabouts of Sadr. Major General William Caldwell said that Sadr was still inside Iran as of 24 hours ago. This seems like a confident report, and assuming its accuracy, it gives lattitude for the appropriate action to remove Sadr from the political and spiritual scene, thus enabling the security plan to succeed. We highly commend the notion of a strategic disappearance of Sadr as one key to the overall success of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This analysis appears to be more important with each passing day. We must not make the mistake that Robert Haddick discusses concerning the radical Sunni insurgency, of assuming that as a group, they were “in play.” Moqtada al Sadr and his loyal followers are no more “in play” to reconcile with the Sunnis and join the political process than the disaffected Saddam Fedayeen and other radical Sunnis were. Failure to effect the ’strategic disappearance’ of Sadr as we have recommended will entail the failure of OIF.
Thoughts on the Walter Reed Scandal
In Intelligence Bulletin #2 we discussed the Walter Reed scandal and the troubles at the VA, saying that six months was not long enough for General Weightman to get the lay of the land, and that the troubles did not seem to point to Walter Reed proper so much as outpatient care of the wounded. The real problem would seem to be inadequate congressional funding given to the Army for this care, along with an overgrown and inefficient bureaucracy at the DoD. In this case, it is easy for the congress to point the finger of blame at someone else and cry foul. In fact, this might be just what has happened. WSJ has an opinion piece up (h/t ROFASix)that argues that the fiasco that this has become has caused the wrong man to be fired, the only one, in fact, who might have been able to ameliorate the failures.
Doubtless, the VA and Walter Reed in particular have some gifted, motivated, well-trained and highly qualified individuals performing their jobs. The very last thing that this head hunt should do is force these people into retirement or into a defensive posture. The goal is to fix the problems, not find the culpable party. There is enough blame to go around.
