The Pentagon just released the lat­est Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq report. Here are some pull-​​outs from the Executive Summary. You can read the entire doc­u­ment HERE.

My ques­tion is how will the MSM por­tray this report and what neg­a­tives will they focus on? It will also be inter­est­ing to see if the major papers and net­works ignore the update. We’ll see… 

…The over­all secu­rity sit­u­a­tion in Iraq has greatly improved this report­ing period. Security inci­dents have remained at lev­els last seen in early 2004 for nearly three con­sec­u­tive months, while civil­ian deaths across Iraq have declined to a level 77% lower than the same period in 2007. The surge in Coalition forces, the growth of more capa­ble Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), the con­tri­bu­tions of the Sons of Iraq (SoI), the abil­ity of forces to secure the pop­u­la­tion, oper­a­tions against Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and other extrem­ist ele­ments, and the increased will­ing­ness of the peo­ple and the Government of Iraq (GoI) to con­front extrem­ists are impor­tant fac­tors that have con­tributed to the improved secu­rity envi­ron­ment. Periodic high-​​profile car and sui­cide vest bomb­ings have occurred, but the num­ber of these attacks and the result­ing casu­al­ties have decreased dra­mat­i­cally. Moreover, these attacks have not rekin­dled the self-​​perpetuating cycle of ethno-​​sectarian vio­lence that plagued Iraq in late 2006 and the first half of 2007.

…The emer­gence of the SoI remains one of the major devel­op­ments of the past 18 months; how­ever, the inte­gra­tion and employ­ment of SoI remain a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. The SoI pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant secu­rity ben­e­fits to their local com­mu­ni­ties by pro­tect­ing September 26, 2008 neigh­bor­hoods, secur­ing key infra­struc­ture and roads, and iden­ti­fy­ing malign activ­ity.

…The slow pace of tran­si­tion is a con­cern. Continued GoI com­mit­ment is required to ensure SoI are fully tran­si­tioned to per­ma­nent employ­ment. Recent alle­ga­tions of GoI tar­get­ing SoI lead­ers in Diyala Province are of con­cern if they are indi­ca­tors of GoI reluc­tance to inte­grate SoI into the ISF or, more broadly, to rec­on­cile a diverse province. Prime Minister Maliki has recently signed an order reflect­ing his com­mit­ment that stip­u­lates the GoI will assume respon­si­bil­ity for SoI in Baghdad and its envi­rons (over 50,000) begin­ning in October 2008, but Coalition forces con­tinue to pay the salaries of SoI per­son­nel. Prime Minister Malikis order would move more than half of the SoIs to the GoI payroll.

(more…)

The com­man­der in charge of help­ing local Iraqis orga­nize and fight al Qaeda and other anti-​​coalition forces said Wednesday that a raid last month net­ted a trea­sure trove of infor­ma­tion that could spell the doom of al Qaeda ter­ror­ist smug­gling oper­a­tions in Iraq and, poten­tially, worldwide.

The descrip­tion of the find exem­pli­fies the kind of intel­li­gence American and Iraqi forces are gain­ing, with the help of local tip­sters, and pro­vides a win­dow into how com­man­ders speak with such author­ity on insur­gent ties to Iran and al Qaeda activ­ity in Iraq.

The raid, con­ducted Sept. 11 in the town of Sinjar near the Syrian bor­der, tar­geted what Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner called a for­eign ter­ror­ist facil­i­ta­tion cell.

As coali­tion forces busted in on the seven-​​man AQ team, one of them det­o­nated a sui­cide vest, killing him­self and one of his com­pan­ions, while the U.S. team made short work of the rest.

Aside from dis­rupt­ing the small smug­gling team, coali­tion forces found lit­er­ally ter­abytes of elec­tronic files, Bergner said, includ­ing 800 names of al Qaeda ter­ror­ists 143 of those either en route or already deliv­ered to Iraq.

The intel included the ter­ror­ists names, pass­port num­bers, home addresses and their tran­sit routes that were involved in get­ting them here, Bergner said in an inter­view with mil­i­tary blog­gers Oct. 10.

The com­puter files included doc­u­ments on logis­tics and admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ties, we saw how they spend their money on every­thing from food, fuel and weapons and even allo­ca­tion of money to sup­port some of their fam­i­lies, Bergner added.

In one macabre find, Bergner said troops obtained copies of sui­cide pledges that al Qaeda is using to help lead these indi­vid­u­als towards the per­for­mance of a sui­cide mission.

Though the raid net­ted only seven dead AQ ter­ror­ists, the infor­ma­tion gleaned from it could crip­ple the groups oper­a­tions in Iraq. Home addresses, phone num­bers, tran­sit routes, money infor­ma­tion, food pro­cure­ment, ammo, gun­s­think how many strands of the web were picked up and the down-​​stream effects those have to the entire AQ network.

I won­der if AQ cells are going to change their record keep­ing after this. And it also makes me won­der why they keep such detailed oper­a­tional records. I thought we were being led to believe these groups were loosely affil­i­ated cells. Only some­one that was being held to strict account would keep such detailed records.

– Christian

I know we cov­ered this sub­ject ad nau­seum last week, but I just thought I’d throw one more log on the fire of the “Petraeus Report” assess­ment melee that’s still simmering.

One of the most inno­v­a­tive and trusted “out­side experts” in D.C. is Andrew Krepinevich and his sta­ble of “for­m­ers” and other “think tankers” at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. It turns out, Krepinevich briefed sen­ate staffers on the 10th, giv­ing his read of the surge.

He’s been pretty down the line on the war, cri­tiquing where he sees fit and approv­ing when it looks like some­things work­ing. Hes a strong advo­cate of coun­terin­sur­gency strat­egy but tends to lean more toward the Rumsfeldian “econ­omy of force” school of thought.

His brief­ing slides are offered HERE in their entirety. But heres a look at his conclusions.

The Maliki Government is seem­ingly unable (unwill­ing?) to affect a national rec­on­cil­i­a­tion it lacks coer­cive power, legit­i­macy, and com­pe­tence, consequently.

Iraqs fac­tions are increas­ingly mak­ing their own way, estab­lish­ing their own con­trol, pro­tect­ing (or extort­ing) those peo­ple who live under their rule, and mak­ing their own alliances with for­eign pow­ers (e.g., Sunni tribes and US; Shia mili­tias and Iran).

The US is slowly but surely see­ing its abil­ity to influ­ence events in Iraq wane … In part because of a grow­ing per­cep­tion that the American pub­lic has one foot already out the door.

The US com­mand in Baghdad has adapted admirably to chang­ing cir­cum­stances, but the sit­u­a­tion is dynamic and the path to national rec­on­cil­i­a­tion may no longer lie through the Maliki Governmentthus the Surge Metrics may be OBE … If so …

What should suc­ceed them? What is the new way for­ward? And not just in Iraq, but in the the­ater of con­flict stretch­ing from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush?

– Christian

Here are the tes­ti­mony and accom­pa­ny­ing slides from the appear­ance today of Gen. David Petraeus before the House Armed Services Committee.

Be sure to use these when read­ing this morning’s entry: “Seeing the Counterinsurgency Forest From the Trees”…

DOCUMENTS:

Testimony of Gen. David Petraeus

Gen. David Petraeus Briefing Slides

(Gouge: Mike Goldfarb)

– Christian

Heres an update to the Hezbollah in Iraq story, espe­cially for those who want harder proof of the Iran nexus.

A few days ago, the new chief spokesman for multi-​​national forces in Iraq held a press con­fer­ence on the heels of the Associated Press and CNN sto­ries on the cap­ture of a key Hezbollah spe­cial oper­a­tions com­man­der in Iraq who pro­vided proof of Irans com­plic­ity in the deaths of American troops.

Defense Tech wanted to bring our read­ers atten­tion to some of the doc­u­ments and tran­scripts pro­vided by MNF-​​I that bol­ster their claim. Any Arab speak­ers out there, please give the docs a once-​​over and see if they are indeed what U.S. com­man­ders say they are…

View the entire MNF-​​I brief HERE

– Christian

Last week Defense Tech pulled out an inter­est­ing line from a June 22 brief­ing given to Pentagon reporters on oper­a­tions in Iraq by Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno.

Odierno was asked sev­eral ques­tions about the involve­ment of Iran in Iraqs insur­gency. As youll remem­ber, he said specif­i­cally that Iran had been train­ing insur­gent mor­tar teams on how to quickly set up in cover, accu­rately fire and extract mor­tar teams before U.S forces could nab them.

He also said, in what prob­a­bly passed through most reporters ears, this sen­tence in ref­er­ence to evi­dence of Irans train­ing and direc­tion of Iraq insur­gents (empha­sis added):

And I think, you know, we’ve had some indi­ca­tions of that through some of the peo­ple we’ve detained, and I think in the future here we’re going to lay some of that out for you. So I think — we feel pretty con­fi­dent about those links. 

Well, now it looks like that has hap­pened. Our sis­ter site, Military​.com, is report­ing this morn­ing an Associated Press story that indi­cates Lebanese Hezbollah was involved in a kid­nap­ping attempt of U.S. troops in January. The ter­ror­ists were trained and advised by Iranian Quds force offi­cers and instructed to carry out a high-​​profile hostage tak­ing sim­i­lar to the one that sparked the war with Israel last summer.

Iran is using the Lebanese Shiite mili­tia Hezbollah as a “proxy” to arm Shiite mil­i­tants in Iraq and Tehran’s Quds force had prior knowl­edge of a January attack in Karbala in which five Americans died, a U.S. gen­eral said Monday.

U.S. mil­i­tary spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner said a senior Lebanese Hezbollah oper­a­tive, Ali Mussa Dakdouk, was cap­tured March 20 in south­ern Iraq. Bergner said Dakdouk served for 24 years in Hezbollah and was “work­ing in Iraq as a sur­ro­gate for the Iranian Quds force.”

The gen­eral also said that Dakdouk was a liai­son between the Iranians and a break­away Shiite group led by Qais al-​​Kazaali, a for­mer spokesman for cleric Muqtada al-​​Sadr. Bergner said al-Kazaali’s group car­ried out the January attack against a provin­cial gov­ern­ment build­ing in Karbala and that the Iranians assisted in preparations.

Al-​​Khazaali and his brother Ali al-​​Khazaali, both cap­tured in March, have told U.S. inter­roga­tors that they “could not have con­ducted it (the Karbala attack) with­out sup­port from the Quds force,” Bergner said.

Documents cap­tured with al-​​Khazaali showed that the Quds Force had devel­oped detailed infor­ma­tion on the U.S. posi­tion at the gov­ern­ment build­ing, includ­ing “shift changes and defense” and shared this infor­ma­tion with the attack­ers, the gen­eral said. 

And CNNs top inves­tiga­tive reporter in Iraq, Michael Ware, never an apol­o­gist for the U.S. inva­sion and occu­pa­tion, bol­stered the AP report with his own work based on inter­views with Iraqi gov­ern­ment offi­cials whod seen the foren­sic evi­dence and inter­ro­ga­tion transcripts.

U.S. sources and Iraqi mili­tia sources have said the care­fully planned oper­a­tion was meant to take cap­tives who could be traded for five Iranians held by U.S. troops since a January 10 raid in Irbil, in north­ern Iraq. But the Karbala attack went awry, result­ing in the deaths of the five Americans.

Qais Khazali, a one­time spokesman for anti-​​American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, was one of the men sought by American troops in con­nec­tion with the attack. By the time of his March arrest, he had left the Mehdi Army and was lead­ing one of the “spe­cial groups,” accord­ing to U.S. intelligence.

In search­ing for Khazali, U.S. and allied troops found com­puter doc­u­ments detail­ing the plan­ning, train­ing and con­duct of the failed kid­nap­ping. And they found Daqduq, whom intel­li­gence offi­cials said has admit­ted work­ing on behalf of Iran. 

And an inter­est­ing post­script to Wares report (watch the video here): Dakdouk pre­tended to be a def-​​mute for a while until inter­roga­tors got him to talk, then he spilled the beans. Wonder how they got him to talk?

– Christian

After three years of train­ing by coali­tion forces and non­stop com­bat with insur­gents Iraqi army and police units are battle-​​hardened, highly moti­vated and skilled in bat­tle­field drills. At the tac­ti­cal level … we’re doing quite well, says Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, a senior offi­cial in the coali­tion train­ing orga­ni­za­tion. Theyre fight­ing, dying, being wounded, being moved around coun­try. He says 5,300 Iraqi sol­diers from out­side of Baghdad have been brought in for the surge.

That last point their abil­ity to deploy is a sure sign that Iraqi army units are improv­ing. Battalions dis­in­te­grated last year when we tried to move them around. Now we have them ready to move, says Major General William Caldwell, top com­man­der in Iraq.

That was not even pos­si­ble six months ago, Dempsey points out.

(more…)

A story cropped up today on a March 4 inci­dent where the first-​​deployed Marine Special Operations Company allegedly shot and killed inno­cent Afghan civil­ians in reac­tion to a road­side bomb ambush. 

The story, of course, is not new. What is, how­ever, is the tacit admis­sion by Army offi­cers in Afghanistan that the Marine spe­cial oper­a­tors com­mit­ted a crimebefore an offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion has been completed! 

I have been cov­er­ing the for­ma­tion of MarSoc since 2002, when a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing between the Corps and SOCom planted the seed for the new com­mando units. I have met some of the Force Reconnaissancemen in the new MarSoc com­pany and can vouch for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, expe­ri­ence and skill. 

Clearly some­thing went wrong on that bumpy road in Nangahar province, but I know from con­tacts within the unit that there are def­i­nitely two sides to this story. And thats what inves­ti­ga­tions are for, right? 

Why, then, did Col. John Nicholson, com­man­der of the 3rd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division deployed to Afghanistan, say this in a state­ment pre­sented to the pur­ported vic­tims fam­i­lies of the March 4 incident:

I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and ter­ri­bly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded inno­cent Afghan people

We are filled with grief and sad­ness at the death of any Afghan, but the death and wound­ing of inno­cent Afghans at the hand of Americans is a stain on our honor and on the mem­ory of the many Americans who have died defend­ing Afghanistan and the Afghan people 

This was a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble mis­take, and my nation grieves with you for your loss and suffering 

We humbly and respect­fully ask for your forgiveness

(more…)

On a day when the polit­i­cal stars seemed aligned even stronger against Americas con­tin­ued involve­ment in Iraq, I thought it might be a good idea to get a view of events from the front line.

A story thats mak­ing its way across the net comes from a Marine posted in Ramadi, Iraqi, who takes excep­tion to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reids view that the war is lost.

From the New York Post:

WASHINGTON — A tough U.S. Marine sta­tioned in one of the most hos­tile areas of Iraq has a mes­sage for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid: We need to stay here and help rebuild.

In raw and emo­tional lan­guage from the bloody front lines, Cpl. Tyler Rock, of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, skew­ered Reid for being far removed from the patri­o­tism and progress in Iraq.

Yeah, and I got a quote for that [exple­tive] Harry Reid. These fam­i­lies need us here, Rock vented in an e-​​mail to Pat Dollard, a Hollywood agent-​​turned-​​war reporter who posted the com­ment on his Web site, www​.pat​dol​lard​.com.

Obviously [Reid] has never been in Iraq. Or at least the area worth see­ing … the parts where insur­gency is ram­pant and the build­ings are blown to pieces, Rock wrote.

Based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., Rock cat­a­logued a series of grim daily trau­mas in Iraq, like get­ting cov­ered in ash and sleep­ing under a dirty rug in an Iraqi fam­ilys house, or watch­ing sev­eral ter­ror­ists die on the same strip of pavement.

But he says he is opti­mistic about the future of a coun­try that he says has turned to com­plete s– — - dur­ing a bloody insurgency.

He also spoke admir­ingly of the risks brave Iraqi cit­i­zens take every day.

If Iraq didnt want us here then why do we have [Iraqi police] vol­un­teer­ing every day to rebuild their cities? he asked.

It sucks that Iraqis have more patri­o­tism for a coun­try that has turned to com­plete s– — - more than the peo­ple in America who drink Starbucks every day.

We could leave this place and say we are sorry to the ter­ror­ists. And then we could wait for 3,000 more American civil­ians to die before we say, Hey, thats not nice again.

And the sad thing is after we WIN this war. People like [Reid] will say he was there for us the whole time.

Rocks can­did e-​​mail swept across the Internet after Dollard posted it on his site, and it was picked up by the Drudge Report and numer­ous other Web sites.

What does [Reid] know about us los­ing besides what he wants to believe? The truth is that we are push­ing al Qaeda out and we are push­ing the insur­gency out. We are here to sup­port a nation. 

Hat-​​tip to Pat Dollard who was there with my buddy that hor­ri­ble night in Ramadi. RIP Almar and Matt.

– Christian

Military​.com is report­ing today that Afghan secu­rity forces have sur­rounded a vil­lage near Kandahar that is report­edly shel­ter­ing some 200 Taliban fight­ers.

The rebels were found in the vil­lage of Keshay, which is in the Taliban heart­land. The story says the rebels were there for a meet­ing when the obvi­ously tipped-​​off ASF cut off their exit and demanded a sur­ren­der. The report says Taliban rebel leader Mullah Dadullah could be in the town as well, but so far has refused to surrender(photo from Counterterrorism blog).

This could be the decap­i­tat­ing blow allied forces were look­ing for in the smol­der­ing Afghan con­flict. Or, it could be a replay of Tora Bora, where pay­offs and shift­ing alliances allowed al Qaeda and Talib fight­ers to escape.

Lets hope that the lessons of the Tora Bora bat­tle have been learned and that the ASF as well as their NATO men­tors are up to the challenge.

– Christian