Iraq: The Story behind the surge

The War Within. The inside story of how President Bush’s team dealt with its failing Iraq strategy. About this series ….

This series of articles is drawn from Bob Woodward‘s “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008.” Woodward, an associate editor of The Washington Post, interviewed more than 150 people, including the president’s national security team, senior deputies and key players responsible for the intelligence, diplomatic and military operations in the Iraq war. Other officials with firsthand knowledge of meetings, documents and events, employed at various levels of the White House, the departments of Defense and State and the intelligence community, also served as primary sources.

WMD Report Card

In WMD Report, U.S. Gets A C, (Washington Post)…Spencer S. Hsu

Seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the federal government has made only limited progress toward preventing a catastrophic nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil and combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction abroad, according to a report card to be issued tomorrow by 22 former U.S. officials.

nK: 6PT, Anniversary Parade

Lack Of Written Agreement Snags Pyongyang Talks
(Washington Times)…Nicholas Kralev
The Bush administration may have contributed to the latest impasse with North Korea by failing to get a written agreement that links Pyongyang’s removal from the U.S. terrorist blacklist to a plan to verify the country’s nuclear disarmament.

N. Korean Military Parade To Mark Anniversary
(USA Today)…Unattributed
North Korea plans to stage a military parade today in Pyongyang to mark the communist state’s 60th anniversary, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae Jae said. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the parade would be North Korea’s largest in terms of number of troops and military hardware.

Social Sciences In The Military

Social Sciences In The Military, Special Report With Brit Hume (FNC), 6:00 PM, September 8, 2008

JIM ANGLE: The U.S. is spending billions every year to improve its weapons and medical technology, but defense leaders recognize there is also value in another type of science – social science: understanding cultures, religions and other factors that affect war and national security.

Correspondent Caroline Shively has this story about the military and professors.

CAROLINE SHIVELY: The Pentagon has its share of soldiers and tanks. Now it’s looking for new weapons in the war on terror: eggheads and ideas. And Defense Secretary Bob Gates, a former university dean and president, has $50 million to pay for it.

GEOFF MORRELL [Pentagon Press Secretary]: He is a strong believer in the notion that social scientists can help us in our efforts in Iraq, in Afghanistan, elsewhere – help us gain a better understanding of the culture and make adjustments to how we do things.

SHIVELY: The Pentagon program is called the Minerva Research Initiative, studying war and the conditions that can lead to it. Despite assurances that Gates respects their intellectual independence, some academics are wary of the idea, saying it could set up an old-style Soviet partnership with the Pentagon paying for research to justify military action and pushing academics to skew their results.

Prof. David Vine calls it the creeping militarization of universities.

DAVID VINE [American University]: Pentagon has insisted on funding it. Unfortunately, it’s sort of stacked the deck to – asked to determine what questions will be asked about U.S. national security policy, and then to determine what research will be selected and funded.

SHIVELY: The initiative focuses on four key issues: China’s military and technological advances; terrorist groups that have formed in Iraq; the role of religion and ideology in jihadist extremism; and something called the new discipline’s project – using social sciences to study the threats of war.

STEPHEN FLANAGAN [International Security Expert]: The military cannot win many of these struggles, particularly the struggle against extremist violence, on its own – that it has to be a much more integrated application of many elements of U.S. governmental and un-governmental capabilities.

SHIVELY: The U.S. military already has smaller partnerships with university scholars. The Army’s Human Terrain System embeds social scientists will soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to help the military better understand local customs and how cultural and religious differences can turn into terrorism.

Secretary Gates is using the 1950s model of historian Arthur Schlesinger, who said the U.S. should employ eggheads and ideas to meet the Russian challenge of the Cold War. While some academics say they worry about a repeat of the best and the brightest leading the U.S. into another Vietnam, that hasn’t stopped their colleagues from applying for the grants, the first of which is said to be awarded later this year.

Soft Power: Microgrants

U.S. ‘Microgrants’ Win Hearts, Minds One Business At A Time
(Washington Times)…Richard Tomkins

From a small compound in northeast Baghdad, U.S. troops are taking tiny steps to rebuild an economy shattered by war.

nKorea: “…this process does go up and down”

U.S. Plays Down North Korea Threat, Washington Times, August 28, 2008, Pg. 2, unattributed

The U.S. is shrugging off North Korea’s threat to backtrack on an agreement to dismantle its nuclear program.

North Korea says it stopped disabling its nuclear complex this month because the U.S. failed to remove it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Wednesday that the U.S. “can’t get overly excited by a down in the situation right now, because this process does go up and down.”

North Korea‘s move threatens a six-nation agreement to abandon nuclear weapons in return for energy aid and political concessions.

Removing North Korea from the terrorism list was a U.S. concession, but the U.S. says it will not go forward until North Korea agrees to a plan to verify its nuclear declaration.

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Fall-Out: Russia’s conflict with Georgia

Georgia War Shows ‘Weak’ Russia, U.S. Official Says,(Washington Post)…Glenn Kessler

Russia’s conflict with Georgia is the sign of a “weak” Russian nation, not a newly assertive one, and Moscow now has put its place in the world order at risk, the top U.S. diplomat for relations with the country said in an interview yesterday.

China’s Unease With Russian Actions Strains Ties

(Wall Street Journal)

Getting it right

Charlie Wilson’s Peace, (Washington Post), Aug 28, 2008, pg.19…by Charles Wilson

…Defense Secretary Robert Gates was spot-on when he said last month, “The Foreign Service is not the Foreign Legion, and the U.S. military should never be mistaken for a Peace Corps with guns.” We’ve got to get this right.

The writer, a Democrat, represented Texas’s 2nd District in the U.S. House from 1973 to 1997. He is an adviser to the Center for U.S. Global Engagement.

Six World Powers Offer Incentives: Iran’s Response

Iran: Letter On Nuclear Program, (New York Times)…Helene Cooper, August 6, 2008

The Bush administration said Tuesday that Iran’s response to an offer of incentives by six world powers seeking to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions was unacceptable, and American and European officials said their next step would be to go back to the United Nations Security Council to seek additional punitive sanctions.

Clashes and Call for Cease Fire

Clashes With Rebels Deepen War Fears, (Washington Post)…Unattributed, August 8, 2008, Pg. 11

The capital of Georgia’s separatist region of South Ossetia came under heavy fire early Friday, just hours after Georgia’s president declared a unilateral cease-fire, news reports and the rebel government said.

“The assault is coming from all directions,” said a brief statement on the separatist government’s Web site. Officials in South Ossetia and Georgia could not be reached by telephone by the Associated Press for confirmation early Friday.

The Interfax news agency, reporting from the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, cited Vladimir Ivanov, an official of the peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia, as saying the fire included salvos by truck-launched Grad missiles.

A week of clashes and escalating tension in South Ossetia has raised fears of an all-out war that could draw in Russia, which has close ties with South Ossetia’s separatist leadership.

At Russia’s request, the United Nations Security Council began meeting in emergency session starting at 11 p.m. Thursday in New York.