Military Recruiting – Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart, Army Reserve Link For Recruiting, Hiring, (Boston Globe)…Associated Press, Nov 12, 2008.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has signed on to an Army Reserve program in which the company and the Army will work together to recruit and train people interested in serving in the military and working for the giant retailer.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, has more than 1.4 million US employees.

An agreement signed yesterday obligates Wal-Mart to interview and consider all qualified, participating soldiers for employment after they complete military occupational specialty training.

When a reserve soldier who works at Wal-Mart is called to service, the company can draw on 1 million or so citizen soldiers to help identify a qualified replacement to work in the soldier’s place.

The arrangement is expected to lower costs of recruiting and training for Wal-Mart.

nKorea: Setting conditions that "could inevitabley lead to war ."

North Korea Limits Tests Of Nuclear Site, (New York Times)…Choe Sang-Hun, Nov 12, 2008.

In its first major act of defiance since Senator Barack Obama’s election, North Korea said Wednesday that it would bar international nuclear inspectors from taking soil and nuclear waste samples, which are considered crucial to determining the extent of its weapons program.

North Korea detonated a plutonium-based device in 2006, adding urgency to arduous six-nation talks to halt the North’s nuclear program. As part of the eventual deal, the North made a declaration in June of its nuclear activities. President Bush then said he was prepared to remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, and the North demolished the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant.

But it was months before the North was removed from the list, while the United States wrangled with its negotiators over how to verify the North’s nuclear declaration and criticism of the Bush administration — for extracting too few concessions — mounted. Finally, in October, the State Department announced that North Korea had agreed to access “based on mutual consent” to undeclared nuclear sites and “sampling and forensic activities.”

North Korea’s statement on Wednesday contradicted that, and further, warned that if the United States diverged from the joint document “even by one word, it could lead inevitably to war.”

Iraq: Human Terrain Teams / Social Scientists

U.S. Military Using Social Scientists In Iraq (FNC)…David Mac Dougall, Nov 12, 2008.
Five years after the invasion comes a tacit acceptance that mission-focused American troops haven’t been able to devote enough time to simply getting to know the locals. The U.S. military is expanding a program in Iraq to send teams of anthropologists and social scientists across the country, acting as cultural analysts for U.S. forces.

 Special Report With Brit Hume (FNC), 6:00 PM

BRIT HUME: Know thy enemy is one of the oldest of military dicta. American forces are working on a variation of that in Iraq, trying to learn more about the people whose country they occupy and it is scientists, not soldiers, who are on these frontlines.

Reporter David Mac Dougall has the story.

DAVID MAC DOUGALL: Five years after the invasion comes a tacit acceptance that mission-focused American troops haven’t been able to devote enough time to simply getting to know the locals. The U.S. military is expanding a program in Iraq to send teams of anthropologists and social scientists across the country, acting as cultural analysts for U.S. forces.

“NANCY” [Anthropologist]: So we go out to the villages, into the cities and talk to the Iraqis, get an idea of their perceptions, their feelings, basically what they’re thinking about their culture and then we take that back to the military so they have a better understanding of the local population.

MAC DOUGALL: The program, though, is not without its critics. Some scholars are alarmed that anthropologists could be gathering information, which is then used by the military in lethal operations, a practice used during the Vietnam War, but later abandoned after public outcry.

Nancy and her co-worker Jean are concerned enough about their professional reputations that they requested we don’t fully identify them.

So much information is gathered about Iraqi men that U.S. commanders really know very little about the lives and concerns of women in this area. And there’s where the anthropologists’ expertise is vital – improving the flow of cultural intel, allowing the military to paint a clearer picture of the social landscape.

At first, the women in Kawaz-Arab are reluctant to come forward. Slowly, but surely Nancy and Jean plan to gain their trust, with repeat visits in the coming weeks, but there have already been successes.

“JEAN” [Anthropologist]: I never would have thought that I’d be sitting in a room filled with 20 Arab women and children and they’d be telling me intimate parts of their lives, how they live, how they love, how they mourn.

MAC DOUGALL: On the ground, U.S. commanders tell us they value the anthropologists’ input, but in reality many of the soldiers have more experience in Iraq than the social science teams. While the practice of deploying anthropologists is still considered counterinsurgency, commanders here say their information is not being used for traditional kinetic military fighting. Anthropologists like Jean and Nancy are able to bring a uniquely humanist touch to understanding Iraqis and that helps recast the U.S. military as more approachable in the minds of Iraqis they meet.

In Kawaz-Arab, Iraq, David Mac Dougall, Fox News.

Afghanistan Strategy: Larger Security Force

How To Win In Afghanistan,  (Wall Street Journal)…Michael O’Hanlon, Nov 14, 2008.

…So why build a large Afghan security force? The answer is simple: because the alternatives are worse. One possibility is to increase the number of NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan, pushing the combined cost of the operation well above the current $4 billion a month. The other possibility is most likely to lose the war.

The United States has been spending nearly $3 billion a year to fund the Afghanistan security forces of late. This is a great deal of money but far less than our own military costs in that country. We should be willing to double that $3 billion a year if need be. The added expenses need not stay high indefinitely. Once Afghanistan’s security forces have their needed equipment, and provided President Obama can cajole and pressure other major countries to foot their share of the bill, American security aid requirements should drop back to current levels.

Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, two notable South Asia scholars asked whether the American political system was reliable enough to commit such funds to an enlarged Afghan security force over an extended period. The answer is yes. We have proven as much over the years in funding Korea and Taiwan, Greece and Turkey, and for the last three decades Egypt and Israel, when our core security interests dictated it. Certainly Afghanistan, where al Qaeda once had its main home — and where over 20 American GIs as well as another 10 foreign troops a month have been losing their lives, carrying out a mission that Afghans themselves are not yet ready to lead — is worth a comparable financial investment.

CIA Threat Assessment: al-Qaeda #1

CIA Chief: Iraq Not Main Front, (Washington Post)…Walter Pincus, Nov 14, 2008.
CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday that al-Qaeda remains the single greatest threat to the United States but that Iraq is no longer the central front in the broader war on terrorism.

C.I.A. Chief Says Qaeda Is Extending Its Reach, (New York Times)…Mark Mazzetti, Nov 14, 2008.
Even as Al Qaeda strengthens its hub in the Pakistani mountains, its leaders are building closer ties to regional militant groups in order to launch attacks in Africa and Europe and on the Arabian Peninsula, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday.

Unmanned Vehicles (Robots)

Aberdeen Starts Work On Robot Test Track, (Baltimore Sun)…David Wood, Nov 14, 2008

With U.S. and allied military convoys under increasing attack in Afghanistan, the Army began work yesterday on a new test track at Harford County’s Aberdeen Proving Ground that will be critical in developing high-speed unmanned, or robot, vehicles for convoy duty.

Robotic vehicles also will be tested for basic performance but also with different sets of sensors that are currently under development, Rooney said.

For example, the Army has been working on ground-penetrating radar to detect one form of bomb common in Afghanistan: a plastic bucket of explosives buried beneath the road surface, detonated by a simple pressure-activated switch.

The problem is that the current radars can see only a short distance ahead, and as a convoy gathers speed, it quickly outruns the distance the radar can see, according to Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, commander of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, the Pentagon command with responsibility for protecting troops from roadside bombs.
“Logistics convoys would like to have a radar that looks 100 meters out in front of them,” Metz said in an interview.

First Female Four Star General

Dunwoody To Be First Female Four-Star General, (Washingtonpost.com)…Robert Burns, Associated Press, Nov 14, 2008.

The recognition makes her a little bit uncomfortable from the standpoint of the gender aspect–that we’re making a big deal (that) she is the first female general officer,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday in announcing that Defense Secretary Robert Gates would attend her promotion ceremony.

Iraq: New IEDs

Militants Turn To Small Bombs In Iraq Attacks, (New York Times)…Katherine Zoepf and Mudhafer al-Husaini, Nov 14, 2008 pg1.

…And as security in Baghdad has improved, the small and furtive bomb — though less lethal than entire cars or even thick suicide belts packed with explosive — is fast becoming the device of choice for a range of insurgent groups. They are also contributing, in the midst of an uptick in violence, to a growing feeling of unease in the capital.

Light, portable and easy to lay, sticky bombs are tucked quickly under the bumper of a car or into a chink in a blast wall. Since they are detonated remotely, they rarely harm the person who lays them. And as security in Baghdad has improved, the small and furtive bomb — though less lethal than entire cars or even thick suicide belts packed with explosive — is fast becoming the device of choice for a range of insurgent groups.

 “You take a bit of C4 or some other type of compound,” said Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a spokesman for the United States military in Baghdad. “You can go into a hardware store, take the explosive and combine it with an accelerant, put some glass or marble or bits of metal in front of it and you’ve basically got a homemade Claymore,” a common antipersonnel mine.

Administration Orders for Military Raids Against Al Qaeda

Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda In Many Countries, (New York Times)…Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, Nov 10, 2008.

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.