Month: May 2007

Holding Security Contractors Accountable

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

From the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire today:

Democrats push to hold security contractors responsible for abuses in Iraq. House legislation, attached to defense-authorization bill, would create a database and rules of engagement for contractors in war zone.

Presidential rivals Obama and Clinton back similar legislation in Senate, while other Democrats seek new FBI unit on contractor crimes.

A good start for accountability and better than the meaningless change to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), but it still both short of the mark and not in the best direction. There is an underlying assumption that contractors, security or otherwise, are part of a functioning principal-agent relationship. Too often this is not the case and the agent does not see itself as an auxiliary of the principal (the US / Coalition) but as some kind of affiliate with an increased independence than should be permitted. There is not enough incentive, positive or otherwise, to compel or encourage the contractor to fully and wholly support the principal’s mission.

The case of Custer Battles is just one example, the Aegis “Trophy Video” and even Abu Ghraib are others. None of this can directly be blamed on the contractors, as authors like Scahill would have you believe. Contracts are negotiated, signed, renewed, and paid with some amount of consideration for the services, including personnel, rendered. Looked at form this angle, it is the principal — the United States — that has failed and some contractors, not all, have “gone off the reservation” (albeit the “reservation” was often ill-defined by the Coalition).

The database is a good start, but better would be to have more contracting officers fully engaged on the contracts and in contact with local ground commanders. Often, as the case of Custer Battles demonstrated, the ground commanders either do no know there is a contract officer or how to get in touch with. Custer Battles is not the exception. Base commanders often do not know how many contractors are operating on his base and has little if any control over them. 

The Aegis “Trophy Video” is an example of how using smart and complete contracting language would increase transparency, and thus accountability (remember Aegis is the company headed by Tim Spicer, the company that left everyone in bewilderment when it was awarded the largest contract ever given by the Pentagon). The investigation into the shooting resulted in a 200-page report. The Pentagon said the report found no wrong-doing but wouldn’t release it because it was the proprietary property of Aegis. Aegis would not release the report because it contained corporate secrets. Both said the men who did the shooting could not be identified despite the fact each man wore an Aegis supplied and monitored blue-force tracker. South Africa apparently find out one of the shooters was one of theirs and hence put him on trial in violation of their anti-mercenary laws. 

A better course of action than the database would be require better integration with military chains of command, financial penalties (or bonuses) for poor (or satisfactory) performance.

Even better yet would be to bring back the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) that was dismissed in the “spirit” of expediency (throwing out FAR is what gave Greenwald’s Iraq for Sale a story line).  

As far as the FBI, this is terrible idea. Inserting another layer is largely if not completely unworkable in an environment such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Philippines. A better solution, but not a great solution, is to work on legislation and contracting language that creates a special civil-military “bridge” office based in the military. This would have the effect of reducing civil-military conflicts that will invariably come from FBI intervention into military affairs and bring the weight of military brass behind certain investigations.  

Band-aids only hide the infection. Go for a real change, which includes bringing back the safe-guards put in place when the public was pissed off over $900 hammers. What will it take today?

(H/T to CS for wire report)

DHS S&T Conference: two panels worth attending

~ Matt Armstrong

Next week MountainRunner will be chairing two panels at the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Stakeholder’s Conference at the Reagan Convention Center in Washington, D.C. 

On Tuesday, May 22, at 4p is “Science as Diplomacy”. On the panel is:

The panel description:

Science and technology are ubiquitous in the modern world. S&T transcends political and cultural divides and fosters long lasting relationships based on networking and collaboration both domestically and internationally. Understanding the value of these relationships, as channels for global cooperation and democracy building, and utilizing them have effects beyond the initial contact.

Working with foreign scientists, as well as their communities, either here or abroad, not only taps into and develops additional research and development capacity, it also promotes changes in commercial, academic, infrastructure, and legal system that form the foundation of democratic institutions, creating a win-win for people and societies and S&T. Polls continue to show American science and technology are admired by countries that increasingly oppose American politics. S&T is thus a bridge to continue a connection or to establish new communication channels to policy and decision makers and their advisors.

This panel brings together a variety of perspectives to discuss science as diplomacy and its use not only as a direct source of S&T in the pursuit of national security, but also as a means of foster security beyond our borders through bottom-up pressures to democratize.

On Wednesday, May 23, at 4p is the panel “Blogging for Technology: Science and the New Media”. On this panel:

Panel Description:

Blogs are an additional forum for creating awareness of and collaboration on science and technology. Subject matter experts (and the not so expert) share and often debate new ideas, policies, and highlight items otherwise lost or ignored by the media. Forming a dynamic and informal web of information and knowledge, blogs provide both immediacy and longevity. Information located in academia, government, industry, media, and other blogs are linked together to create and facilitate informal multidisciplinary research and discussion.

This panel includes both providers and consumers of the blogosphere and will look at how bloggers change the discussion and create awareness of S&T in the context of national security.

Both panels are the real deal with heavy hitters in their fields. Each will be giving a 10min presentation and then we’ll have Q&A. My role as chair is to stay out of their way, they are the ones you want to listen to. Let me know if you plan on attending.

Confirming the Destruction of Iraq

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 16 Comments

How do you confirm you’ve really destroyed a country? Make sure the education system is shattered. This is especially effective in a country like Iraq that had the best university system in the Middle East / Southwest Asia.

“Medics, pharmacists, biologists and dentists are desperately seeking training in hospitals because what they have learnt so far does not give them enough confidence to treat patients. There is a really huge difference between now and the times of Saddam Hussein when medical graduates left college with the competence to treat any patient,” he said.

“Children’s capacity for learning has been reduced and the main reason for this is the effect the violence has had on their minds and this might continue to affect them for years to come,” she added.

“I remember when I entered college and students were graduating with detailed knowledge, and leaving direct to the global job market, but unfortunately today I and my colleagues find ourselves graduating knowing that , with our lack of experience, no one would employ us,” said Salman Rafi, a sixth year student at Mustansiriyah University’s Medical College.

Playing politics with soldiers

~ Matt Armstrong

From Phil Carter:

[T]he California National Guard is alone among the 50 states in not providing state-funded tuition assistance to its National Guard troops. Although soldiers can still get the reserve GI Bill, this state offers no separate benefit to make up the difference between that amount and UC/CSU tuition, nor any separate GI Bill-like benefits of its own. 

Why is this? Impotent politicians are taking out their frustrations on the Guard, according to the Times:

State Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena) chairs the Senate Education Committee, which has scuttled attempts by the California Guard to get tuition assistance for members. College aid ought to be based on financial need, not on membership in a group, Scott said, and if the federal government deploys the Guard overseas, then it should give members the same educational benefits as enlisted men and women, who can get more than $1,000 a month for school.

“It’s the federal government that’s made the decision to go to war,” Scott said.

How much would this cost?

All it would take, Guard officials say, is $3 million a year, a negligible sum in the state’s $130-billion proposed budget.

Politicians’ distance from the military, as one Republican Assemblyman rightly noted, is a central reason for this childish and short-sighted behavior.  

Assemblyman Chuck Devore (R-Irvine), who retired last month from the Guard after 24 years, said the Legislature is out of touch with the military.

Only 13 of the state’s 120 lawmakers have military experience, and Devore said that since the closure of many bases in recent decades, most Californians have no regular contact with the military.

And some lawmakers are reluctant to do anything that could be viewed as support for the war in Iraq, he said.

My great state of California must realign its priorities and understand the full implications of this lack of action. The federal government isn’t the one being punished, it the men and women who serve, the communities they live in, and the economy as a whole. But this is clearly too big of a picture of some to come to grips with.

Sporadic Posting

~ Matt Armstrong

I’ve got lots of things to post, but too little time to do it right now. Tomorrow, look for some catch-up through the end of the week. Next week, I’ll be in DC (more on that tomorrow)… 

Why the Reconstruction Failed and Why State is to Blame

~ Matt Armstrong

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the author of the current handbook on how to manufacture an insurgency, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, wrote another damning article on the failure of the Administration make the children get along.

Following the Bremer-esque line that things must be built back better or not at all, State has called Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense, a Stalinist for his efforts to reopen dozens of government-owned factories. 

[Comrade] Brinkley said embassy staffers called him a Stalinist bent on restoring a command economy. Another told him that if he rehabilitated factories, Iraqis “are going to use those machines to make more complicated weapons to kill our troops with.”

Two embassy staff members confirmed Brinkley’s depiction of the tension but blame him for the rupture. “Here was this guy who parachuted in from Washington who thought he had all of the answers and that we were just a bunch of idiots sitting around in the Green Zone,” said one of the staff members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the matter. “Had he bothered to think about all of the reasons why pouring money into these factories is a bad idea?”

And what exactly did Comrade Brinkley fail to consider? 

Embassy officials warned Brinkley that if he opened factories in Sunni areas first, he risked angering Shiites. Moreover, the electricity needed by production lines would mean less for residences. Would people really be happier, embassy officials asked, if they had jobs but less power at home?

Right, because State is doing such a bang up job on anticipating and staying ahead of what the Iraqi’s want and need. Iraqis would rather be unemployed, sitting at home playing XBox.

The conflict between State and Defense (and everyone else) kills not only any hope of reconstruction, but also soldiers and Marines. Who’s in charge here?

(H/T PCR Project)

War as Theater

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Warfare in a globalized society is theater, making information king. The “old” style of warfare, occasionally still played out in Afghanistan, the Philippines, inside Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Long War (or whatever it is named today), is a rarity. Camera phones, cheap digital video cameras, YouTube and LiveLeak, and connectivity everywhere means every Joe and Jihadi gets at least a bit part in the theater of information.

Continue reading “War as Theater
“ →

Updating the Blogroll

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Two new additions to the blogroll:

First, Abu Muqawama (“Father of the Resistance”). Recommended for the counterinsurgent in you. His post today Insanity in Afghanistan is spot on. How would you respond to this question:

How do these events affect your efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people in Afghanistan?

Do you think you’d respond like this?

I — well, to the extent that people understand that we’re working there on — working on their behalf, I think in the long run they understand that these actions — any loss of innocent life isn’t intentional on our part and that we certainly hope that they understand that.

I’m not exactly sure how this differentiates our tactics from the bad guys’. Is it intent? or that we’re apologetic? Notable line: “we certainly hope that they understand that.” Implied message: because we know we’re not making it clear.

(Thanks Phil for this recommendation.)

Second addition is Seth Weinberger’s Security Dilemmas where he’s writing on international relations and domestic politics.

Back to Phil at Intel Dump, here’s his description of MountainRunner:

An eclectic blog which covers a wide range of security subjects from contemporary counterinsurgency to technology and procurement.

“Procurement”??  

Where are You?

~ Matt Armstrong

Finally, after sending Statisfy to Sean and Mark (see live hits for TPM Barnett and ZenPundit), I finally inserted the code into this blog: StatisfyMountainrunner. Kind of cool… at times. Sometimes it’s just dead, but others, it’s hopping.

While on live mapping of visitors, I was looking at maps of who visited last month and thought the end of month maps for April 07 were interesting. Below are the visitor locations from Africa, Middle East (er, SE Asia), and Asia. Sometimes there are little surprises on where the hits come from… Fascinating demonstration of global communications.  

World famous book, now available in paperback

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

The book read by Jihadis (it’s apparently been found in Taleban training camps in Pak), the President, at least two SecDefs, and “21 of 25 Senate Armed Services Committee” members can now be yours for less than $10.20 plus shipping (or free shipping if you buy 3 copies). It’s FM 3-24, the Counterinsurgency manual of the US Army and Marine Corps.

It is a pain going through the soft copy sometimes…

(Hat tip John Nagl blogging at SWJ)

Monday Mash-Up

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

A day late but not a dollar short (remember you get what you pay for). Here’s the Monday Mash-Up, delivered on Tuesday.

  • Another kind of AMC
  • Animating the Bayeaux Tapestry (h/t A&I)
  • If you’re reading this you probably won’t be surprised that a recent Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch ‘Daily Show’ and ‘Colbert’– and Visit Newspaper Sites

    A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans’ knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little. For example, only 69% know that Dick Cheney is vice president, while 74% could identify Dan Quayle in that post in 1989.
    Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot — with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.
    Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.
    Told that Shia was one group of Muslims struggling in Iraq, only 32% of the total sample could name “Sunni” as the other key group.

  • Child Mortality in Iraq 150% worse than in 1990. But it’s more than Saddam starving his people:

    “Some 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005 before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths were among newborn babies in the first month of life,” Save the Children said, listing “armed conflict and social instability” among the principal reasons for Iraq’s child mortality rate.

    Remind me again how we achieve moral legitimacy over a population that is suffering like this?

  • Air Force Fleet Wearing Down

    Compared to 1996, the Air Force now spends 87% more on maintenance for a warplane fleet that is less ready to fly. The average Air Force warplane is 23.5 years old.

  • Trying to bring the fight home to American bases

Chinese Tuesday

~ Matt Armstrong

As is the trend here, it’s Tuesday and time for news on China.

  • VOA reports on how Chinese are gaining African respect because of their “simple” living:

    …in contrast with Western expatriates, says Brautigam, the Chinese always live at or below “local standards” – even when it’s quite within their means to live lavishly….
    …”The Italian project had a container of food brought in from Italy every two weeks! And the (Italian) experts were living in very comfortable houses that were built (specially) for the project.”…
    …”The United States.had eight experts and they had built ranch-style houses in a little subdivision, with street lights and sidewalks, and everything the way it would be in Texas or someplace like that!”…
    In Nigeria…the Chinese are perceived as being “better able to transfer technology to Nigerian employees than Western expatriates.” …China is popular amongst businesspeople in Africa because of a simple reason: Money. “Africans associate the Chinese with profits,”…

  • China confirms terrorist camps in Pakistan 19 Apr 07:

    China has for the first time publicly acknowledged the existence of terrorist camps within the territory of its “all-weather” ally.
    It said that some East Turkistan separatists, who have been fighting for decades to make oil-rich northwest China’s Xinjiang province an independent state, received training at the terrorist camps in Pakistan.

  • China to Send Military Unit to Darfur 8 May 07. Posting on the article, T P M Barnett asks a question (“What is our military really doing to encourage this? What is our government doing?”) that emphasizes the structural failure in American diplomacy. On the action itself, the Chinese should be expected to do the minimum necessary for appearances while pressuring Bashir behind the scenes to make a show of acceptance.

News from the Small Wars Journal Empire of Knowledge

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Los Angeles Anti-Terror hub as model

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Briefly, GovExec.com has a very good article by Shane Harris on LA’s Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC).

amid a warren of stout office buildings in the industrial L.A. suburb of Norwalk, is a sand-colored 525,000-square-foot edifice. JRIC is on the seventh floor, next to the corporate headquarters of Bally Total Fitness. This is homeland security’s next frontier.

Continue reading “Los Angeles Anti-Terror hub as model
“ →