McClatchy Newspapers published a story yesterday, an utterly predictable hit piece

describing a small portion of Senator Joseph Lieberman’s surprise visit to troops in Iraq. More on McClatchy, after a review of the story, written by Leila Fadel.

Fadel sat down with a young soldier, SPC David Williams of the 82^nd Airborne Division, as part of “the first of the five ‘surge’ brigades to arrive in Iraq.”  SPC Williams was invited to share lunch with Sen. Lieberman, and he apparently gathered questions from other soldiers the night before, which he transcribed onto two file cards. Those identified as submitting questions were all young men (20-22 years old, Specialist (E4) and below enlisted.

Clearly, SPC Williams shared the contents of his note cards, which Fadel described as a “laundry list,” but she specifically mentions just three questions, and a statement.

As reported by Fadel:

At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers: “When are we going to get out of here?”

Not an unusual question for soldiers assigned to a combat zone, all the more for soldiers assigned as part of the “surge” of US forces into Iraq.

If these soldiers meant this question as oblique criticism of US military strategy in Iraq, rather than a matter of grave personal interest to soldiers in harm’s way, is unclear from Fadel’s written text.

The two other questions quoted:

When would they have upgraded Humvees that could withstand the armor-penetrating weapons that U.S. officials claim are from Iran? When could they have body armor that was better in hot weather?

One can imagine most MSM reporters would pick up on questions like these three, they’re certainly of greater interest than anything else that might have appeared on SPC Williams’ list, such as “why do you caucus with the Democrats when they hate you,” or “why can’t the rest of Congress support our troops without insisting we withdraw?” Okay, so the soldiers may not have wanted to ask those questions, but I’d be curious what Fadel omitted from her report, given she picked the three questions most of interest to agenda-driven reporting.

Last but not at all least, Fadel reports on a statement found on the bottom of one of his cards:

It isn't clear whether Williams mentioned the last line on his note card, the one that had a star next to it. “We don't feel like we're making any progress,” it said.

Fadel doesn’t explain how SPC Williams was selected, who organized the soldiers from whom he gathered questions, or if he was among others at the lunch. As I review the story, there’s likewise little in the account of the lunch itself, or and no information about whether the questions the soldier had prepared were actually asked. Fadel herself took special note of the question on SPC Williams’ list marked with a “star,” but neither SPC Williams nor Fadel ever explained its significance, or confirmed what Williams intended by marking the question.

Three other soldiers are specifically mentioned in the report, and each one is credited with a negative assessment of the war and our progress, or complaints about armor:

“We're waiting to get blown up.”

“We're not making any progress.”

“It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at.”

“It's just more troops, more targets.”

“It's like everything else in this war…[referring to Baghdad]…It hasn't changed.”

Soldiers do bitching better than almost anyone else, and younger, junior troops have oftentimes the most limited perspective on war, given their proximity to danger and distance from decision. All given.

But it is hard for me to imagine a more cherry-picked selection of quotes, even from junior soldiers, without one positive word or hint of motivation for their mission.

I know what I think of press pieces like this. If you don’t, or somehow think this should stand as journalism, rather than propaganda, ask yourself this.

If this was written by our enemies, intended to wear down public support for the war, or portray our efforts as deeply unsupported by our own military, how would it be written any differently than it was?

I did a little research on McClatchy Newspapers, to see if they showed any (other) obvious signs of taking a partisan or political slant on the war.

McClatchy, a chain of small, regional newspapers of which I have taken little or no notice previously, may not be well known outside their markets, but a cursory review of their homepage, their Iraq news coverage, and their “blog” Inside Iraq should allow any objective reader to get fair measure of their political persuasion.

McClatchy and their “Iraqi and US journalists,” not unlike their more mainstream media (MSM) brethren, can’t seem to find any good news from Iraq, and resolutely identify all possible negative consequences from any news that could otherwise be perceived as positive.

Humorously, McClatchie has a Good News link on their website, but it currently contains only two stories, both about “good news” for big government progressives, and naturally, no such entries for Iraq.

McClatchy also allows a couple of stringers in Iraq daily compile an unedited (and unverified) “Roundup of Violence” in Iraq (for example, The Roundup of Violence in Iraq, Thursday May 31, 2007).

McClatchy editors at least have the honesty to post a disclaimer, although they can’t resist editorializing even here (emphasis mine):

The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported. It’s posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy’s Washington Bureau.

One can imagine that Al Qaeda and Iranian backed militias have the Washington Bureau (or at least the McClatchy stringers) on speeddial.

For a sense of how articles like the McClatchy piece play in the left side of the blogosphere, Nico of Think Progress presents a real eye-opener. No, not in his reaction to Sen. Lieberman’s visit with the troops, but with the hateful and deranged readers at “Think Progress” who respond in comments. Within two hours, comments are full of BDS and anti-Semitism.

Here’s a small but representative sample:

3. Well the troops should know that they’re getting killed and maimed for Joe Lieberman whose name ironically tells the story…Lie-berman.
But none of this will change anything until the troops and the folks back home are pushed to the breaking point. In a fascist regime, when the propaganda is perfected they is no changing course. Only death and destruction for the commoners, and more wealth and privilege for the Ruling Class, the Z I O N I S T S.

Comment by Shirley — May 30, 2007 @ 10:43 pm

8. The troops are being maimed and killed for people like Joe Lieberman, to ensure their wealth and privilige.
There is a name for people like Joe Lieberman.

Comment by Shirley — May 30, 2007 @ 10:45 pm

9. What a f*ckin’ joke. This guy shoud be run out of town already.

Comment by Denise — May 30, 2007 @ 10:46 pm

12. Oh come on, Joe’s doing a good thing here. He’s over there to see how his pet war is going. That a boy Joey, you f__cking pathetic moron.

Comment by Later... — May 30, 2007 @ 10:49 pm

14. I cannot summon the words to express my contempt for this putrid waste of human life.

Comment by VerbalKint — May 30, 2007 @ 10:56 pm

18. Gee, no one seems to mention that lieberman is a jew and the real reason we are there is because US troops are protecting Israel. Don’t you remember, back before the Iraq war Israel said that Iraq is their biggest threat. Now they are saying the same thing about Iran. Let’s stop being puppets of Israel.

Comment by Wes Denton — May 30, 2007 @ 11:14 pm

24. Shoulda just fragged the jerk. Seems like then he’d get the idea…

Comment by Dr. Crow — May 30, 2007 @ 11:21 pm

25. Somebody should have painted Joe’s helmet RED, because he is a warmongering whore for the Bush Regime.

Comment by Jay Randal — May 30, 2007 @ 11:24 pm

26. Like I said, frag the fool. Only way this thing’s gonna end is to frag more idiots who think its a cool idea. Worked in Nam, b’lieve me!

Comment by Dr. Crow — May 30, 2007 @ 11:25 pm

30. Dr Crow, right on.
Joe Lieberman (I-Israel) is only interested in promoting the AIPAC agenda.
Damn Connecticut (did I spell that right?) anyhoo.

Comment by RUCerious — May 30, 2007 @ 11:38 pm

32. israel was a bad idea when it was created and gets more expensive to maintain everyday.

Comment by wes — May 30, 2007 @ 11:40 pm

41. Wayne ~ I have no doubt that fragging has already started and we’re not hearing about it.

Comment by RUCerious — May 30, 2007 @ 11:49 pm

55. lieberman is biased.
he has personal interest in keeping US troops in the area.
he is jewish and wants to protect israel from all the countries that surround it.
i have no problem with jews, but we have no reason for protecting israel.

Comment by Rafael — May 31, 2007 @ 12:14 am

57. Joe Lieb has his nose so far up chimpy’s ass, he has to be Pinocchio.

Comment by Uncle Ho — May 31, 2007 @ 12:18 am

70. In response to their questions about leaving Iraq, Lieberman said it would be a “victory for al-Qaida and a victory for Iran.”

Answer the f*cking question, Yahweh boy.

Comment by Juan C — May 31, 2007 @ 12:42 am

(Courtesy of Memeorandum)

By now, everybody’s got an opinion over a new Pew Research Center poll of various attitudes and opinions of American Muslims. Some express outrage at the results, others criticize the outrage as misplaced, overblown, or hysterical. Clearly, the majority of major media outlets are spinning more positive interpretations of the results.

Victor Davis Hanson writing at The Corner makes the best argument, in my view. However much critics of the outrage want to make all kind of claims about people saying anything in polls, or comparing these results to other polls, or Muslims in other countries, none of those complaints stand upo against the simple logic of Hanson’s alarm:

Despite explanations from academics and religious figures—youth sound off, war is increasingly acceptable to Americans, Black Muslims may be a different subset of the polled, etc—one could interpret this as very bad news: the US just recently welcomed in tens of thousands of Muslims from the failed states of the Middle East, offering them an opportunity for a vastly different life, which apparently they embraced with open arms. And the views of some of that community to the most devastating attack on American shores in its history apparently include that 25% of its youth approve of suicide tactics, and only 40% on the entire community accept that Arabs carried out the mass murder.
Polls are unreliable. But one cannot praise them on the one hand for showing real signs of Muslim success, and then not be more candid that well over 1 million Muslims here don't believe Arabs were involved in destroying the World Trade Center, and several hundred thousand apparently approve in theory of the generic tactic of suicide bombing.

The Ace of Spades catalogs a dizzying amount of spin employed by major media in reporting the poll results.

ACE quotes directly from the Pew press release:

The Pew polling organization itself: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream

"Mostly." Except for the 1-in-4 males of military age who support terrorism.

How far down does Pew bury its own lede? Well, in "Key Findings," we have to wade through five bullet-points, including ones about such scary-important factoids as "a large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society" and "Roughly two-thirds (65%) of adult Muslims in the U.S. were born elsewhere" -- before coming to this:

“Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.”

Note Pew does not report the actual percentage of young male Muslims who support terrorism -- only noting the percentage is higher than among older Muslims. It then immediately reassures us that the number is quite low, "especially compared with Muslims around the world," but refrains from telling us what this number actually is, so that we can decide if it's "quite low" or not.

26%. "Quite low"? I'd say it's rather high, but then that's me. I have this weird touchiness about being killed by religious maniacs.

I'd say that Pew worked pretty hard to slap some lipstick on this pig, but that might be considered Islamophobic.

Pew betrays an obvious partisan slant in much of what it does, aside from whatever amount of pig lip-sticking they do here.

Via http://www.memeorandum.com/, which also links to lots of other commentary:

Glenn Greenwald / Salon:   Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians

Margaret Besheer / Voice of America:   Poll: US Muslims Feel Post-9/11 Backlash Despite Moderate Outlook

Brian Knowlton / International Herald Tribune:   Muslims assimilate better in U.S. than Europe, poll finds

National Review:   The New U.S. Muslim Poll

Ed Morrissey / Captain's Quarters:   American Muslim Youth And Suicide Bombing

Lawyers, Guns and Money:   Polls that actually matter

Mark Steyn / National Review:   "Potentially disenfranchised youth"

Jeff Goldstein / protein wisdom:   BREAKING: AP unable to unearth party affiliation of "Minn. Lawmaker …

USA Today:   Poll: American Muslims reject extremes

Karoun Demirjian / Chicago Tribune:   U.S. Muslims more content, assimilated than those abroad

Ewen MacAskill / Guardian:   US Muslims more assimilated than British

Thoreau / Unqualified Offerings:   Pew Polls Muslims

Robert / Jihad Watch:   WaPo: "Survey: U.S. Muslims Assimilated, Opposed to Extremism"

Douglas Farah / Counterterrorism Blog:   A Look at the Polls, Some Good News, Some Scary

Salon:   BREAKING!  Loud noise heard in parking lot at Topeka Wal-Mart!

Senator John Edwards, a fan of Big Government, and patronizing too. Or would that be redundant?

Andrew Stuttaford posting at The Corner, links to a fawning Washington Post article on Edwards:

Ask Not What You Can Do...but do what your country tells you to do. Quoted in the Washington Post, John Edwards reminds us (as if we needed reminding) that he's a big government man:

“One of the things we ought to be thinking about is some level of mandatory service to our country, so that everybody in America _ not just the poor kids who get sent to war _ are serving this country...”

What an a$$. Another uniformed and ignorant elitist who thinks only the “poor” volunteer to join the military, and that we’re all kids.

Just to set the record straight, Senator. I was 45 years old when my National Guard unit was activated for deployment to Iraq. I celebrated my 46^th birthday in Tikrit as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) III. The average age for soldiers in my unit was about 38 years old, and three of our soldiers were two time Combat Vets with a tour of duty in Vietnam.

At a time when National Guard and Reservists, most with prior Active Duty, are called upon to deploy to combat zones as part of our efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, I think Edwards proves himself a fool by viewing us as “kids.” But then, he’s done that already, in abundance.

Two terrific must-read commentaries, both courtesy of Glenn Reynolds (linked here and here):

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, National Review Online:

[Reacting to a Drama Review in the Economist, about the play “Fallujah” now in London, in which Fallujah was described as “a shameful chapter in a disastrous war.”]

“Shameful” and “disastrous”? This cheap sermonizing of Western elites reflects two unspoken truths: privately, no well-heeled British subject would prefer the world of beheading, gender apartheid, and Sharia law that flourished in lawless Fallujah to the legal system and audit that governs the American military. And yet most understand that their own professional advancement, psychological well-being, and political acceptance come from praising the former and damning the latter. Thus the war to establish democracy to replace Saddam Hussein's genocidal rule must be reduced to "swaggering Americans" threatening female "Iraqi aid workers."

Former Senator Bob Kerrey, Opinion Journal Online:

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."

This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

Bob Krumm responds to Kerrey’s Op-Ed:

“If Democrats had nominated the other Senator Kerrey in 2004, they might already control the White House.”

Hmmm. Senator Kerry, a gift to the GOP greater than many realize.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit links to an exceptional piece of reporting by Michael Yon. Yon, as any reader of MILBLOGS knows well, is among the very few independent journalists self-embedding themselves within active combat zones. Arguably, the quality on Yon’s reporting surpasses anything else you can read. But often, his prose achieves the lyricism and beauty of free form verse.

That such writing also conveys a serious and critical message as well makes it all the more valuable. And I think, timeless; I’d nominate Yon’s work as essential content for any first draft of history of our efforts in Iraq.

In his latest report, Yon tells a vivid story of how British forces recently transferred authority for Maysan Province to the Iraqi government, the 4^th of 18 provinces to be turned over.

With truly great reporting, a journalist tells the story by careful presentation of images and facts without the (unnecessary) intrusion of the author. The reporter serves as window, without edit, without embellishment, and without any verbal or emotional amplification. The story tells itself.

Yon does so here, at least through the majority of his piece. After a short background piece on recent violence and trouble in Maysan, Yon quickly reduces his report to a string of photos and captions, tied together with a very spare narrative.

As Yon tells his story, he explains that he’s reading General David Petraeus’ Ph.D. dissertation, “THE AMERICAN MILITARY AND THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM:
A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era.” GEN Petraeus evidently wrote this dissertation for his PhD from Princeton.

Yon quotes Petraeus:

Perceptions of reality, more so than objective reality, are crucial to the decisions of statesmen. What policy-makers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters—more than what actually occurred. . . .

Our enemies know this far better than we do. Not least, because so few practitioners of what can accurately be called journalism actually take the time to consider their effect on public perception, media manipulation, and propaganda – unless it suits their private, personal interests to do so.

Reading Yon, we can’t help but ask the question. Why hasn’t the story of Maysan, and the bigger story of the Iraqi struggle to preserve their democracy, been told in mainstream media (MSM)?

At the conclusion of the transfer of Maysan to the Iraqis, Yon reports:

And that was it: no big drama. The journalists all disappeared. The important political people went back to Baghdad or wherever, and few people seemed to notice that another Iraqi province was turned over. A sampling of the resulting coverage of the ceremony might explain why the handover of authority to Iraqis in a fourth province did not resound as loudly as one would think, given the phalanx of reporters and camera crews.

The transfer of authority did not even make the cut for news for most US publications and networks. Of those which included the story in their news reports, most mentioned it only as part of an overall report about the day’s activities in Iraq. Many of those included it in reports which were headlined or sandwiched with bad news about the violence in other parts of Iraq.

The Washington Post’s “Bombers Defy Security Push, Killing at least 158 in Baghdad” briefly mentions the transfer in a sentence in the seventeenth paragraph. Likewise, The New York Times’ “Bombings Kill at Least 171 Iraqis in Baghdad” mentions the transfer of the province somewhere in the sixth paragraph.
This general theme carried over in the UK media coverage as well. The Guardian offered “‘We’ll be in control by end of 2007’ say Maliki. [sic] In Baghdad, carnage continues.” The Independent headline blared “Hundreds killed on Baghdad’s day of bombs and blood.” Not to be outdone in the dramatic headline competition, The Mirror gave the world “BLOODIEST DAY: 191 dead and hundreds maimed as 5 bombs rock Baghdad.”
The BBC article titled “Iraq troops to take over security” reported on statements made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in the speech prepared for the Maysan ceremony, (delivered by Iraq’s National Security Minister) about the schedule for turning over additional provinces to the control of Iraqi security forces. But before describing the ceremony and without ever providing any details about the province or the Iraqi security forces who now control it, the article inventoried recent attacks and included a mention of the withdrawal of Sadr loyalists from the Iraqi parliament.

On the day after the ceremony, the BBC mentioned it in the sixth paragraph of an article titled “Two UK soldiers killed in Iraq.” The next day it was mentioned again in a BBC article titled “UK soldiers killed in Iraq named,” although this time it was relegated to a mention in the nineteenth paragraph. No details about the ceremony were given in either article, both of which also referenced recent US and UK military casualties, civilian casualties and sectarian violence.

Along with Alex Zavis’ “British Hand Over Province to Iraqi Control” in The Los Angeles Times, two other reporters wrote stories headlined with the transfer ceremony. The Telegraph’s Thomas Harding filed his “200 killed as province returns to Iraqi control” from Camp Sparrowhawk, although he didn’t get around to anything about the transfer ceremony until the 20th paragraph. James Hider’s piece in The Times, “British put the ‘Wild West’ back under control of Iraqis,” was the only other news story about the transfer that was actually about the transfer.

Yon offers no further comment on his fellow practitioners. He headed out on his next mission, one that would bring Yon and his British hosts into a blistering and deadly attack.

To read more about that, we’ll have to check back with Yon’s next report.

But do consider how much misinformation and distortion is caused by media that filters actual news events so selectively. Context must never be provided, unless its political context that underscores the “deeply unpopular war.” Good news can only be included if juxtaposed and overwhelmed by the blasts and bombs of the day. Victory can never be spoken, out of deference to a faux neutrality, or a inapt illogic that insists that success can only be a subjective determination, at all times avoided.

Yon, and his work clearly underscores why so many dismiss the traditional MSM as hopelessly biased, ineffective, and unworthy of representing any kind of social estate. Unless someone can suggest one all of their own, without consequence to the rest of humanity.

Come to think of it, that’s exactly what malpractitioners have created for themselves. Thank goodness we no longer need them, with reporters like Yon.

Just incredible.

Bill Whittle wrote the most brilliant analysis I have ever read.

No, I’m not exaggerating. I consider myself very logical, and like to think I can write well.

Every time I read one of Bill’s essays, he raises the bar ever higher. If I didn’t think there was room for all of us to share our thoughts online, I’d give up. He came across some Game Theory, a logical construct called the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and used that construct to explain, well, a lot of things.

Go read it for yourself. Carefully. Thoroughly, don’t skim.

I can’t vouch for where he goes in Part Two, it’s a little too much Virtual Community for me. I live in multiple worlds already (home, work, church, military, blog), and know whence comes both inspiration and salvation. But that doesn’t detract in any way from the power of Bill’s analysis in Part One.

John Ward Anderson, writing in The Washington Post this past Friday, trotted out some standard “Iraq is a violent mess” boilerplate, and for good measure threw in a gratuitous reference to a liberal British think tank assessment: that Iraq teeters on the brink as a “failed state.”

BAGHDAD, May 17 -- More than 60 people were killed and dozens wounded in mortar strikes, drive-by shootings, roadside explosions, suicide bombings and other violent attacks in Iraq on Thursday, as a new study warned that the country was close to becoming a "failed state."

Those of us who watch mainstream media (MSM) reporting on Iraq are so familiar with the template, and the boilerplate it contains, I believe most of us could dash off these reports in a matter of minutes. Just add the day’s horrors, find any supporting sound bites from oppositional sources, and file. But this report made me curious, as Anderson used an excerpt from this “new study” as the virtual cornerstone of his report.

Anderson didn’t do a very good job of identifying or clarifying the organization behind the report, nor did he make it particularly easy to find the organization or the report itself. As grist to the mill, the millstone cares not who tended the grain, I suppose.

After the lead paragraph, Anderson added a highly subjective characterization from the report:

A report released Thursday by Chatham House, a foreign policy research center in Britain, challenged the notion that violence in Iraq has subsided since the buildup of U.S. troops, saying, for instance, that car bombings had not diminished and arguing that radical groups were simply lying low.

"It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation," the report said.

I assume since the Editors of the Post chose to run this in Section A that they consider this a “news” report. Surely Anderson has fulfilled some criteria for news, adding lots of detail of killings and attacks ‘round about Iraq. But note that he gratuitously adds think tank commentary as if the commentary itself was newsworthy, and offsets these inclusions with official military responses. Including official reaction to news reports is standard fare in news reporting. But what Anderson does here is set up their think tank commentary as roughly equivalent to the official reaction.

This equates, in my opinion official response to the level of the subjective commentary, rather than as a primary source for news. I find this insidious, and revealing of a journalistic laziness. Amazing that such laziness is permitted in news reporting only when it deals with Iraq or other areas of useful partisan propaganda. I seriously doubt that the Post covers very many of its news beats with this level of subjective additives. They do here, without any contrast of opinion or analysis contrary to their obviously preferred outlook, precisely to suggest that the factual statements of military representatives are nothing more than opinion. Again, this treatment appears in what purports to be a news story, although in fairness (better) foreign correspondents are expected to provide analysis and commentary sufficient to allow readers to properly interpret the significance of foreign news. To the extent that a correspondent “outsources” this obligation to third parties (not the reporter and not the primary news source), I think it’s fair to ask for some kind of balance. At the least, I think Anderson owed it to his readers a little more insight into the study and the institute that produced it.

The study was produced by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House. Chatham House released the report on 17 May 07 entitled Accepting Realities in Iraq.

Here’s a summary of its conclusions:

* Iraq has fractured into regional power bases. Political, security and economic power has devolved to local sectarian, ethnic or tribal political groupings. The Iraqi government is only one of several 'state-like' actors. The regionalization of Iraqi political life needs to be recognized as a defining feature of Iraq's political structure.

* There is not 'a' civil war in Iraq, but many civil wars and insurgencies involving a number of communities and organizations struggling for power. The surge is not curbing the high level of violence, and improvements in security cannot happen in a matter of months.

*          The conflicts have become internalized between Iraqis as the polarization of sectarian and ethnic identities reaches ever deeper into Iraqi society and causes the breakdown of social cohesion.

*          Critical destabilizing issues will come to the fore in 2007-8. Federalism, the control of oil and control of disputed territories need to be resolved.

*          Each of Iraq's three major neighboring states, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, has different reasons for seeing the instability there continue, and each uses different methods to influence developments. 

*          These current harsh realities need to be accepted if new strategies are to have any chance of preventing the failure and collapse of Iraq. A political solution will require engagement with organizations possessing popular legitimacy and needs to be an Iraqi accommodation, rather than a regional or US-imposed approach.

Chatham House is an old school British Think Tank, whose political stripe can be deduced or identified with a cursory review of board members. Those whose political leanings can be identified are all Liberal (although in traditional UK political that can sometimes mean more Conservative that US audiences might think).

They do have a few overtly political snippets in the report that give away their orientation, like quoting Anthony Cordesman: “It is possible that a failed President and a failed administration will preside over a failed war for the second time since Vietnam.” They do so in the context of making a statement that (alternative) US choices would require the Bush Administration to “accept” this assessment. I’m quite sure the current US Administration can take any action, even one recommended by this study’s author, without accepting that Bush is a “failure” and Iraq is a “failed war.”

Aside from that, this is a political white paper for Liberal/Labor/Democrat war opponents to put a Foreign Policy wonkish veneer on retreat and surrender. Interestingly, sections that talk about the "many civil wars" going on in Iraq completely fail to mention Iranian influence or agitation or proxy war fighting, or even Al Qaeda attempts to incite sectarian civil strife. These omissions are clearly by design. Likewise, comments about Regional players describes Iran in at least neutral if not positive tones, and neglects Syria altogether. As with other leftist oriented Foreign Policy analysis, it tacks towards Iran (they deserve to have primary influence in region).

The paper also makes the breathtaking assertion that 20th century history “is increasingly irrelevant when discussing Iraq’s future, owing to the profoundly transformative effects of violence since 2003.” You would think a British think tank would be more reflective on the nagging residue of British colonial nation state building, as they criticize US nation state building. The paper ignores the fascist aspects of our enemies (in the 20th century or today), or those same aspects reflected in Saddam Hussein and his criminal elites. That’s by design as well, to make the following argument.

Without substantive evidence, the paper builds a case that our intervention in Iraq has created a worse situation that what was before, and clearly attempts to craft a foreign policy stance that makes the Iraq war a wrong, unjustified, and counter-productive. There is no acknowledgment here that we are at all in a state of war with radical Islam, or very real state and non-state actors.

Chatham crafted an excellent narrative, but their product here remains propaganda. Call it positioning for a post November 2008 world. (And what its proponents hope is a post-Republican world as well.)

By way of contrast, I highly recommend this truly excellent and thoughtful offering by Tigerhawk, detailing some modest truth propositions. He calls them minimalist assertions, and perhaps they are, but of value nonetheless.

Here’s his introduction (note his victory condition post as well):

Anyone who is not trying to gain partisan advantage should think seriously about the best Iraq policy for the United States in the coming months and years. The purpose of this post is to propose a framework for considering both the Bush administration's policy and alternative policies offered by both the right and left. Toward that end, I offer a series of minimalist assertions, delightfully free of evidence and supporting linkage. Each assertion or question is numbered; please comment below with reference to the corresponding number. (Background note: Newer readers may want to look at the most recent edition of my "victory conditions" post, published about a year ago at The Belmont Club. It includes my basic thinking about the intersection of al Qaeda and rogue states.)

Tigerhawk makes 33 assertions in two broad categories: our geopolitical interests in Iraq, and the military, political and geopolitical circumstances of Iraq, including the interests of others. I think he’s right on target, but do read the whole thing.

Bill Roggio passes along a link to the dopey reaction of the new owners of “Wonkette” to the arrests of the Dix 6 Jihadi plotters.

Why is it that liberals and other democrats think any Jihadi we catch BEFORE they implement their plans are pretenders, incompetents, terror wannabees, or innocents swept up in rhetorical excesses? In contrast to what many of these same have said about 9/11 terrorists, describing them as “daring,” “courageous,” “determined,” and “disciplined.”

There must be some mechanism when a boob with a bomb manages to detonate, despite his own inept-ness, that magically transforms him from pathetic loser into master terrorist. So one would conclude from simpletons (or partisan dissemblers) like the rubes at Wonkette.
Never in my career, on any CONUS post and most OCONUS outside of Iraq, have I ever seen soldiers issued ammunition. Heck, they don’t even have access to their assigned weapons. Those are locked up in arms rooms. At upwards of $3,000 a rifle, neither regular Army, Reserves nor Guard let their soldiers carry such equipment around, unless going to the range, checking them out for regular weapons cleaning, assigned to a specific force protection mission, or going into a war zone.

Call it one more aspect of the Modern Army. Other than Physical Training, we hardly move anywhere on two feet anymore, let alone march, and we keep our weapons safely secured until needed. That makes responding to a hostage, mass murder, or terror attack situation more difficult to respond to with any immediacy. Like the Democrat-preferred method for counter-terrorism operations, it’s a matter for appropriate law enforcement officials, after the fact (or at least, after the shooting starts).

Most posts don’t have significant amounts of local force protection via the Provost Marshall, Military Police (MP) and the like, but for regular law enforcement type roles. Just as with the University campus attack in VA, many of our installations (like Dix) could be hit with lots of casualties before any effective (armed) response would be forthcoming. The trick is getting on base, unless you decide to hit the rush hour line up coming on or off post at the gate. Threat Assessments have been done with more regularity since 9/11, and some open posts went closed, but the plot at Dix should have serious implications for Installation Force Protection.

I remember active duty in Germany, mid ‘80s. Bader-Meinhoff, Red Army Faction were active in Europe. We had a Turkish (!) guard at a top secret facility shoot himself and fall on the pistol. It occurred at night, at a perimeter gate manned by one foreign national and one US MP.

The frequently practiced but never utilized quick reaction force deployed (Intel types in the facility). We were issued weapons by the MP station – we had none assigned – and out we went into the night. The LT in charge told us to deploy towards the perimeter, if we got into any action, he would send ammo out to us. (I guess he thought he would toss it or run it out.) He kept the ammo on his person inside the facility. This was to make sure we didn’t hurt ourselves or anyone else. We were out about 30 minutes or so before the MPs determined it wasn’t an attack on our facility or a sniper, etc.

Afterward, there was hell to pay, complaints to US Army Europe, big furor, soldiers were irate about what they perceived as hyper-caution that could get us hurt. In the end the multiple star General decided that local commanders reacted “appropriately.”

Unfortunately, I think that’s still the premise behind CONUS garrison force protection. Perhaps the incident at Dix will shake the complacency behind those attitudes.

Potential terrorists and mass murderers, those inspired by radical Islam theology and its adherents (Al Qaeda, Iranian mullahs, and others), the fully converted, or even those explicitly controlled, have a great potential to score a major public relations (PR) coupe by attacking any of our more vulnerable targets.

One can compile a very long list of soft targets available: Planes and trains, tour boats and cruise ships, passenger terminals for all of the above, universities, schools, and hospitals and military installations, too. While these last might be the harder and more secure from this list of targets, the “profit” for terrorists in terms of PR might make them much more attractive, to demonstrate the “weakness” of our military.

This past weekend, MILBLOGGERS and friends gathered for the 2nd Annual 2007 MilBlog Conference.

Andi of Andi’s World pulled the event together, with sponsors including Military.com, USAA, Soldiers’ Angels, Minimus.biz , and Excalibur Research and Development. MILBLOGS provided a live video feed of the Conference, and Mudville Gazette’s own Mrs. Greyhawk moderated on-line chat for virtual conference attendees.

I tried my hand at live-blogging the Conference, unofficially. That’s not the best way to enjoy an event in which you have any personal interest. I hope to get a chance this week to clean-up my posts, and maybe pare them down to an Intro post and maybe one for each of the 4 panels. (I think I have over 20 of them sitting out there now, scroll down for the play-by-play.)

For a round-up of other post-conference feedback, see Andi’s post up on the Conference website.

I think the high point for me was having the President of the United States send us a video greeting, recognizing MILBLOGS for how much they contribute to the effort, in encouraging our military, informing the public, and combating propaganda and other oppositional mainstream media (MSM).

Okay, he didn’t say that last part, but I’m pretty sure he was thinking it.

Other highlights included the live feed from Rear Admiral Fox in Iraq, Matt Burden (Blackfive) passing along the letters written by Senators on behalf of MILBLOGS over the OPSEC controversy, and all the well-deserved visibility given to Soldiers Angels.

One of the Senatorial communications Blackfive came across was a letter from – choke on liquid hazard warning – Sen. Ted Kennedy. (More on the OPSEC story in a later post.)

It was great to see my friends from last year’s conference, really great to see all the media attention, and a pleasure to meet in person Greyhawk, Mrs. Greyhawk, Hook, Armed Liberal Marc Danziger from Winds of Change, Eagle1 of Eaglespeak, and so many of the good people from SA.

Summary of Live Blogging:
Conference Keynote Addresses
From the Front
All in the Family
Rapid Fire Roundtable
Support -- More than Just a Bumper Sticker
Wrap-up

I linked at the end of my last post to this commentary, here’s more.

OPSEC, the OOBs and the Myopic Mis-Focus of Security Personnel

By DJ Elliott, IS1(SW), USN(Ret)

Just below a photo of soldiers boarding a helicopter, DJ Elliott opens his report with the question, “what’s wrong with this caption?”

U.S. Army Soldiers move to the UH-60 Black Hawk after searching the area for items of interest during an aerial response force mission, Iraq, March 31. Soldiers are assigned to the 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway. [Link]

Msgt Dunaway may not be the author of the captions on his photos, but whoever is, needs to learn the art of “sanitizing” intelligence information. Public disclosure of this sort information is precisely what the increased vigilance of new OPSEC Update was designed to prevent.

Now, if that were a MILBLOGGER revealing that much information, we as fellow MILBLOGGERS would want to quickly come alongside and urge our colleague to avoid these kinds of violations.

There’s just one problem. The people who are releasing this kind of information, and lots more besides, are higher level Multinational Force headquarters and Public Affairs Offices (PAO), not MILBLOGGERS.

DJ Elliott along with a coworker has been compiling Orders of Battle (OOB) for posting on Bill Roggio's site. According to DJ, here’s what motivated the exercise:

My principle motivations for my involvement in publishing these OOBs are somewhat contradictory. First, I wanted to get the principle operational security [OPSEC] violators to tighten their OPSEC. Second, I want to further an understanding of the development of the Iraqi Security Forces and the Baghdad Security Plan. As a retired intelligence analyst, I could not believe that the Public Affairs Officers [PAOs] and Commanders were releasing this much operational data in a time of war.

For those who criticize their effort as a blatant violation of OPSEC, DJ makes the following argument:

The Order of Battles are not OPSEC violations, they are reports of OPSEC violations. All of the data contained within the OOBs is available with a simple word search on the Internet and any intelligence operation worthy of its name already has the data in far greater detail than what we publish in these OOBs. Most of the information used to compile the OOB comes from the PAOs and senior officer briefs. By far, these are the source of the greatest OPSEC violations in this war.

DJ reports a significant reduction in OPSEC violations since publishing the OOBs. Based on his research, and the sources for the information he compiles, DJ reports that military leadership itself can be identified as the worst of OPSEC violators, starting at the very top:

The worst OPSEC violator in the senior staffs is the Pentagon. I get more advance notice from a Pentagon Press Brief of US movements from Kuwait into Iraq than I get from all other sources combined. The Pentagon acts as if it is not at war, and the leaks emanating from Arlington are enormous.

After the Department of Defense (DoD) itself, DJ indicts all the major Multinational Division (MND) and Multinational force (MNF) commands as sources for intelligence exploitation, in clear violation of the letter and spirit of OPSEC. Beyond the violations of high level commands, DJ notes that various team assigned to training Iraqi Army units too frequently over-identify the forces they work with and their readiness status.

And who does DJ compliment as the top three maintainers of good OPSEC?

3. Military Bloggers: Despite the worries by the hierarchy, I have seen only five valid OPSEC violations in two years from Military Bloggers concerning ISF/Coalition forces (only 1 in the last year). MilBloggers tend to lose unit IDs and details in their writings in a way that PAOs should study and learn from.
2. Special Operations Forces: We have SOF? All joking aside their security is good and the Iraqi Security Forces is following their lead, except they do acknowledge that I SOF conducts operations now.
1. Multinational Division-North East/Zaytun Division (Republic of Korea Army): The best in-theater OPSEC. Period. The only thing I see from their AOR is what new project or jobs training is ongoing. Unit identification of coalition/Iraqi Security Forces below Division does not get released by the Koreans. I get my data on Iraqi Security Forces in that area from US PAO releases and briefs.

DJ goes on to explain that the major sources for public disclosure of intelligence and sensitive information (and therefore, those responsible for OPSEC violations) are photo captions, PAO press releases, Commander’s and Pentagon Briefs, and unclassified reports to Congress.

This makes intuitive sense for those of us in Military Intelligence. At each level of Command, on up to our civilian leadership, there is often one set of rules for the handlers of intelligence, for those who analyze and pull pieces together, and another altogether for consumers. Clearly, this gets more extreme the higher one goes, and some relates to executive authority to declassify information, or at lower levels, command prerogatives.

Yet, this is a new avenue of discussion, given the controversy involving OPSEC and MILBLOGS. Even more ironic (some might say perverse) is the level of animosity and distrust between some PAOs and MILBLOGS within their Area of Operations (AO). Note I say some; clearly the PAOs who attended the 2007 MILBLOG Conference (and the one in 2006) seem like big fans of MILBLOGS.

But for the PAOs who fight MILBLOGGERS within their AOs, one has to wonder. Do they really view them as potential OPSEC violators, or as competition? We politically minded types speak often about message control. Stay on message. Maintain message control.

Is that the motivation behind those who would shut MILBLOGS down, or at least see their prevalence controlled by local commanders?

I only pose these last as questions, I can’t say I know the answers.

The recent controversy over the Army’s latest update the Army Regulation (AR) 530-1, Operations Security (OPSEC), certainly added discussion fuel and maybe some added media attention to our 2007 MILBLOG Conference.

The controversy took shape in public this week with Noah Shachtman’s article on the OPSEC update in Wired. Since that piece came out, MILBLOGS and other conservative bloggers have reacted strenuously to the new Regulations. But even within MILBLOGS, reaction to the OPSEC update is far from uniform.

Some, like Blackfive and I, are very concerned that local commanders and intermediate commands will shortcut potential OPSEC problems by reading the Regulation literally, and err on the side of caution. This would certainly mean bloggers having their work reviewed and possibly censored, or even with blogs shutting down. Commanders might also consider other prevention measures for electronic email or instant messaging (IM). The AR is written very expansively, and in the interest of giving military personnel a comprehensive summary of OPSEC threats, directs unit Commanders to conduct very thorough OPSEC reviews in a wide range of communications that might otherwise have escaped such scrutiny.

Matt Burden, the MILBLOGGER behind Blackfive, has long been warning that the attitudes towards MILBLOGS from some senior military leadership might soon mean the end of blogging by active duty military. Promotional materials for Burden’s anthology of MILBLOGS, The Blog of War quote a Vanity Fair review, “Grab it before the Pentagon orders it burned...,” in explicit reference to the possibility that MILBLOGS might be shut down by the military.

Earlier updates to AR 530-1, as well as policy announcements from military officials, suggested increased military attention to and concern with military use of new media. In the past two years, some local commanders and higher echelon leaders put pressure on MILBLOGGERS over content. Several MILBLOGGERS voluntarily closed down their blogs pre-emptively.

Other MILBLOGGERS dismiss these concerns as overblown. They suggest Commanders have always had great latitude and control over soldier communications, public posting and/or dissemination of military information, and even pass or entertainment privileges for the soldiers under their command. They also point to interviews given by the AR’s author, MAJ Ceralde, who goes to great lengths to explain that the specifics in the AR are guidelines, and that in no way is the AR intended to shut down or censor MILBLOGS. Military officials have also released a two page fact sheet that reiterates many of the same points made by MAJ Ceralde, which in some cases directly refutes the language contained in the AR.

Still others, among them former military, think it long past time for the military to impose tighter OPSEC restrictions or at least oversight of MILBLOGS who have allowed sensitive information to be made publicly available and exploitable by potential enemies and adversaries.

Among those who make this argument is Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost.

Here’s how Joe sets up his rebuttal to the arguments Blackfive and I have made against the OPSEC update:

I propose that these bloggers consider how they would react upon hearing the following two statements:

1) The editors of the Washington Post released details about operational security in their newspaper that may have led to the deaths of 14 American soldiers.

2) A group of milbloggers released details about operational security on their blogs that may have led to the deaths of 14 American soldiers.

Imagine the reaction if the editors of the Post were to justify such an irresponsible move based on their right to "freedom of expression" or the American public's need to "know what's going on in Iraq." We would rightly consider such rationalization indefensible. So why are the same arguments being used to excuse milbloggers who are able to have a far more deleterious impact?

Any observer can find mountains of examples of Mainstream media (MSM) revelations that surely have contributed to combat losses and operational degradation of strategic and tactical military capabilities. Entire websites and blogs have been founded on such evidence. The same cannot be said of MILBLOGS, even those who place their cravings for public attention above any OPSEC concerns they hold, if they hold them at all.

Joe quotes from Ed Morrissey, who makes the similar but perhaps broader claim, “no one has any evidence that milbloggers have violated OPSEC orders in their communications.”

Joe feels otherwise, and links to an Army slide presentation that Joe claims provides evidence of serious OPSEC violations:

In fact, the Army has an unclassified PowerPoint presentation that provides an example of what they are trying to prevent [emphasis and commentary added]:

"It is Monday again and we are still at K-2 airfield in Bayji [location]. As a squadron [size and type of unit], we are 'demonstrating a military presence.' [type of action] That means the troops set up checkpoints and stop hundreds of cars, searching them and the people. [explanation of tactical reasoning] They keep taking these 'detainees' or EPWs and I have partial responsibility for the 'jail', which is a building here on the airfield. [provides notice of prisoner location on base] But we are not set up for this. MPs are supposed to come and get them almost immediately but they take a while. [Elucidates point of tactical weakness] Plus the Civil Affairs/Counter Intelligence teams that are supposed to talk to them don't know crap and the whole thing borders on a war crime. I am just trying to find blankets and light and medical care for the prisoners. [provides propaganda from an American solider "admitting to war crimes."]

As any small-unit leader will tell you, this is the type of information that gets men killed.

The PowerPoint presentation also shows photos taken by a soldier and posted on his blog that were later used on a Jihadist site to expose weaknesses and areas for exploitation on American tanks and armored vehicles. Such information may seem trivial to civilians, but it is worth more than gold to a terrorist.

The examples contained in the presentation and highlighted by Joe are obvious OPSEC violations. Commanders would have every right and reason to shut a blog down that posted such information, and use these as good examples of what NOT to do in any electronic communications.

More MILBLOGGERS than ever blog, and there are legitimate concerns that the many, less experienced MILBLOGGERS might not write with the same care and concern over OPSEC as their more experienced forebears.

But the vast majority of MILBLOGGERS, and all of the more experienced ones, stay far away from this kind of OPSEC sensitive information. None of these same would come close to posting information that could be so easily used for enemy propaganda, or provide such details battle damage assessment (BDA) results.

So the military has examples of violations, and some MILBLOGGERS go too far and need to be reigned in. I’m still not sure the latest OPSEC update doesn’t go way beyond what would be needed to end violations of the type highlighted by Joe.

As I stated earlier, the OPSEC update is written very expansively, and dictates very thorough OPSEC reviews in a wide range of communications. All to prevent these more obvious examples of excess. Many commanders are likely to opt to forbid blogging or insist on review prior to publishing each post, on the basis that any potentially sensitive information will be too much, as every little clue can be joined with thousands of other little clues in building the puzzle of capabilities and vulnerabilities for our enemies.

The flaw in this argument is that the US employs thousands and thousands of analysts, with huge investments in computers, automation, and artificial intelligence, and we can’t even begin to organize the volume of data into coherent patterns, at least not sufficient to ensure we can draw accurate conclusions about what we see. At the rate that bloggers and other on-line resources for information increase and expand, the terrorists and their state sponsors would need to invest at least some significant fraction of such human and technical resources to come anywhere near what OPSEC purists suggest they can accomplish. It’s just too big a problem, outside of these specific, isolated instances of violations. Better that we educate, inform, and correct or discipline those who violate OPSEC. MILBLOGGERS can help police themselves, likely far more effectively than military authorities ever could.

This reminds me of criticism of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the aftermath of 9/11. In the days following 9/11, NSA combed back through millions of intercepts, worked through translation backlogs, and managed to find a handful of traffic excerpts that seemed to refer to the terror plot against World Trade, the Pentagon, and the intended target of flight 93. Similar threads of analysis teased out the many mentions and forewarnings of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden threats against US and Western interests.

A lot of craven partisanship, and ignorance, fostered a blizzard of criticisms along the lines of, “why didn’t anybody act?!”

What the US Intelligence and Foreign Relation Communities had was full knowledge of the desire, fomented by bin Laden and Al Qaeda, of radical Islamic terrorists to strike at the US, our allies, and Western interests in general. But they did not have information about specific targets, specific timeframes, specific weapons, nor specific tactics. One can argue for years – and likely, we will – about how much more could have been done to get better information, and more specifics, but the fact remains there was little we could or should have done with what we had. The implication that we could somehow have shut down air traffic, or imposed draconian preventive measures, prior to 9/11, is naïve. The US air traveling public and most of Congress would have reacted violently, and no such policy in the absence of a “9/11 type attack” could have been maintained.

Only in hindsight can one see any way of preventing 9/11 prior to such an event even emerging in consciousness. People forget how much of a stunning break with everything we had ever known, was the sight of two planes hitting the WTC towers in quick succession.

Joe argues strongly in favor of tighter OPSEC, despite its potential impact on MILBLOGS. Critics of the OPSEC update, myself included, should seriously consider them:

Let me be clear. I love milbloggers. I was one myself before I left the Marines (though I was not a "warblogger" in a combat zone). But the job of our American soldiers is not to win the "information war" or to provide "unbiased, indifferent view of the war" or even to "tell the truth about The Long War." The job of American soldiers is to win the war. That can't be done when the enemy is being fed critical information through the blogosphere.

Instead of criticizing the addition of common sense restrictions, my fellow conservative bloggers should be asking why this change wasn't implemented years ago. How many times do we have to read about the enemy being an "adaptive, cunning, and learning adversary ... unlike most previous experiences" before we figure out where the terrorists are getting their information from? The question that should be asked is how many soldiers lives had to be lost do to poor OPSEC before the generals realized they needed to tell milbloggers to "button your lip!"

Now I admire Joe and his fine work at EO, he’s often been inspiration, along with John Shroeder and Lance, for what I’ve wanted to do with Gladmanly. His reaction gave me real pause in thinking about OPSEC and MILBLOGS; exacerbated, of course, by the fact that Joe quoted some earlier posts of mine at length to back up his argument.

Let me tell you, trying to reason through a determined debate opponent is made lots more difficult when he can use your own words against you. Here’s how Joe accomplished that:

In August 2005, a number of the most prominent milbloggers wrote about and expressed their concern over violations of OPSEC in the blogosphere. Dadmanly wrote:

Frankly, much of the most popular ("live action") combat reporting on the web makes me nervous. Many of these young men (and women) are not at all careful or discrete about their identities, unit compositions, and even very minute operational details. All of us understand how popular such accounts are, people back home and even fellow soldiers are really hungry for knowledgeable front line reporting. But this same accuracy and realism may be providing our enemies -- who gain some advantage they wouldn't otherwise have if we ignore their collection or reconnaissance capabilities -- with useful information for planning more effective attacks (and by the way, allowing them at least some useful battle damage assessment (BDA) information).

John from Argghhh! Acknowledged that it could be a problem and admitted to having inadvertently made a clear OPSEC violation on his blog. Blackfive even predicted that "in the future, Military Blogging would be severely restricted."

Two years later the prediction is coming true. That is hardly "out-of-the-blue."

Finally, as Dadmanly wrote almost two years ago:

I would hate to think that good OPSEC might interfere with what is some of the best reporting available on our great efforts in Iraq. But I likewise think that MILBLOGGERS need to carefully (and prayerfully) consider if, in the interest of feeding a hungry audience, we likewise satisfy an avaricious enemy. This is an enemy who knows how and where to get information vital to making his efforts against us more deadly and effective, and knows how and where and to whom to get this information into the hands of those who would harm us.

If we ignore this responsibility, aren’t we doing the same as the big media we so frequently criticize? In the interest of “hits” and traffic (equivalent after all to ratings or circulation), we go for the gritty detail, and disregard real and significant concerns about whether this in some way increases the danger to our soldiers?

I think there’s a middle ground between me and Joe (and even my own OPSEC concerns I’ve expressed over time).

More on that in a follow-up post. Plenty to ponder on for now.

While I linger on the topic of OPSEC, National Public Radio (NPR) did an interview with Jason Hartley, author and early milblogger at Justanothersoldier.com, as well as Matt from Blackfive, and OPSEC AR author MAJ Ceralde. NPR also published a story on the OPSEC update, including quotes from John Noonan, Matt Burden, and Noah Shachtman. (Via Blackfive and Instapundit.)

LAST MINUTE UPDATE (More follow-up required)

Bill Roggio passes on a link to an OPSEC piece, written by “DJ Elliott, the tireless worker behind the Order of Battles we publish” over at Bill’s website. Per Bill:
DJ outlines who the worst OPSEC violators are in Iraq. MilBlogs are the least of the Army's problems. DJ also gives advice on how to fix the problem. He is a former Navy intel specialist, and they don't get much sharper than him.

Sounds like a must read, I’ll have to check it out.

Noah Shachtman, blogger and panelist for the upcoming MILBLOGGER Conference, does an excellent job reporting on some really bad news for MILBLOGGERS, over at Wired.

The bad news? The Army has seen fit to rewrite Army Regulation (AR) 530-1 Operations Security (OPSEC), upgrade it’s classification to For Official Use Only (FOUO), tie OPSEC to information excluded from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) access, and “put into law” draconian restrictions on all forms of electronic communications, including web logs (blogs), email, instant messaging (IM), and potentially even personal letters and other non-electronic communications.

Shachtman’s comprehensive report, along with a companion interview with the Regulations author Major Ray Ceralde, provides a chilling example of hyper-vigilance and military leader short sightedness in what could very well be the end of MILBLOGS as we have known them.

Here’s a little background on the controversy, courtesy of Shachtman:

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

Here’s what the regulation says, again, as reported by Shachtman, and the implications for Commanders and the MILBLOGGERS who try to operate under their command:

Army Regulation 530--1: Operations Security (OPSEC) [Link removed as reposted by Dadmanly] restricts more than just blogs, however. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything -- from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home.

Failure to do so, the document adds, could result in a court-martial, or "administrative, disciplinary, contractual, or criminal action."

Despite the absolutist language, the guidelines' author, Major Ray Ceralde, said there is some leeway in enforcement of the rules. "It is not practical to check all communication, especially private communication," he noted in an e-mail. "Some units may require that soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes with occasional spot checks after an initial review. Other units may require a review before every posting."

But with the regulations drawn so tightly, "many commanders will feel like they have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from blogging -- or even using e-mail," said Jeff Nuding, who won the bronze star for his service in Iraq. "If I'm a commander, and think that any slip-up gets me screwed, I'm making it easy: No blogs," added Nuding, writer of the "pro-victory" Dadmanly site. "I think this means the end of my blogging."

I may have just violated Army Regulation in excerpting that portion of Shachtman’s report, and that’s one example of the potential insanity that will result from this new version of the AR.

The Army saw fit to upgrade the classification of the AR, to FOUO. By the actual regulation specifics, discloser of sensitive (but unclassified) information is a violation of the AR. Even repeating this information after it is already public or appearing in open source media is proscribed as a violation. This means, if military members refer to or mention any specific contents of the OPSEC AR itself, may be considered in violation of the AR and liable for punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Non-military can also be prosecuted criminally, according to the AR, although I don’t see how that would work in practice.

MILBLOGGERS will be understandably upset, alarmed, and angry. Shachtman already received my reaction, as well as a powerful response from Blackfive:

"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."

Any long-time reader here knows I lean very heavily to the side of safer rather than sorry in matters of OPSEC (see here, here, here, and here). That drastically limits what I’m willing to report or commit to pixel from my (admittedly limited) combat experiences in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) III, and my traffic history bears testimony.

Nevertheless – OPSEC could be applied to restrict all manner of potential intelligence indicators, and the latest version of this AR goes WAY overboard, and will almost certainly lead to local commanders taking too much precaution, stifling both MILBLOGS and the personal electronic communications of their soldiers.

Shachtman’s interview with MAJ Ceralde reveals that, while Ceralde rightly perceives the importance of OPSEC, he may well greatly overstep on what he views as advisable counter-measures:

Passing on classified data -- real secrets -- is already a serious military crime. The new regulations (and their author) take an unusually expansive view of what kind of unclassified information a foe might find useful. In an article published by the official Army News Service, Maj. Ceralde "described how the Pentagon parking lot had more parked cars than usual on the evening of Jan. 16, 1991, and how pizza parlors noticed a significant increase of pizza to the Pentagon.... These observations are indicators, unclassified information available to all … that Operation Desert Storm (was about to) beg(i)n."

Steven Aftergood, head of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, called Ceralde's example "outrageous."

"It's true that from an OPSEC (operational security) perspective, almost anything -- pizza orders, office lights lit at odd hours, full or empty parking lots -- can potentially tip off an observer that something unusual is afoot," he added. "But real OPSEC is highly discriminating. It does not mean cutting off the flow of information across the board. If on one day in 1991 an unusual number of pizza orders coincided with the start of Desert Storm, it doesn't mean that information about pizza orders should now be restricted. That's not OPSEC, that's just stupidity."

In fairness to MAJ Ceralde, he defends the breadth of the AR, and suggests that local commanders more authority and discretion to implement their own OPSEC plan as they see fit. From Shachtman’s interview:

Q: If a soldier has to consult his supervisor or an OPSEC officer every time he wants e-mail home or put up a blog posting, doesn't that effectively kill the practice?  What supervisor is going to have the time to check all of that material? 

[A:] The regulation says that a Soldier or other U.S. Army personnel must consult with their immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer prior to posting information in a public forum.  However, this is where unit commander or organization leadership specifies in orders, policies, or directives how this will be done.  Some units may require that Soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes with occasional spot checks after an initial review.  Other units may require a review before every posting.  A private e-mail message to Family Members is not considered posting information in a public forum, but U.S. Army personnel are informed that unclassified e-mails can be intercepted and that they shouldn’t write anything that they wouldn’t say on an unsecure phone. While it is not practical to check all communication, especially private communication, the U.S. Army trusts that Soldiers and U.S. Army personnel will do the right things to maintain proper security when they understand their role in it.   

I’m glad to see MAJ Ceralde sees 100% censorship of all soldier communications (private or otherwise) “not practical.” But I can’t see how Commanders can do much to dial back what is clearly intended in the Reg, as even Ceralde admits: “Other units may require a review before every posting.”

That little insight is the real danger here, and will pretty much end MILBLOGS as we know them.

The AR not only directs Commanders (BN and above) and OPSEC Managers to ensure that no communications in a public forum or media (to include email) occur without OPSEC review, but directs UCMJ action against military violators and criminal prosecution against anyone else.

Worse than that, as written it also means soldiers need to have their commanders review/censor every single email or IM they want to send. To comply, commanders would have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from using email or IM via the internet, or the Commander would have to go with them to the internet cafe.

Completely impractical, unrealistic, worse by far than prohibitions that are widely ignored, such as gambling. This one can only be complied with by severely curtailing one of the few highly successful MWR initiatives in combat theater -- internet cafes.

Some commanders might legitimately interpret the AR to allow them to censor the outgoing personal mail of all soldiers under their command, or to prohibit telephone contact to anyone outside of their command.
The Military is making a terrible mistake with this AR. How many problems are really being caused by the status quo arrangement? What are the real risks, rather than the imagined ones, or the fear of whistle-blowing that may be justified? Then, consider the impact of what's proposed.

It will severely curtail positive news and voices from within the military. Critics within will STILL have direct lines to the NYT, Washington Post, ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS/NPR, they'll only end up silencing pro-military and pro-victory voices.

Current leadership thinks they need to shut down blogs and contact with media, and will no doubt attempt to enforce the provisions of this AR, yet they do nothing for known leaks of CLASSIFIED information. They neglect investigation, and avoid potential prosecutions. Many of those involved in leaking classified information are senior government officials and senior military officers. This is hypocrisy and discrimination of the highest caliber.

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

The AR contains a paragraph that I have read almost verbatim in open sources, and to suggest it is critical or sensitive would be the height of stupidity and ignorance, so at the risk of punishment, I will excerpt the following:

The asymmetric methods of warfare involve a strong emphasis on collecting information from unclassified and open sources. Because the US is a free and open society, information is readily available and easy to access. Adversaries are exploiting this vulnerability by aggressively reading open source and unclassified material about the US Army. As a result, many adversaries do not need to invest in costly and highly technical intelligence collection systems when they can obtain as much as 80% of the information they are seeking openly and legally.”

Yes, we are a free and open society, and our enemies can exploit that “vulnerability.” That vulnerability is also our greatest strength and asset, for by being free and open, we deny those who would deprive us of our essential freedoms any ground to make us subject to oppression.

There will always be OPSEC concerns, and the military rightfully must take aggressive steps to ensure that real, actual essential elements of friendly information, even “critical information,” be protected from unacceptable dissemination. By taking such a severely draconian step of attempting to obstruct the vast amount of harmless – and overwhelmingly positive – information from our soldiers to their families and the public – the foolish bureaucrats responsible for this update do far more harm then good.

They will be squelching pro-victory commentary, the very voices which have been far too often far too lonely. The US Government and Military have done an abysmal job communicating to the US public the threats, the danger, the stakes involved, and the tremendous job of the US Military. They have done a terrible job explaining why we fight.

Rather than silence the few voices that have lifted to fill the gap of their negligence, better that the Military try to get better at message control – not control of the MILBLOGS, but of themselves.

Blackfive wrote his own reaction to the new regulation, full of outrage and dismay, but also some excellent insights:

The Bottom-Line to the this bad piece of regulation:  The soldiers who will attempt to fly under the radar and post negative items about the military, mission, and commanders will continue to do so under the new regs.  The soldiers who've been playing ball the last few years, the vast, VAST, majority will be reduced.  In my mind, this reg will accomplish the exact opposite of its intent.  The good guys are restricted and the bad continue on...

Operational Security is of paramount importance.  But we are losing the Information War on all fronts.  Fanatic-like adherence to OPSEC will do us little good if we lose the few honest voices that tell the truth about The Long War.

Instead, the US Army should adopt Major Robbins recommendations, allow for unit bloggers, and restrict bloggers with the same rules as the military gives embed reporters (with UCMJ exceptions).  Maybe, then, we can start winning some battles on the information front.

Like gun control, this will only serve to impede legitimate and law abiding citizens, while giving free rein to the law-breakers.

Blackfive and Shachtman both linked to a must read paper: Major Elizabeth Robbins award winning paper about military blogs "Muddy Boots".

Blackfive’s updates to his original post are illuminating enough to repeat in their entirety:

Update:  Steve Schippert sends this link to a video by Brad Levinson of the first panel of the 2006 MilBlog Conference.  At the very end, I make a prediction that I've been praying would never happen.

"If the Army restricts bloggers, all you will have are pissed-off dissident bloggers who are willing to take a risk...every Article-15  schlep will be blogging and all of the guys in this room who are trying to get the stories out, will not.  That'll be the end."

Update 2:  Wired also has an interview posted with the creator of the new regulation.  And treating reporters as Al Qaeda moles.

Update 3:  Reader Paul asks if I'll continue to post messages and emails from my friends in the war zone.  For my answer, see below.

Update 4:  John, a US Army Reserve Officer in Iraq, writes:

If the mil thinks they can keep this reservist from blogs, KMFA

Update 5:  General Casey is not the most Public Affairs minded General ever.  Can't say much else on a PG13 blog.

Also commenting today:

Army To Milbloggers: About Face

COMING DOWN ON THE MILBLOGGERS

Army Forbids Troops From Blogging

AW, HELL  —  In the vein of obtuse military bureaucracy vs …

Glenn Reynolds debated between two potential sets of “last words,” linking to them both at Instapundit. Reynolds suspects that Tenet may want to opt for the first, contained in commentary from Roger Simon:

My conclusion: an inept organization was led by a stupefyingly inept man.

Simon prefaces his comment with a pretty clear-cut case of fabrication in Tenet’s narrative, in which he claims that Richard Perle on 9/12/01 told him, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.”

The only problem being that Perle was stuck in France between 9/11 and 9/15 of 2001, until normal air traffic was allowed to resume after 9/11. This according to some basic research, reported in the Weekly Standard.

Ouch, as they say. Reynold thinks Simon’s take more generous by another he mentions,

A Loser's History, as critiqued by the nettlesome but always entertaining Christopher Hitchens.

The Weekly Standard piece written by Bill Kristol and linked by Simon includes other details of Tenet’s inaccuracy, in which Perle mischaracterizes several aspects of the August 2002 presentation by Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith. Tenet is in plentiful company on that score, as Senator Levin and his associates have taken misrepresentation of the supposedly “cooked intelligence” to the level of high farce.

Tenet describes Feith’s staff as “utterly out of its depth,” and dismisses the main briefer Tina Shelton as a “naval reservist.” Tenet reports that Shelton claimed the case proving Saddam was involved in 9/11 was “open and shut.”

Levin has repeated and extended these claims as well, one has to wonder who feeds him all his best lines. Here’s the problem for both Tenet and his would-be friends for better days to come: the staffer Tenet maligns has a twenty year career as a DIA Analyst. Shelton and Feith deny the statement was ever made, and others confirm the unlikelihood that such a claim would be made.

That’s all stand operating procedure for political hacks and opportunists in any case. I doubt many people other than committed partisans against the war would really look to Tenet as authoritative, in any case.

Hitchens delves deeper, and slams Tenet with rhetorical two-by-fours that Tenet himself helpfully provides, first via Woodward, and now in his own book of fables:

It's difficult to see why George Tenet would be so incautious as to write his own self-justifying apologia, let alone give it the portentous title At the Center of the Storm. There is already a perfectly good pro-Tenet book written by a man who knows how to employ the overworked term storm. Bob Woodward's 2002 effort, Bush at War, was, in many of its aspects, almost dictated by George Tenet.

(snip)

I only mean to say that it was a very favorably disposed chronicler who wrote this, in describing Tenet's reaction on the terrible morning of Sept. 11, 2001:

"This has bin Laden all over it," Tenet told Boren. "I've got to go." He also had another reaction, one that raised the real possibility that the CIA and the FBI had not done all that could have been done to prevent the terrorist attack. "I wonder," Tenet said, "if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training."

Notice the direct quotes that make it clear who is the author of this brilliant insight. And then pause for a second. The author is almost the only man who could have known of Zacarias Moussaoui and his co-conspirators—the very man who positively knew they were among us, in flight schools, and then decided to leave them alone. In his latest effusion, he writes: "I do know one thing in my gut. Al-Qaeda is here and waiting." Well, we all know that much by now. But Tenet is one of the few who knew it then, and not just in his "gut" but in his small brain, and who left us all under open skies. His ridiculous agency, supposedly committed to "HUMINT" under his leadership, could not even do what John Walker Lindh had done—namely, infiltrate the Taliban and the Bin Laden circle. It's for this reason that the CIA now has to rely on torturing the few suspects it can catch, a policy, incidentally, that Tenet's book warmly defends.

I wouldn’t ever want to get on the outs with Hitchens. I’m glad he’s on the pro-victory side of our Hundred Years War Long War? War against Terrorists [not to be called the Global War on Terror]? Here he concludes:

A highly irritating expression in Washington has it that "hindsight is always 20-20." Would that it were so. History is not a matter of hindsight and is not, in fact, always written by the victors. In this case, a bogus history is being offered by a real loser whose hindsight is cockeyed and who had no foresight at all.

Talk about irritating expressions, I thought of the famous quotation, often attributed online (mistakenly) to John F. Kennedy, but actually written by Thomas Campbell in The Battle of the Baltic (courtesy World of Quotes):

Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

Based on the hindsight criticisms of retired Generals and Clinton-era apparatchiks, defeat is less an orphan than the bastard child of George W. Bush, carried to term by a hapless and helpless bureaucracy, military, and American public. In defeat, it turns out, there will be hundreds of neighborhood gossips suggesting they told the poor unfortunate girl to stay away from the cad who seeded the foundling.

Rich Lowry offered running excellent commentary on his speed read of the Tenet book over at The Corner yesterday. He condensed his running impressions in an article, up at NRO.

He summarizes Tenet as a man of passion:

George Tenet is a man of passion. One of the things he is most passionate about is never seeing unflattering portrayals of himself in the press. Hence he managed to be the second-longest-serving CIA director in history, despite presiding over massive intelligence failures.

And yet, as Lowry notes, Tenet’s account of the run-up to war in Iraq thoroughly debunks the “Bush lied us into war” mythology:

In a book that is hard on Bush-administration hawks, Tenet writes, “Intelligence professionals did not try to tell policymakers what they wanted to hear, nor did the policymakers lean on us to influence outcomes.” He notes that the CIA underestimated Saddam’s progress toward a nuke before the first Persian Gulf War. That surely colored Dick Cheney’s view and “had a profound impact on my views and those of many of our analysts.”

Tenet argues that WMDs weren’t really that important to the administration’s case for war. He’s right that it wasn’t the only reason, but it was central. Tenet writes that it was believed if Saddam had to produce his own fissile material, he might produce a nuclear weapon in the “2007 to 2009” period (in other words, right about now). If he got the fissile material from elsewhere, “it would not be hard for the regime to make a weapon within a year.”

For an American president considering that information in the post-9/11 environment, the case for military action against Saddam had to be close to a ... well, choose your own basketball metaphor.

Tenet’s remembrances are at least accurate enough on the pre-war Intelligence, analysis, and leader assessments that made the vote to authorize war the right decision then. It should silence the “Bush lied” and “cooked intelligence” lies perpetrated by Sen. Levin, Moveon.org, and other tinfoil proponents, but it won’t, surely.

Apropos of nothing, I note the unusually ironic name of today’s protagonist in the Self as Unfairly Discredited Hero fable.

From Wiktionary, definition for tenet:

An opinion, belief, or principle held to be true by someone or especially an organization. From the Latin, Verb form, Second conjugation, “he/she/it has or holds.”

The CIA as an organization clearly held to the tenets that made them blind to secular state sponsors of terror as cooperating with Islamic terrorists. This set up the classic confrontation with Feith and Rumsfeld, played out in battles of press leaks and junkets to Nigeria.

George Tenet, a man who surely maintains a tenet about self, would do better for himself if he let go. However much he tries to serve himself, in rewriting 9/11 and the war against terrorists [not to be called the Global War on terror] as a tragedy with him as neglected sage, he only serves to remind others how dreadfully bad a Director he was.