Petraeus 'leaked' Iraq pullout plans

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON
- The political maneuvering between United States President Barack Obama and his top field commanders over withdrawal from Iraq has taken a sudden new turn with the leak by Central Command chief General David Petraeus - and a firm denial by a White House official - of an account of the January 21 White House meeting suggesting that Obama had requested three different combat troop withdrawal plans with their respective associated risks, including one of 23 months.

The Petraeus account, reported by McClatchy newspapers on February 5 and then by the Associated Press the following day,

appears to indicate that Obama is moving away from the 16-month plan he had vowed during the campaign to implement if elected. But on closer examination, it doesn't necessarily refer to any action by Obama or to anything that happened at the January 21 meeting.

The real story of the leak by Petraeus is that the most powerful figure in the US military has tried to shape the media coverage of Obama and combat troop withdrawal from Iraq to advance his policy agenda - and, very likely, his personal political interests as well.

This writer became aware of Petraeus' effort to influence the coverage of Obama's unfolding policy on troop withdrawal when a military source close to the general, who insisted on anonymity, offered the Petraeus account on February 4. The military officer was responding to an Inter Press Service story published two days earlier (Please see, Obama not bowing to top brass, yet, February 4, 2009.)

The story reported that Obama had rejected Petraeus' argument against a 16-month withdrawal option at the meeting and asked for a withdrawal plan within that timeframe, and that Petraeus had been unhappy with the outcome of the meeting.

It also reported that General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, and retired army general Jack Keane, a close ally of Petraeus, had both made public statements indicating a determination to get Obama to abandon the 16-month plan.

The officer told IPS that, contrary to the story, Petraeus had been "very pleased" with the direction of the discussions. He said that there had been no decision by Obama at the meeting and no indication that Obama had a preference for one option over another.

The military source provided the following carefully worded statement: "We were specifically asked to provide projections, assumptions and risks for the accomplishment of objectives associated with 16-, 19- and 23-month drawdown options." That was exactly the sentence published by McClatchy the following day, except that "specifically" was left out.

The source also said Petraeus, Odierno and ambassador Ryan Crocker had already reached a "unified assessment" on the three drawdown options and had forwarded them to the chain of command.

But a White House official told IPS on Monday that the Petraeus account was untrue. "The assessments of the three drawdown dates were not requested by the president," said the official, who insisted on not being identified because he had not been authorized to comment on the matter. "He never said, 'Give me three drawdown plans'."

McClatchy's Nancy Youssef reported a similar account from aides to Obama. "Obama told his advisors shortly after taking office that he remained committed to the 16-month timeframe," Youssef wrote, "but asked them to present him with the pros and cons of that and other options, without specifying dates."

That suggests that the only specific plan for which Obama requested an assessment of risks was the 16-month plan, but that he agreed to look at other plans as well.

The sentence given to this writer as well as to McClatchy bore one obvious clue that the request for the assessments of three drawdown plans did not come from Obama: the sentence used the passive voice. It also failed to explicitly state that the request in question was made during the meeting with Obama.

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Thank you for posting it.

It seems any country can either choose to have a massive domestic reform, or go fight a war, but not both at the same time. From all indications, Obama is being forced to scuttle the military fantasies to deal with the ever darker realities at home. At least I hope so for all our sakes.

but who is chief of staff X? am I missing soemthing?

with all the news on Pakistan, Iran, and NATO in Afghanistan , your piece ties right in nicely. kinda, sorta, in a way. We seem to be getting a good picture of Obama's foreign policy.

The Dissenter Who Changed the War
As the No. 2 Commander in Iraq, Raymond Odierno Challenged the Military Establishment, Pressing for More Troops and a Long-Term Strategy to Guide Them

Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno was an unlikely dissident, with little in his past to suggest that he would buck his superiors and push the U.S. military in radically new directions.

A 1976 West Point graduate and veteran of the Persian Gulf War and the Kosovo campaign, Odierno had earned a reputation as the best of the Army's conventional thinkers -- intelligent and ambitious, but focused on using the tools in front of him rather than discovering new and unexpected ones. That image was only reinforced during his first tour in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

As commander of the 4th Infantry Division in the Sunni Triangle, Odierno led troops known for their sometimes heavy-handed tactics, kicking in doors and rounding up thousands of Iraqi "MAMs" (military-age males). He finished his tour believing the fight was going well. "I thought we had beaten this thing," he would later recall.

Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as "fairly desperate, frankly."

So that fall, he became the lone senior officer in the active-duty military to advocate a buildup of American troops in Iraq, a strategy rejected by the full chain of command above him, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top commander in Iraq and Odierno's immediate superior.
Communicating almost daily by phone with retired Gen. Jack Keane, an influential former Army vice chief of staff and his most important ally in Washington,Odierno launched a guerrilla campaign for a change in direction in Iraq, conducting his own strategic review and bypassing his superiors to talk through Keane to White House staff members and key figures in the military. It would prove one of the most audacious moves of the Iraq war, and one that eventually reversed almost every tenet of U.S. strategy.
...
(much more...

http://tinyurl.com/czunna

(Note: Ricks is a highly-regarded writer on military affairs, but he hardly critiques Ordierno's tactics in pushing his strategy, nor reflects on the implications of what seems to be disobedience.)

Among the worst consequences of the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush years was the breakdown in the normal "chain of command" governing the military and its ostensible civilian masters. Bush's "I'll do what my generals recommend to me" mentality (and providing a direct line to the White House) encouraged free-lancing amongst the more ambitious senior commanders, of which the good General Petraeus is the most visible, acting much like a latter-day Douglas MacArthur. Odierno's actions as "the dissident" is yet another illustration of policy-making on war issues being driven by military commanders in the field, rather than the Pentagon/SecDef, and it may well be that Robert Gates could emerge as a major force restoring the traditional (constitutional) chain-of-command here, rather than merely an enabler and passive by-stander.
The creation of a global-wide command structure - Centcom, Southcom, Norcom, Africom (though the latter is proving more difficult to get off the ground within its theatre), etc., has also given senior flag officers a huge stake in policy-making, as some have seen their role as a quasi-diplomatic entity, projecting more influence than the US Embassy on a country-by-country basis, and rivaling the State Department (severely down-graded in the Cheney years) as the voice of US foreign policy.
The Ricks profile of Odierno ends thusly:

"Obama is likely to find Odierno and other generals arguing passionately that to come close to meeting his commitment to keeping U.S. troops safe, keeping Iraq edging toward stability and maintaining the pressure on extremists, he will need a relatively large force to remain in Iraq for may years.

When asked what sort of U.S. military presence he expected in Iraq around 2014 or 2015 -- well after Obama's first term -- Odierno said, "I would like to see a . . . force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000," with many troops training Iraqi forces and others conducting combat operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq and its allies.

One of the points he would stress to the new commander in chief, Odierno said, would be "the importance of us leaving with honor and justice. "

"For the military, he added, "it's extremely important because of all the sacrifice and time and, in fact, how we've all adjusted and adapted.".

Essentially Odierno will tell Obama that to pull out in any manner other than what he (Ordierno) prescribes will be to "dishonour the sacrifices" of the ca. 4300 military KIA, and the tens of thousands wounded or invalided out of combat. Now, THAT line of argument is going to require major push-back by the Obama/Gates team, as it also can be coupled to how Petraeus, Odierno, et al see themselves as THE "agents of and for success" (if not "victory) in OIF, and for which they shall be forever remembered - both in their military careers and future civilian pursuits. Repudiate the advice of the generals and OBama risks "losing Iraq", IMO is the subtext here.

for generals that publically disagree and/or attempt to embarrass the Commander-in-Chief

Both Petraeus and Odierno are on slippery ground and could find themselves jobless. Gates and Obama will be pushed only so far! Leaving Iraq was part of Obama's election platform. He knows the United States cannot economically afford to finance a large military presence.

All this Minot nuclear stuff and recalcitrant generals. Indeed we will see what happens when a few contractors get kicked off the gravy train, what kind of madness & stunts they'll pull with their buddy Cheney, hanging out in Tysons Corner and the other military-industrial office parks. But I'm repeating myself :(
--
Hongpong.com

Just heard an NPR interview with the author of the book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005.

I heard it the hills and so missed the actual policy change named, but I' pretty sure it was The Surge... the author asked Petraeus about it: "How did the President react when you asked him about making this major change in the conduct of the war?" "I didn't. It was within my existing purview."

The author said his jaw dropped. "I mean, you want your generals to be audacious, but..."

"Turning Japanese I think I'm Turning Japanese I really think so da-da-da det det det det" - The Vapors

...on NPR's Fresh Air - approx. 28:35.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

I remember that Gen. David Petraeus,commander of the Iraq surge was recommended on April 23,2008 by Gates to be the next head of CENTCOM.

Gareth Porter aka Porte(sic) was published in the Helsinki Times today

Selling the President's General
The Petraeus Story

By Tom Engelhardt
April 27, 2008

BBC

US 'lost track of Afghan weapons'

The US military has failed to keep track of thousands of weapons shipped to Afghanistan, leaving them vulnerable to being lost or stolen, a report says.

The report has been compiled by congressional auditors, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

It found that, in the four years up to June 2008, the US military failed to keep complete records on some 222,000 weapons entering the country.

The report will be discussed in the US House of Representatives on Thursday.

It states that weapons supplied by the US to the Afghan military "are at serious risk of theft or loss".

The report says:

* US military officials failed to keep proper records on about 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons sent to Afghanistan between December 2004 and June 2008 - about a third of all the weapons sent
* There was a similar lack of management of a further 135,000 light weapons donated to Afghan forces via the US military by 21 countries
* The military failed even to record the serial numbers of some 46,000 weapons, making it impossible to confirm receipt of weapons or identify any which had fallen into the hands of militants
* The serial numbers of 41,000 weapons were recorded, but US military officials still had no idea where they were

"Lapses in accountability occurred throughout the supply chain," concludes the report, which is due to be discussed on Thursday at a panel hearing of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee.

In response, the Pentagon agreed that it needed more people to help train the Afghanistan government to track the weapons, the AP news agency reported.

It said it had made attempts to address the problems with registering serial numbers and monitoring weapon locations.

The report's findings came just a day after an audacious attack on three government buildings in the Afghan capital Kabul left 28 people, including eight attackers, dead.

The report is reminiscent of an August 2007 study, also by the GAO, which found the US military could not account for some 190,000 rifles and pistols given to security services in Iraq.

"Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff." --Steven Wright