Tag Archives: Defense Department

Reporting in Guantanamo

The Pentagon’s “Media Policy and Ground Rules” pamphlet for reporting on Guantanamo starts off badly and quickly veers into silly.

The bad start: Reporters may only fly to Guantanamo to cover the military commissions by using military aircraft, although they can leave on commercial planes. Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald noted that she had to fly via commercial plan to Washington so she could take a military flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Cuba. She used to fly from Miami to report on Guantanamo.

The turn to silly: “Etiquette” rules prohibit chewing gum, standing and stretching or sleeping in the courtroom.

What these examples demonstrate: A military culture that results in arbitrary restrictions on reporters at the whim of a public affairs officer.

The New York Times reported last week about how the media guidelines are enforced at Guantanamo, exposing the public affairs officers as petty, controlling and fearful of journalists. Through the guidelines they established, these PAOs have undermined Defense Department efforts to build relationships with the media. Recently, in announcing rules for military officials’ interactions with reporters, Secretary Roberts Gates stressed the need for aggressive reporting on the military.

He told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that The Washington Post series about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center “have been a spur to action for me. The kind of reporting you do … is one of the tools I have in trying to lead this department and correct problems.”

Some senior officials at the Defense Department have agreed to meet this week with representatives of several news organizations demanding the some of the Guantanamo rules be rescinded.

Much of the focus is on rules that prohibit reporters from revealing information the Pentagon decides is protected even if that information is learned from non-government sources.

Rosenberg and several other reporters were expelling from Guantanamo in May for publishing the name of an Army interrogator even though that name had been aired in numerous news stories previously – because the rules allowed only an anonymous moniker given to him in court documents.

Rosenberg and lawyers for the media companies say the rules are a violation of the First Amendment.

This week’s meeting offers an opportunity for the Pentagon to acknowledge the obvious as a start in rebuilding a damaged relationship and, more important, allowing Guantanamo reporters to do their job in the best interests of the public.

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U.S. military rules the planning roost

WASHINGTON–As Americans, we see ourselves as the best in a number of ways. We have the best governmental framework. We have the best athletes. We have the best way of life.

Whether those are true or not is up for debate abroad, but not within our borders. What is likely an accepted truth across the world is the United States military’s ability to plan for unforeseen disasters is second to none.

“This is an enormous strength of the United States military,” said Dr. David Tretler, a professor at the National War College in Washington. “We probably do this more, and therefore better, than anybody else.

“When events do occur, we have a greater capacity to carry out the planning that’s necessary to try to get everything lined up in the right way and moving at the proper time.”

Indeed, the U.S. military spends a vast amount of time making contingency plans. Each of the individual combatant commands has its own planning division concerned strictly with thinking about the contingencies that need to be in place. For example, one of the contingencies thought about at Pacific Command is what the course of action needs to be if North Korea decides to invade South Korea.

Tretler said planning contingencies for a certain region or deployment used to take about two years, but former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cut the planning cycle to a year or shorter. Once a plan is in place, however, it is constantly revised.

“What it comes down to is assessments by senior leaders that the process in place is working or we see a better way,” Tretler said. “If that becomes fact, we generate a new doctrine.”

It’s an element of the military that receives little attention because for it to be successful, it needs to happen behind closed doors. Military planning gets noticed when something goes wrong, but with the enormity of the task, the planners simply cannot get everything right.

“The military spends so much more time on planning and trying to think ahead, but that takes large staffs and large headquarters,” said Dr. Conrad Crane, director of the Army War College in Carlisle Pa. “The rest of the government doesn’t have the resources to do it.”

Crane also mentioned that the rest of the government tries to play catch-up with the military in this respect, again speaking to the adroitness with which the military plans for anything that can go wrong.

“In terms of trying to develop processes, foundation, skills and cadre of experts we are considerably further ahead than most folks,” Tretler said. “Especially when you talk about big things because, frankly, we’re the only people who have big things.”

It all gets back to being the best, and that’s something our military takes very seriously.

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"Can you repeat that?" Linguistics key to Afghan war effort

WASHINGTON–Last summer, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed a group of 2,000 people who he located at the critical juncture and “at the heart” of the military’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You are as important as any other undertaking in the US military right now,” Mullen proclaimed.
This wasn’t a talk of weapon systems or traditional war theory, but one centered on what might be the most undervalued tool in the military’s arsenal – language.
Mullen’s newfound indispensible manpower in an interminable and untraditional war are the students and staff at the Monterey, Calif.-based Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center.
Ten years ago, the DLIFC was solely in the business of training linguists for traditional roles.
“Now, we’ve had to branch out,” said Stephen Payne, DLIFC command historian. “We’ve been helping train troops since 2003.”
A premier institution since 1941 — when Japanese-American Soldiers were first trained to become translators and interpreters in World War II — DLIFLC teaches 24 languages to linguists from all four branches of the military, the U.S. Coast Guard and other Department of Defense agencies.
Due to rapid expansion, the DLIFLC hired over 1,000 new faculty members since 2001. Their budget has more than tripled, from $77 million in 2001 to $275 million this year. The center started offering predeployment training for Dari and Pashto in 2007. Since then, there has been a 500 percent increase in enrollment, with 15,000 service members trained in just 2009.
Most recently, the center partnered with the army to host “Language Training Detachments” to better prepare troops to meet the demands of an increasingly involved war in Afghanistan. Fort Campbell in Kentucky, Fort Carson in Colorado and Fort Drum in New York are the first installations to start the program. DLI hopes to add 14 permanent Language Training Detachments for the General Purpose Force in the next year.
Last weekend, 73 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell graduated from the first 16-week course in Pashto and Dari, the official languages of the South Asian country.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai capped his four-day US trip last month with a visit to the post. The United States already has sent three brigades to Afghanistan and three more are expected to deploy in the coming months, totaling around 20,000 troops.
Sgt. Audreuna Cleveland, the only female in the Dari class, was deployed to Iraq in November 2007 and served there for a year.
“I didn’t know any Arabic and I realized it was almost essential in winning the hearts and minds of the people,” said Cleveland, who will be deployed to Afghanistan in the next few months.
This time around, with a basic level of conversational language skills in her arsenal, Cleveland hopes the operation in Afghanistan will be different.
“If I at least know the language and culture, I’ll be able to establish relationships with the Afghan people.”
Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s call last November for more soldiers on the ground with language capabilities under the  “Campaign Continuity” initiative is expected to enhance the Army’s ability to partner with Afghan National Security Forces and local Afghan communities.
McChrystal, who commands all Afghanistan war operations, says his goal is to have one leader in every platoon who will interact with the Afghan population. We’re talking more than “hello’s” and “thank yous.” The concept calls for building rapport with Afghan nationals by engaging them in meaningful conversations.
“We didn’t take this approach in the first years of the present conflicts,” said Payne. “We went in with the idea we’d overthrow the governments and ‘Gee, it would be great.’ We had no training going in, and when the next phase hit, we weren’t prepared.”
Col. Danial D. Pick, the commandant for DLI, said McChrystal’s directive has ushered in a much-needed sea change.
“This might be the most systematic and intense language training provided to army units,” said Pick, “and it’s necessary in winning the war in Afghanistan.”
But complex is always the keyword in a conversation on Afghanistan.
The country’s terrain is as varied as its ethno-linguistic populations, with more languages and dialects than in Iraq.
Pick notes Dari and Pashto only truly came on the linguistic radar after 9/11 and sustaining access to high quality translators and interpreters has been more tenuous – both in America and in Afghanistan — than in previous wars.
And with a fabled history of invaders stretching back to Alexander the Great, Afghans are traditionally suspect of  foreigners.
“We’re still trying to figure out the best ways to tap human capital in Afghanistan,” said Pick.
The linguistic development of troops isn’t a skill that can be taught overnight.
“Commanders have to give us a valuable resource – time,” said Sgt. 1st Class Brian Lamar, the school’s spokesman. “And sometimes that’s difficult when you only have six months of training before deployment and you have Joe Private who doesn’t really know much about Afghanistan.”
A soldier in a war like Afghanistan that once seemed like a cakewalk, doesn’t just dodge bullets. He or she attends Shuras and talks to village elders about governance, economics, and security.
And when dealing with counterinsurgency doctrine under McChrystal’s direction, no training is more crucial to the military than education in critical languages and cultures.
“Just to be able to watch the Afghan news and know what people are saying means a lot to them,” said Army Captain Victor R. Vera, who’s enrolled in the Dari class at Fort Campbell.
The Department of Defense recently created a program, AFPAK HANDS, through which mid- and senior- level officers attend language training, usually in DC, for four months prior to deployment to Afghanistan.  The focus is on building a base of officers with language skills to work on Afghanistan and Pakistan issues, alternating between assignments overseas and in the US.
“Bottom line is we need to learn lessons from the past and soldiers need to realize they’re going into a completely different cultural situation where they need to be equipped,” said Pick. “They’re not in Iowa anymore.”
Staff Sgt. Genevieve Chase, who served in combat operations in Afghanistan in 2006, said she would have benefitted from more pre-deployment familiarization programs and language training.
“This is a war very much about relationships,” said Chase, who often went outside the wire and worked with tribal elders.
“We’re never going to win if we don’t even know how talk to the people.”

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Weapons of mass depression?

Pharmaceutical companies come away winners

WASHINGTON — Military doctors are prescribing more meds to soldiers to treat depression and anxiety, yet there is an increasing rate of suicides among active duty soldiers and veterans. This includes recent veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Meanwhile pharmaceutical companies – the Big Pharma crowd and an increasing showing from low-cost generic brands – are benefitting from the uptick in business without clear disclosure of just how much each is receiving.

The Military Times and affiliated Army Times Group publications have been doing a series of reports pointing out the liberal distribution of prescription medicine to those in the military and a potential connection to the mental instability that leads to suicide. Although ­a combination of therapy and medication has proven to be of significant help in treating depression, anxiety and trauma, it may be the case that active troops have access to a dangerous variety of drugs without much concurrent therapy. The Times based its report on the government data obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. Use of antidepressants in the general population itself has exploded, yet it has not come with such a spike in suicide and possibly includes more clinical care.

While the Afghanistan/Pakistan and post-Saddam Iraq battles drag on interminably, the continued presence of terrorism, either independent or organized, assures the continuation of ubiquitous U.S. armed forces and support personnel. Troops are subjected to myriad traumas and stress, only to come back stateside with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in many cases and then even the most iconic among them have struggled in attempts to receive care. This may compound the problems created by the loose dealing of prescription drugs to active soldiers, experts say.

The number of annual suicides per 100,000 troops serving has risen from 8 in 2001 to 14 in 2009, according to the Times analysis of Defense Logistics Agency data. What’s more, citing information from the Veterans Affairs Department, The Army Times reported last week that as many as 18 veterans are committing suicide each day.

Bart Billings, a doctor and retired colonel, recently testified ­ before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs that soldiers should not be taking antidepressants at all, let alone at the alarming rate and in such varied combination. “Drug cocktails,” however, have become common in the armed forces despite there being little research to support many of the combinations, according to Billings.

I caught Billings on the phone this weekend while he was at the Annual Combat Stress Conference, which he founded 18 years ago.

Billings is an outspoken critic of the lax oversight of ­what appears to be a huge proliferation of drugs in the field that is not being reported. He said that it’s hard to quantify how much of these kinds of medication are being used in the field , but that there are documented cases of sudden death as a result of so-called medication cocktails.

“It’s easier to figure out how many drugs are coming from Colombia to the U.S. than trying to figure out the number of drugs going to the field,” Billings said, in a reference to cocaine cartels.

Peter Breggin, Ph. D., presented an article to appear soon in a scientific journal in which he draws the clear connection between the use of antidepressants by soldiers put in stressful situations who are taught to use violence and increased incidence of suicide or even homicide.

Following the money

The Pentagon has more than a $6 billion annual budget for prescription drugs. I tried to find out if there is information available about just how much taxpayer money is going to which drug manufacturers, but ran into some road blocks.

The DLA, a part of the DoD, is the place that orders the drugs eventually used by all U.S. armed forces. That agency spent at least $1.1 billion on psychiatric and pain medication between 2001 and 2009, according to the Military Times report. Yet the DLA doesn’t purchase anything directly from the manufacturers such as Ely Lilly, Wyeth, Pfizer and GlaxosmithKline.

Instead, the DLA uses a network of pharmaceutical “prime vendors,” according to DLA spokeswoman Diana Stewart. So they contract with distributors in the pharmaceutical industry to purchase and deliver pharmaceuticals in different geographical regions while the prime vendors purchase direct from the manufacturers.

It’s not yet clear whether those in the DoD have a say in which manufacturers are used or if it would matter whether they are courted by pharmaceutical companies. Yet it is certain that the pharmaceutical industry shells out money for at least the travel of DoD doctors and other medical professionals.

The Center for Public Integrity had previously collaborated with Medill to report on the amount of money drug companies spend on travel for the Defense Department officials. The 2009 report showed that from 1998 to 2007, the medical industry paid more than $10 million for 8,700 trips, or about 40 percent of all outside sponsored travel.

Health care bill sunlight

The momentous Obama administration health care bill recently passed by Congress might actually illuminate how much the Department of Defense pays to each manufacturer, as a sunshine act actually will track the relationship between Big Pharma and physicians to see whether there’s any undue influence in who uses which drugs.

Until then, the DLA is working on gathering the information on its prime vendors, and the Army Times publications are working on another reporting package on the subject.

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Omar Khadr's prosecution pushes the limits of international law

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba– Omar Khadr, a 23-year-old Canadian citizen charged with murder, conspiracy and support of terrorism whose pretrial hearings began this week, was captured by the United States in Afghanistan in 2002. Khadr was 15 at the time.

That’s not the centerpiece of the hearings; Khadr’s attorneys are asking the court to exclude incriminating statements he made because they were allegedly procured using torture. But Khadr’s age at the time of his capture remains a major concern for human rights advocates, and a point of legal contention.

Several non-governmental organization representatives here to observe the hearings believe that, at the time of Khadr’s capture, he was a child soldier. Subsequently, they contend, his rehabilitation, rather than prosecution, should have taken precedence and perhaps even blocked him from being charged in the first place.

“The detention, treatment and prosecution of Omar Khadr violates international law and flies in the face of accepted international practice,” said Jennifer Turner, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview.

“Under international law, an alleged child soldier like Omar Khadr should be treated first and foremost as a candidate for rehabilitation and reintegration, not subjected to abuse and prosecution before military commission.”

The Department of Defense has acknowledged that at least 12 juveniles have been held in the Guanatanamo Bay detention facility, although human rights advocates speculate that the actual number may be higher.

Navy Capt. David Iglesias, a legal advisor to the office of military commissions and a prosecutor for commission cases other than Khadr’s, disagrees with the contention that the United States is in violation of international law. The government’s position, Iglesias said in an interview, is that the United Nations enacted the child soldier provisions to penalize countries that force children to fight.”

Iglesias, a former U.S. Attorney, also noted that the two Additional Protocols of 1977, amendments to the Geneva Conventions that concern child soldiers, have not been ratified by the United States.

The United States did ratify the Optional Protocol on the involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, but even that does not prohibit Khadr’s prosecution, according to UNICEF’s website.

Stacy Sullivan, a court observer for Human Rights Watch, acknowledged that international law does not ban the prosecution of children for war crimes. But she noted that military tribunals have not been a venue for juvenile prosecution since the Second World War.

“Even the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where a great many of the crimes were committed by children, did not prosecute children,” wrote Sullivan in an email. “Prosecutors will say that that children were prosecuted for war crimes in Germany following World War II — but the claims are ridiculous. A couple of children were prosecuted for theft, and I think maybe one for murder, but none for war crimes.”

Sullivan also noted that there are other international laws regarding children that the U.S. may have violated since it captured Khadr.

“There is a lot in international law about the detention of children,” she wrote in an email.“They must be held separately from adults, given family visits, provided a lawyer, provided education, etc… The US, of course, did not do any of this [during Khadr’s detainment] so there is no question that the US violated its international legal obligations.”

Meanwhile Iglesias contends that there is only aspect of Khadr’s case to which his age is germane.

“Where it becomes relevant is for sentencing purposes,” he said. “ If he is found guilty, the judge can take into consideration the fact that he was only fifteen years old,” when the alleged crimes occurred.

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Will the U.S. effort to buy off Afghan locals ever work?

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military appears to be realizing the limits of the “buy and hold” counterinsurgency strategy that it used so successfully in Iraq as it struggles to gain local support in Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines have pumped millions of dollars into the Marja agricultural district in southern Afghanistan, either as compensation for damages or to pay off military-aged males so they don’t join the Taliban. But as The New York Times detailed in an article earlier this month, the strategy is riddled with problems and unproven assumptions. Locals who take the money in good faith are often beaten by Taliban forces, the article states, while others use the funds to purchase automatic rifles for insurgents.

Not that this comes as a surprise to many experts within the U.S. national security community.

“There’s an enormous moral hazard. What you’ve basically done is created a class of rent seekers,” lining up for free money from Washington, said C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s security studies program and former  political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul. “­You’re trading off some presumed level of security today for less security tomorrow.”

Defense Department officials say the practice, which has been employed for several years, is not a security trade-off but rather a way of building long-term stability. But they have yet to answer a fundamental question posed by many counterinsurgency experts: what happens when the United States leaves and the money stops flowing?

The goal in the Afghanistan theater still is to produce some system of governance that keeps militant radicals out of Kabul without a potentially antagonizing public show of American troop support – a near impossibility given the country’s history, some experts said.

The best-case scenario would be to create a government seat in Kabul, the Afghan capital, but also have urban areas with loose agreements with provincial leaders, said Seth Jones, an Afghanistan policy expert for the Rand Corporation. Jones, the author of “In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan,’’ has led numerous projects on stability operations and counterterrorism for the Department of Defense, FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.

“The question becomes how to deal with local actors,” said Jones. He added that development projects have proven successful in the past, but that they need to be done by local leaders such as Hajji Abdul Zahir, Marja’s newNATO-backed governor. ­

As the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan nears the 10-year mark, Washington continues to struggle with identifying any successful, or even promising, alternatives. Military brass have repeatedly stated that any long-term strategy will be based in local support and cooperation, but there is no indication that U.S. troops have gained the kind of widespread credibility on the ground that they need to achieve that.

In addition, there needs to be accountability built into the Pentagon strategy—especially given all of the U.S. taxpayer money being spent, Georgetown’s Fair said.

“These guys are never held responsible for conducting an evaluation of this program,” she said. “Just because they’re taking money from you, doesn’t mean they’re not taking money from the Taliban.”

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New legislation to save billions in defense purchases

Representatives aim to cut waste, speed up process of Defense contracts with new bill

WASHINGTON — Each year, the Defense Department buys more than $330 billion worth of services from outside companies, wasting billions in taxpayer dollars in the process, Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.J., said on Wednesday. He and four fellow members of the House Armed Services Committee presented a bill to reduce that amount, arguing that more rigorous accounting standards and incentives for employees tasked with contract oversight could help save taxpayers $135 billion­ over the next five years.

“This legislation would require the Defense Department to adopt the basic management practices that are necessary for anything as complex as the acquisitions system to function properly,” said Ike Skelton, D-Mo., committee chairman­.

The lawmakers ­want the Pentagon ­to set clear objectives for the contractors, and hire qualified employees to oversee the contracts. They also want to set ­financial incentives for those employees, and to increase competition among defense contractors to “gain access to more innovative technology,” as Skelton said, and save taxpayer money.

Andrews said the bill would reduce contracting costs for services by six to seven percent each year, leading to savings of $135 billion over a five-year span.

­Last year’s Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act­ addressed the processes of buying large weapons systems. Sponsors said the ­new bill would focus on “the remaining 80 percent of defense acquisition,” said Howard McKeon, R-Calif., the highest ranking Republican on the committee. That includes contracts for services and computer programs.

Contracting for these services provides a particular challenge because the Defense Department’s contracting process doesn’t fit well with rapidly changing technology needs, said Laura Peterson, senior policy analyst for national security at the non-partisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“The technology just tends to change as these contracts are going through the motions,” Peterson said. Figuring out the standards a new computer system should meet, finding a contractor and ­putting the new program into place can take years. By that time, the technology may be outdated.

Bill takes up bipartisan recommendations

The House committee created the bipartisan panel in March 2009 to review the defense acquisition process.

“While the nature of defense acquisition has substantially changed, the defense acquisition system has not kept pace,” the panel’s members wrote in a report published last month after a yearlong review of the acquisition structure. The current process is “particularly poorly designed for the acquisition of information technology.”

Setting clear standards is one way of addressing ­that problem, but ensuring adequate oversight is another challenge. Defense Department employees may lack the technological expertise to assess computer systems, Peterson said. The bill would require the Defense Department to “strengthen the part of the acquisition workforce that specializes in information technology,” for example by offering career incentives to IT experts.

The Pentagon lacks adequate records needed to provide an audit of the contracts, Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, said.

The current deadline the Pentagon ­set for itself to produce those financial statements is 2017. The new bill, called the Implementing Management for Performance and related Reform to Obtain Value in Every Acquisition or IMPROVE Act, attempts to speed up that process by offering incentives to those agencies within the Pentagon ­that complete the audit process before then. That includes ­faster access to funding­.  The auditing itself would be contracted out.

“You would have independent accounting firms who would be performing the audits, through a contract, on behalf of the taxpayers,” Conaway said.

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