About that Iraqi troop withdrawal

[Anti Federalist]

State Department readies Iraq operation, its biggest since Marshall Plan

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Dan Zak, Published: October 7 | Updated: Saturday, October 8, 6:09 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...emailtoafriend

Washington — The State Department is racing against an end-of-year deadline to take over Iraq operations from the U.S. military, throwing together buildings and marshaling contractors in its biggest overseas operation since the effort to rebuild Europe after World War II.

Attention in Washington and Baghdad has centered on the number of U.S. troops that could remain in Iraq. But those forces will be dwarfed by an estimated 16,000 civilians under the American ambassador — the size of an Army division.

The scale of the operation has raised concerns among lawmakers and government watchdogs, who fear that the State Department will be overwhelmed by overseeing so many people, about 80 percent of them contractors. There is a risk, they say, that millions of dollars could go to waste and that bodyguards will lack adequate supervision.

“We’re very, very worried,” Dov Zakheim, a Defense official during the Reagan presidency who served on the Commission on Wartime Contracting, said at a recent House hearing. “I don’t know how they’re going to do it.”

State Department officials say they are working flat-out to finish preparations, adding contracting professionals to prevent fraud and focusing on ensuring the protection of U.S. personnel.

“We’ve spent too much money and lost too many kids’ lives not to do this thing right,” said Thomas Nides, deputy secretary of state.

But officials acknowledge they have never done anything quite like it. “Make no mistake, this is hard,” Nides said.

There are 43,000 U.S. service members in Iraq. Under an agreement negotiated by the George W. Bush administration, they are to leave by the end of 2011.

Iraqi leaders said last week that they want a small contingent of U.S. military trainers to remain, but without immunity from local prosecution, a condition the Obama administration has said it cannot accept. The administration has been planning to keep 3,000 to 5,000 military trainers in the country if the two sides can hammer out an agreement.

The list of responsibilities the State Department will pick up from the military is daunting. It will have to provide security for the roughly 1,750 traditional embassy personnel — diplomats, aid workers, Treasury employees and so on — in a country rocked by daily bombings and assassinations.

To do so, the department is contracting about 5,000 security personnel. They will protect the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad plus two consulates, a pair of support sites at Iraqi airports and three police-training facilities.

The department will also operate its own air service — the 46-aircraft Embassy Air Iraq — and its own hospitals, functions the U.S. military has been performing. About 4,600 contractors, mostly non-American, will provide cooking, cleaning, medical care and other services. Rounding out the civilian presence will be about 4,600 people scattered over 10 or 11 sites, where Iraqis will be instructed on how to use U.S. military equipment their country has purchased.

“This is not what State Department people train for, to run an operation of this size. Ever since 2003, they’ve been heavily reliant on U.S. military support,” said Max Boot, a national security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In its final report, issued in August, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting said that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars had been squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the State Department had not made the necessary reforms in its contracting operation.

“Therefore, significant additional waste — and mission degradation to the point of failure — can be expected as State continues with the daunting task of transition in Iraq,” the commission warned.

State Department officials dispute that conclusion, saying that they have hired dozens of extra contracting personnel and that they have gained experience in managing contractors in Iraq.

Zakheim said he also worries that the State Department’s small security force will be stretched too thin to supervise armed contractors. He told the hearing that he feared a repeat of the 2007 incident in which guards from the security firm then known as Blackwater USA opened fire at a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 Iraqi civilians.

Stuart Bowen, the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said in an interview that the transition would have other costs. Without military protection, he said, U.S. government workers will have limited reach throughout Iraq. Already, the 1,200 personnel in the consulate in the southern city of Basra cannot move around that region adequately, he said.

“In between this area and Baghdad, there will be a void” of diplomatic coverage, Bowen said.

Nides emphasized that the State Department wasn’t trying to duplicate the military mission.

“That’s not what the Iraqis want. Frankly, that’s not what was agreed to” with the government in Baghdad, Nides said. The department is trying to transition to a diplomatic presence, he said.

Although the Iraq operation will be huge by State Department standards, it will be significantly smaller than the military-led mission, which currently involves 50,000 defense contractors. And State Department officials say their use of contractors is expected to drop sharply over the next three years, as security improves.

Nides noted that the State Department planned to spend less than $6 billion in Iraq in 2012, compared with an outlay of about $50 billion by the military this year.

“That’s a pretty good transition dividend,” he said.

The State Department had originally planned a more ambitious network of consulates and police-training sites, but it scaled back after failing to get enough money from Congress.

Its smaller footprint will be evident in the police-training program, which will be run out of three locations. In contrast, the U.S. military had training programs in all 18 provinces, said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, chief spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.

“We had a partnership at a much lower level, but I think [State will] bring a very needed expertise at a higher level, a more strategic level,” he said.

The department’s inspector general reported in May that there was a risk that some of the new embassy facilities, such as hospitals and housing, wouldn’t be ready by year’s end.

A State Department official acknowledged that housing construction will probably extend into 2012. But temporary accommodations, at least, will be ready by the end of this year for 10,000 people at the embassy in Baghdad, said the official, who was not authorized to comment on the record. There will be no need, as initially feared, to make people use beds in shifts.

“We will have the basics for everyone,” he said.



Zak reported from Baghdad. Staff writer Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

[flightlesskiwi]

after reading this... i find myself thinking these numbers are grossly inaccurate?

Employees 11,500 Foreign Service employees
7,400 Civil Service employees
31,000 Foreign Service National employees[1]
Annual budget $27.4 billion (FY 2010)

OOOH, wait: In FY 2010 the Department of State, together with 'Other International Programs' (for example, USAID), had a combined projected discretionary budget of $51.7 billion.

also hilarious: In 2009, the Department of State was the fourth most desired employer for undergraduates according to BusinessWeek.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...tment_of_State

[moderate libertarian]

The department will also operate its own air service — the 46-aircraft Embassy Air Iraq

Interesting, embassy will have its own air force.



Allegedly, an "army of private killers" will be left behind.

Occupying Iraq, State Department-style


You and whose army?

A fortress needs guards, and an occupier needs shock troops. The State Department’s army will be divided into two parts: those who guard fixed facilities like the embassy and those who protect diplomats as they scurry about trying to corral the mad Iraqis running the country.

For static security, a company named SOC will guard the embassy facilities for up to $973 million over five years. That deflowered old warhorse Blackwater (now Xe), under yet another dummy corporate name, will also get a piece of action, and of the money pie.

SOC will undoubtedly follow the current security company’s lead and employ almost exclusively Ugandans and Peruvians transported to Iraq for that purpose. For the same reasons Mexicans cut American lawns and Hondurans clean American hotel rooms, embassy guards come from poverty-stricken countries and get paid accordingly — about $600 a month. Their U.S. supervisors, on the other hand, pull down $20,000 of your tax dollars monthly. Many of the Ugandan and Peruvian guards got their jobs through nasty intermediaries (“pimps,” “slavers”), who take back most of their meager salaries to repay “recruitment costs,” leaving many guards as little more than indentured servants.

Long-time merc group Triple Canopy will provide protection outside the embassy fortress, reputedly for $1.5 billion over a five-year span. The overall goal is for State to have its own private army in Iraq: those 5,500 hired guns, almost two full brigades worth of them. The Army guards Fort Knox with fewer soldiers; my Forward Operating Base made due with less then 400 troops and I slept comfortably.

The past mayhem caused by contracted security is well known, with massacres in public squares, drunken murders in the Green Zone, and the like. Think of the mercs as what the Army might be like without its NCOs and officers: a frat house with guns.

Most of them are Americans, though with a few exotic Brits and shady South Africans thrown in. They love 5.11 clothing and favor fingerless leather gloves. Think biker gang or Insane Clown Posse fan boys.

Popular is a clean-shaven head, no moustache but a spiky goatee teased straight out. You know the look from late-night convenience store beer runs. They walk around like Yosemite Sam, arms out as if their very biceps prevented them from standing straight. They’re bullies of course, flirting inappropriately with women and posturing around men. Count on them to wear the most expensive Oakley sunglasses and the most unnecessary gear (gold man-bracelets, tactical hair gel). Think: Jersey Shore rejects.

Aggressive tattoos on all exposed skin seem a prerequisite for membership in Club Merc, especially wavy inked patterns around the biceps and on the neck. They all let on that they were once SEALS, Green Berets, SAS, or Legion of Doom members, but of course they “can’t talk about it.” They’re not likely to disclose last names and tend to go by nicknames like Bulldog, Spider, Red Bull, Wolverine, or Smitty.

With the U.S Army departing in whole or in part by year’s end, most of the array of Army air assets State used will need to be replaced. A recently released State Department Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) “Report on Department of State Planning for the Transition to a Civilian-led Mission in Iraq Performance Evaluation” explains that our diplomats will, in the future, have their own little Air America in Iraq, a fleet of 46 aircraft, including:

* 20 medium lift S-61 helicopters (essentially Black Hawks, possibly armed)

* 18 light lift UH-1N helicopters (new models of ‘Nam era Hueys, possibly armed)

* Three light observation MD-530 helicopters (Little Birds, armed, for quick response strike teams… er, um, observation duties)

* Five Dash 8 fixed-wing aircraft (50-passenger capacity to move personnel into the “theater” from Jordan)

The OIG report also notes that State will need to construct landing zones, maintenance hangars, operation buildings, and air traffic control towers, along with an independent aviation logistics system for maintenance and fueling. And yes, the diplomats are supposed to supervise this, too, the goal being to prevent an Iraqi from being gunned down from an attack helo with diplomatic license plates. What could go wrong?

How much?

At this point, has cost started to cross your mind? Well, some 74% of embassy Baghdad’s operating costs will be going to “security.” State requested $2.7 billion from Congress for its Iraq operations in FY 2011, but got only $2.3 billion from a budget-minded Capitol Hill. Facing the possibility of being all alone in a dangerous universe in FY 2012, the Department has requested $6.3 billion for Iraq. Congress has yet to decide what to do. To put these figures in perspective, the State Department total operating budget for this year is only about $14 billion (the cost of running the place, absent the foreign aid money), so $6.3 billion for one more year in Iraq is a genuine chunk of change.

Which only leaves the question of why.

Pick your forum — TomDispatch readers at a kegger, Fox news pundits following the Palin bus, high school students preparing to take SATs, unemployed factory workers in a food-stamp line — and ask if any group of Americans (not living in official Washington) would conclude that Iraq was our most important foreign policy priority, and so deserving of our largest embassy with the largest staff and largest budget on the planet.

Does Iraq threaten U.S. security? Does it control a resource we demand? (Yes, it’s got lots of oil underground, but produces remarkably little of the stuff.) Is Iraq enmeshed in some international coalition we need to butter up? Any evil dictators or WMDs around? Does Iraq hold trillions in U.S. debt? Anything? Anyone? Bueller?

Eight disastrous years after we invaded, it is sad but altogether true that Iraq does not matter much in the end. It is a terrible thing that we poured 4,459 American lives and trillions of dollars into the war, and without irony oversaw the deaths of at least a hundred thousand, and probably hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis in the name of freedom. Yet we are left with only one argument for transferring our occupation duties from the Department of Defense to the Department of State: something vague about our “investment in blood and treasure.”

Think of this as the Vegas model of foreign policy: keep the suckers at the table throwing good money after bad. Leaving aside the idea that “blood and treasure” sounds like a line from Pirates of the Caribbean, one must ask: What accomplishment are we protecting?

The war’s initial aim was to stop those weapons of mass destruction from being used against us. There were none, so check that off the list. Then it was to get rid of Saddam. He was hanged in 2006, so cross off that one. A little late in the game we became preoccupied with ensuring an Iraq that was “free.” And we’ve had a bunch of elections and there is a government of sorts in place to prove it, so that one’s gotta go, too.

What follows won’t be “investment,” just more waste. The occupation of Iraq, centered around that engorged embassy, is now the equivalent of a self-licking ice cream cone, useful only to itself.

http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2011/06/...artment-style/

[amy31416]

Got this email from Adil Shamoo, foreign policy analyst with the University of MD and native of Iraq.

Below is an Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...,5725911.story
baltimoresun.com
Is U.S. really leaving Iraq?

Despite planned troop withdrawal, our continued influence and presence there will be huge

By Adil E. Shamoo and Bonnie Bricker
1:49 PM EDT, October 25, 2011

"After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over."

With his Oct. 21 statement on our withdrawal of troops from Iraq by year-end, President Barack Obama is keeping his promise to the American people for complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and satisfying the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government. Mr. Obama declared that the U.S. and Iraq would have a "relationship between sovereign states, an equal partnership based on mutual interests and mutual respect."
Yet even with the withdrawal under way, Mr. Obama's actions continue to undermine the sovereignty of Iraq.

Even without the presence of U.S. troops, America's footprint in Iraq is immense. In addition to the fortress near the site of Saddam Hussein's palace, two additional, $100 million buildings are slated to be built outside Baghdad as mini-embassies in the north and south of Iraq. Iraqis know that U.S. troops acting as trainers will still be in Iraq, both as a permanent presence of less than 200 and as an undetermined presence of U.S. troops permanently stationed in neighboring countries. In addition to these troops and embassy personnel, a large and robust force of CIA agents are presumed to be on the ground. As one of the largest contingencies of foreign personnel in any sovereign nation, it is no surprise that Iraqis refused to bargain away their right to enforce their own laws by giving our troops immunity from prosecution.

The use of a huge personnel force, with a large number of private contractors, has even stoked the ire of some Republicans. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in a recent letter to President Obama expressed his dismay at the drastic increase of contractors as a private army in Iraq. "The American people have a right to know the past, present and future status of private security contractors in these regions," Mr. Issa wrote. Taken a step further, the American people have a right to know that our stated withdrawal is far from a true withdrawal of our presence from Iraq.

The danger of this continued involvement in the country we invaded on false pretenses almost nine years ago cannot be ignored. With aspirations for freedom and democracy spreading throughout the region, a perceived U.S. client-state will act as a thorn in the region's side. How can Iraqis believe in their system of government while they watch the continued construction of permanent U.S. facilities in Iraq?

Many nationalist Iraqi groups — including those in the insurgency as well as underground organizations — oppose America's large presence, and some have promised increased violence. Muqtada al-Sadr's party, with 40 seats in parliament and an underground army, has threatened a variety of measures, demonstrating its opposition to the extended presence of the U.S. footprint. These militants do not care whether the Americans in their country are troops or contractors. The continuing influence of Mr. al-Sadr's group should not be underestimated; in late September, a huge demonstration of his followers marched against the extension of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Our current policy in the region, as it convulses with the fever of freedom and democracy, is to treat each country as a specific case rather than prescribe a one-size-fits-all reaction to these revolutions. That is the most realistic and measured response. But as the Arab spring turns to fall, the Obama administration's claims of support for these movements and its call for "other nations [to] respect Iraq's sovereignty" must show in our actions. We won't be believed if pronouncements of a free and sovereign Iraq are made from the top floors of our office complex in Baghdad.

Adil E. Shamoo, a native of Iraq, is a senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and the author of the forthcoming book "Equal Worth — When Humanity Will Have Peace." His email is ashamoo@som.umaryland.edu. Bonnie Bricker is a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus, a teacher, and writer.
Copyright © 2011, The Baltimore Sun
Regards,
Adil

Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.

[flightlesskiwi]

update:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/wo...er=rss&emc=rss