Iraq trivia – the white Oldsmobile Cutlass

An interesting piece of trivia from Iraq.

The recent news story about two Iraqi women who were killed in Baghdad by employees of a private security firm included a description of the car involved. It was a white 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.

What is a white 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera doing in Baghdad? Oldsmobiles are not exactly hot sellers in this part of the world. Granted, there were a lot of Chevrolet Caprices in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s – their reputation for excellent air-conditioning systems made them big sellers in the desert states.

Here’s the explanation:

During the Iran-Iraq war that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988, Iraq lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers. In the early years of the war, the families of those killed did not receive compensation from the government. The Iraqis researched how other countries, including the United States, compensate the families of the fallen, and came up with a uniquely Iraqi solution.

The family of an enlisted soldier or noncommissioned officer was given a red Brazilian-made Volkswagen Passat. When I was in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988, I saw thousands of them everywhere – easily the most common vehicle on the road. The family of an officer killed in the war was given a white Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. There were a lot of them on the roads as well.

The vehicle involved in this incident was probably one of the death gratuity vehicles from that war.

Ex-Saddam defense minister set to be executed

An article by NBC News Senior Investigative Producer Bob Windrem

Did Saddam minister help the U.S.?
Why a former CIA officer says he should not be killed
ANALYSIS
By Robert Windrem
Senior Investigative producer
NBC News

For more than a year, Rick Francona, then an Air Force lieutenant colonel, was part of a secret CIA task force working to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the Clinton administration’s failed attempt at regime change in Iraq.

Now an NBC News analyst, Francona is talking for the first time about his role in recruiting generals for that mission seven years before the US invasion, and laying out why he thinks the US should try to stop the hanging of former Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed, one of the generals recruited in that effort.

Hashim has been convicted of war crimes by an Iraqi court and is scheduled to hang in the next few days, unless the US military can quietly get the Iraqi government to commute his sentence.

“I moved in and out of northern Iraq, as well as the countries bordering Iraq,” says Francona. “We were involved in what was known inside the Agency as “DBACHILLES” – the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

“We at CIA had tried to contact and co-opt as many Iraqi military officers as we could, hoping to convince them that they should not fight when and if an invasion or coup attempt occurred. That program had some successes.”

Francona says that he does not know what help Hashim provided, but notes that there is ample evidence he offered to help and that he was told that Hashim even volunteered to have communications gear hidden at his estate north of Baghdad in preparation for a coup attempt. Moreover, Jalal Talabani, the man who brought Hashim to the CIA’s attention, and now President of Iraq, has said publicly that the defense minister “cooperated” in the effort, Francona notes.

“DBACHILLES”--the DB was the CIA designator for Iraqi operations—was based on what the agency thought was the dictator’s Achilles’ heel: a military whose loyalty even Saddam questioned. Saddam understood the professional military was more loyal to the nation than it was to him. That was one reason why he had set up the Republican Guard and the Special Security Organization as well as a host of intelligence and counter intelligence organs. They were loyal to him personally. Better paid and better equipped than the military, the Guards and SSO were Saddam’s last line of defense. The military, the CIA believed, was vulnerable to recruiting pitches that played on their patriotism.

So during 1995-96, Francona was temporarily assigned from his role as a Defense Intelligence Agency officer to the CIA. He was uniquely equipped for the duty. Fluent in Arabic, Francona had worked out of the defense attaché office in Baghdad at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. As a Defense Intelligence Agency official, he had worked as America’s liaison officer to Iraq’s Directorate of Military Intelligence. He traveled extensively observing Iraqi combat operations against Iranian forces, and even flying sorties with the Iraqi air force. It was Francona, in fact, who had shown Iraqi intelligence officials US satellite photos of the Iran-Iraq battlefield and it was Francona who first gathered the proof that Iraq had used nerve gas on Iranian troops in 1988.

Then, he got another view of Iraq’s military during the Gulf War. He served as General Norman Schwarzkopf's translator, reading intelligence reports, briefing Schwarzkopf, and ultimately translating Schwarzkopf's commands to defeated Iraqi generals, one of whom turned out to be Hashim.

The agency set him up in Kurdistan, the northern section of Iraq no longer under Saddam’s control. Working out of a heavily sandbagged house in Sal-ah-din, Francona worked with Kurdish officials and ran several operations, training Kurdish pershmerga militants, extricating the family of an Iraqi nuclear scientist who had defected and meeting regularly, even daily, with Kurdish leaders, including Talabani. At the time, Talabani was head of the PUK, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the main Kurdish opposition group. He is now President of Iraq.

“I met with Talabani on numerous occasions. I was a guest in his home, we had professional meetings almost daily,” says Francona. “In 1996, we were involved in supporting the Kurds and other opposition groups operating out of northern Iraq, also other countries in the region.

“Part of that was cooperating with the PUK, and Jalal Talabani, in a meeting told us he had taken steps to contact people in the Iraqi administration, and one of them being Sultan Hashim.”

Francona explained that during a meeting with “Mam Jalal”, Talabani’s nickname in Iraq, he revealed that he had made contact with a “senior member of the Saddam regime” who was willing to work with the CIA to remove Saddam. Francona asked who he was talking about…”Obviously this was of great interest to us.”

Talabani explained that he was working with Hashim on the overthrow of Saddam. Francona understood instantly the importance of . He had been the Deputy Director of Operations of the Iraqi armed forces in March 1991, the man who had surrendered to Schwartzkopf at Safwan in southern Iraq.

"Talabani told us, the Central Intelligence Agency, that he had been in contact with Sultan Hashim Ahmed, and that Sultan Hashim was willing to cooperate with us in removing Saddam Hussein from power,” says Francona.

The recruiting of Hashim was kept separate from the recruiting of lesser Iraqi generals. Still, at one point, Hashim’s name was entered into a CIA database as an “agent of influence.” An operation was approved. Francona says he does not know for certain what happened after that. Talabani was handling Hashim. But Francona says he was told: “There was a meeting between an intermediary and Sultan Hashim at a farm…we would call it an estate. My recollection is that we could hide some communications gear there and would be used to communicate with Sultan Hashim”.

Did he help? Francona says he doesn’t know. Officially, the CIA declines comment. A former CIA official says he doesn’t think Hashim did much if anything, but Talabani said last month that he cannot morally sign an execution order for Hashim’s hanging as President of Iraq, stating bluntly, “He used to cooperate”.

"I had known him. He had relations with us during Saddam's regime," Talabani told a press conference in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah. "We were urging him to revolt against Saddam. How can I today sign his execution order when I was the one who provoked him then to rebel against Saddam. No, No, No. I will not do it. I used to urge him to rebel against the government and he used to cooperate so how can I now authorize his execution? I just cant."

Francona says that Talabani has a problem with the death penalty in general. He wouldn’t sign Saddam’s execution order, letting a deputy do it. But the case of Sultan Hashim is different.

"Talabani hasn't signed anybody's death warrant,” says Francona. “He's designated that responsibility to somebody in his office, but he does not want Sultan Hashim executed, he's tried to get clemency for him. So, he's not going to sign any death warrant.”

Talabani can’t issue a clemency order. Only Nouri al Maliki and the Iraqi courts have that right. Now, the question is whether the US military can convince them to commute the death penalty to life in prison. Time is short. Hashim could be hanged in the next few days.

If he is, says Francona, it will not be a good thing for US intelligence, even if Sultan Hashim’s cooperation was minimal.

“If Sultan Hashim was willing to cooperate with us, if he did cooperate with us, now he finds himself facing Iraqi justice - it just doesn't seem right to me,” he says. “I think we owe him the benefit of the doubt, and at least get his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. But to have him executed really does us no good.

“This sets a really bad precedent for people who are willing to cooperate with the United States. If they're willing to cooperate with the United States, and then, they find themselves justice in their own country, why would anybody cooperate with us in the future?”

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

NBC Worldblog - from Ally to Adversary

Richard Engel, NBC Middle East Bureau Chief writes:

FROM ALLY TO ADVERSARY?

To survive under Saddam Hussein, you had to feign loyalty and turn on your friends. To survive after Saddam, you had to cooperate with Saddam's enemies. It's a reality that has left so many in Iraq with checkered pasts.

Some former spies have done well and reinvented themselves. Others have been forgotten and disavowed.

Saddam's final defense minister Sultan Hashim says he is one of the betrayed.

I met Hashim in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion. He was gruff, portly, and abrupt and ended up looking somewhat foolish. I was in the Palestine Hotel, holed up with a few journalists still in Baghdad, taking shelter from the rain of bombs and rockets. Hashim had come to give a statement to the tiny Baghdad press corps.

VIDEO: U.S. goes to bat for a former Saddam aide who also worked for the CIA

He sat at a table set up on a little stage in the Palestine's main conference room. A giant map of Iraq was pinned to the wall behind him. Hashim’s main message was that American troops were bogged down in southern Iraq and were not advancing toward Baghdad as quickly as American commanders claimed. Hashim wasn't fooling anyone. As he spoke, the map behind him shook like paper in the wind as American JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions) and cruise missiles exploded outside. Nope, no Americans here. It was almost funny.

But it turns out Hashim wasn't working only for Saddam. He'd also volunteered to work for the CIA to overthrow the dictator.

Saddam’s Achilles’ heel

According to Rick Francona, an NBC News analyst who worked in northern Iraq for a secret CIA task force code named Achilles, Hashim reached out to the CIA in 1996 through the former Kurdish rebel leader Jalal Talabani.

Francona and his team were trying to overthrow Saddam. Talabani said Hashim wanted to help.
The CIA, Talabani, Ayad Allawi, Gen. Abdullah Shawani and several Iraqi officers were all deeply involved. Their names have been previously published. The plot was called "Achilles" for "Achilles' heel," the weak spot that ultimately brought down the fabled hero. The army officers and insiders, men like Hashim, were meant to be that weak spot, the Achilles' heel.

It's unclear exactly how much Hashim actually did for the CIA. He certainly was helpful to Talabani, who in turn was helpful to the CIA. Talabani said Hashim "made calls," "communicated" and "helped rebel against (Saddam's) government."

But the CIA's 1996 coup never materialized. Saddam infiltrated the conspirators and executed as many as 200 of the plotters, including two of Shawani's sons.

The survivors, however, would get their chance again when the U.S. took a more direct approach to toppling Saddam, invading the country in 2003.

The class of 1996 did well by the invasion.
· Talabani became president.
· Allawi became Iraq's first prime minister.
· Shawani became intelligence chief.

But what happened to Sultan Hashim?

Eight of hearts in U.S. deck of cards
He was sentenced to death in June, convicted as a war criminal.

A U.S.-funded Iraqi court convicted Hashim of involvement in the murderous campaign against Kurds in northern Iraq known as the Anfal. Kurdish officials say an estimated 160,000 Kurds were killed by Saddam's forces, some with chemical weapons. Hashim was a commander in northern Iraq at the time. He may very well have been guilty of war crimes. But it seems by 1996, he wanted to be OUR war criminal.

It didn't work out that way. After U.S. forces toppled Saddam's government, Hashim suddenly found himself on the run, listed as the eight of hearts on the U.S. "deck of cards" of Iraq’s most wanted former leaders.

Hashim escaped to Mosul, where he has many supporters and relatives. That's where he came into contact with Gen. David Petraeus, now commanding general in Iraq. At the time Petraeus was the commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Petraeus wanted Hashim to surrender and sent him a letter, a copy of which was provided to NBC News by Hashim's former aides.

In the letter, Petraeus wrote:

"... I offer you a simple, yet honorable alternative to life on the run from Coalition Forces in order to avoid capture, imprisonment, and loss of honor and dignity befitting a General Officer. I officially request your surrender to me. In turn, I will accept this from you in person. You have my word that you will be treated with the utmost dignity and respect, and that you will not be physically or mentally mistreated while under my custody."

A spokesman for Petraeus, who was forwarded the letter by e-mail, said it "appeared to be an authentic copy."

The spokesman said Hashim "was treated with respect while in American custody. But there was never any promise of amnesty."

That's not how Hashim's family says the defense minister saw it. His son, brother and former chief of staff tell NBC News Hashim was promised protection and that intermediaries negotiating for Petraeus even suggested the former defense minister would be able to assume a prominent role in the new Iraqi armed forces. Petraeus’ spokesman said the general never had made any promise other than a dignified surrender. Intermediaries might have gone further.

Hashim did surrender to Petraeus, and his aides say he was treated with respect by the American commander. Hashim's aides, however, said they were shocked that the U.S. military handed him over to an Iraqi court that swiftly sentenced him to death.

Will he or won’t he?
Now here's the real twist.

According to Iraqi law, as president, Talabani must sign Hashim's death sentence. He must approve the execution of a man with whom he conspired against Saddam, a man he introduced to the CIA.

Last month, Talabani told a press conference that he will not do it.

"I used to urge him to rebel against the government, and he used to cooperate," Talabani said last month."So how can I now authorize his execution? I just can’t."

So Talabani, a Kurd, is in the bizarre position of defending one of Saddam's top generals convicted of war crimes against Kurds.

For now, there's a deadlock over Hashim's execution. Quietly some American officials here are working for some sort of compromise. CIA officials tell us they are not trying to commute Hashim's sentence.

Read more about Sultan Hashim's involvement with the CIA from NBC News' Senior Investigative Producer Robert Windrem: Did a former Saddam Minister help the U.S.?

It's time for Blackwater to leave Iraq

This article appeared on MSNBC.com

It's time for Blackwater to leave Iraq
Francona: Private security company is a problem the U.S. doesn't need

COMMENTARY
By Lt. Col. Rick Francona
Military analyst
MSNBC

The killing of two Iraqi women in Baghdad by an Australian private security contractor has again highlighted the ongoing debate about the role of private security companies in Iraq.

Although there are numerous contract security firms in Iraq, one name always comes to mind, Blackwater USA. One of Blackwater’s major contracts is to provide security, mostly convoy security, for members of the American Embassy in Baghdad as they travel around the area.

It was such a mission that has led to the current scrutiny. On Sept. 16, there was an incident in which 17 Iraqis were killed by Blackwater employees and the Iraqi government believes Blackwater is at fault. The Iraqi government is demanding not only $8 million compensation per victim, but that the United States also hand over Blackwater employees involved in the shootings to face Iraqi justice.

The U.S. government's use of contractors is not unique to the Iraq war nor to the present. It goes back to the Civil War and the push west under Manifest Destiny. Sutlers provided rations and supplies as the U.S. Army moved west. In World War II, contractors were a common sight on military installations, and have always been considered a “force multiplier.” Why use trained soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines to do routine, non-military type functions when you can contract them out? Duties such as cooking, cleaning, construction, maintenance, supply, etc. can all be done more effectively by contractors, freeing up trained military personnel for direct combat, combat support and combat service missions.

As the size of American military forces became an issue and troop ceilings were mandated, the use of contractors became even more important. Contractors normally do not count against troop strength. When the Department of Defense is ordered to station only a finite number of troops in a particular area, the use of contractor support allows that lower number to be met more easily. You can maintain a larger force with contractors than without. The advantage is a more potent military force with fewer active troops.

In recent years, the role of contractors has changed, by necessity. With the drawdown of the U.S. military to about one-half of one percent of the population, coincident with a two-front war and our existing global commitments, there are not enough combat forces to meet all the requirements. To meet the demand, contract personnel have moved into roles formerly reserved for military personnel.

Increased contractor roles have provided lucrative opportunities for people with the right skills, including Arabic linguists, interrogators and, of course, former members of elite combat forces, specifically the Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces. The use of contractor linguists and interrogators became an issue during the Abu Ghraib scandal and at Guantanamo.

Why? The problem is accountability and the ambiguous legal status of contractors. At the Abu Ghraib prison, because they possessed skills critical to the mission, contractors operated outside the normal chain of command and in conditions conducive to abuse. Their status was never officially defined and their legal status not negotiated by the organization sponsoring the contract. What we have seen also is a fundamental change in the use of contractors.

In the past, they provided support and now they have become an integral part of the mission. It is hard to imagine a deployed U.S. military force operating without contractors. This may not sound like a good idea, but with the size of the U.S. military, we have little choice.

The issue at hand is the use of private security companies in Iraq. For the most part, these companies provide a necessary service, guarding supply convoys and protecting infrastructure. Unfortunately, the highly visible presence of companies like Blackwater on the streets of Baghdad has made their name almost a household word. In Baghdad it evokes the same negative psychological response as Abu Ghraib.

Fair? Maybe not, but that is not the issue. The issue is perception, and in the Middle East the perception quickly becomes the reality. Blackwater, once an asset to the U.S. Embassy for protection of its diplomats has become a liability for the overall mission of the United States. This comes at a time when there are some positive results in American military operations.

The Blackwater issue is a distraction we don’t need. The State Department needs to cancel that contract, then enter into another contract but this time with better oversight by the Diplomatic Security Service and well-defined legal parameters.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the long haul

This article appeared on MSNBC.com

Keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the long haul
Forces need to stay — with correct mission — to protect interests in region

COMMENTARY
By Lt. Col. Rick Francona
Military analyst
MSNBC

In the last Democratic candidate debate, neither of the two front-runners would pledge that by the end of his or her first term there would be no U.S. troops in Iraq. Sen. Barack Obama said he would “drastically reduce our presence there to the mission of protecting our embassy, protecting our civilians and making sure that we’re carrying out counterterrorism activities there.”

There are two separate but related issues here, the continued presence of American forces in Iraq and the definition of their mission. First, let’s look at the definition of the mission. Limiting the troops to the three specific missions articulated by Sen. Obama is not only unrealistic, it’s virtually impossible. If there are American troops in Iraq, they will have to address any and all threats, be they from Iraqi insurgents, Shiite militias or al-Qaida terrorists. Are the troops supposed to ask the affiliation of a threat prior to taking action? Does the senator propose to restrict the military with impossible rules of engagement such as, “Determine that the opposing forces are in fact members of al-Qaida in Iraq before commencing hostilities

The senator should have added to his list of missions “protecting America’s vital interests in the region.” In real terms, that means protecting access to Persian Gulf oil — yes, it’s about oil — and maintaining the security of the state of Israel. These have been our interests for years, and adequate protection of those interests requires the presence of American military forces in the region.

American troop presence in the region is nothing new. The U.S. Navy has maintained a continuous presence in the Persian Gulf since World War II. The headquarters of the Navy’s forces in the region, now called the Fifth Fleet, is in Mina Sulman, Bahrain. Air Force units began deployments to Saudi Arabia soon after the 1979 Iranian revolution — those units are now located in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Although the U.S. Central Command tried to get a land force presence in the region, it was unsuccessful until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Since the liberation of Kuwait, American ground forces have maintained a facility there for storage of equipment called prepositioning, or “PREPO” in military parlance, and staging of units entering Iraq. The United States now has defense pacts with several gulf countries, and many of these states regard the United States as a counterbalance to increasing Iranian power and influence in the region.

I don’t believe Sen. Obama would disagree with the premise that we need to keep troops in the Persian Gulf region to protect our national interests. Just as we have had troops in Europe and Asia since the end of World War II, we need to maintain a military presence in the Middle East. Our interests there are no less vital than our interests elsewhere and are likely more at risk. The rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to New York and the Israeli airstrike on a possible North Korean nuclear-related facility in northeast Syria underscore the point.

If we can divorce the emotion over the war from the argument, Iraq is an ideal location to project U.S. power throughout the region. It is centrally located and home to excellent facilities such as the sprawling air base at Balad. If we assume that the two primary threats to security in the region are Iran and Syria, an American military presence in Iraq places our forces in a central position to counter those threats with military force if necessary. Combined with effective diplomatic initiatives that have virtually surrounded Syria and almost surrounded Iran, the United States can leverage military presence to bring pressure on these two rogue states.

Iraq is not only centrally located, but it is more accessible via sea, air and land than the other options. The Persian Gulf provides sea access via the newly upgraded ports of al-Basrah and Umm Qasr. Land access from Kuwait and Turkey can be complemented by access from Jordan, whose port at al-Aqaba was Iraq’s proxy port when its access to the Persian Gulf was blocked by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. Air access via NATO ally Turkey provides excellent access to American military facilities in Europe and Central Asia.

The debate over whether we should have invaded Iraq has become a historical argument. Now that we have forces there, we need to make sure we can address future threats in the region effectively. Troops in Iraq — a stable Iraq, I hope — will give us that ability.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Attack the Iranians? It's about time!

According to an article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine, the U.S. military is planning air strikes on Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facilities. This article, if true – consider the source – purports that the planning, being done by the Air Force planners at the Pentagon, has shifted from strikes on key facilities of the Iranian nuclear program to strikes on IRGC Qods Force installations.

These people have been killing our troops – it’s time to hit back.

The Qods Force is the elite special operations unit of the IRGC. They have been sent into action in Lebanon, Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq, and probably as of late, Afghanistan. They have American blood on their hands in Lebanon and Iraq for sure, and possibly recently in Afghanistan. It is the Qods Force that is providing the Iranian-made weapons components – explosively formed projectiles - being used in roadside bombs that have killed over a hundred American troops in Iraq.

It goes back for decades. In Lebanon, the IRGC was directly involved in the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks at Beirut airport, complicit in the kidnappings, torture and murders of CIA Beirut station chief Bill Buckley in 1984 and U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Rich Higgins (serving with the United Nations) in 1989.

The Qods Force has been involved in other Iranian special operations in Europe, Asia and Africa. It was members of the Qods Force who were dispatched into southern Iraq in 1991 to foment the failed uprising against Saddam Husayn. They provided weapons to fundamentalist Islamic groups in Algeria in the early 1990's. In 1995, the Qods Force was involved in smuggling weapons to Bosnia's mostly Muslim army.

Of course, there are those who fear that any strike into Iran will cause the Iranians to unleash a wave of terrorism against U.S. interests in the region or elsewhere in the world. Maybe, but we cannot hold our foreign policy hostage to what the Iranians might do. Those who counsel against military action also have no alternative plan to deal with the problem. Diplomacy? Has that in any measure slowed the Iranian nuclear program?

The Iranians have attacked our troops - we owe it to them to hit back. At some point, we are going to have to address the growing Iranian threat – terrorism, nuclear, or both. Hurting the IRGC is a good place to start.

The Israeli air strike in Syria - what the target wasn’t....

In the aftermath of the September 6 Israeli air strike in northeast Syria, there has been much speculation about the target. Neither the Israelis nor the Syrians are talking about what was hit, only that there was a strike.

Whatever the target was, the Israelis considered it of such importance that it mounted a long-range raid to attack it. The area of the strike, Dayr az-Zawr, is fairly remote, yet on the Euphrates River, providing some infrastructure to support a large industrial facility.

What target would be of such significance? The speculation is that there were some nuclear-related materials from North Korea. The North Koreans have been in Syria since the 1970's. When I was the air attaché in Damascus in the early to mid 1990's, the North Koreans supplied Scud C ballistic missiles and mobile launchers. The North Korean military attaché spoke fair Arabic, so we chatted on occasion – he never denied that his country was in the missile export business. Not a bad guy, just on the wrong side. He was killed in car accident in Lebanon - against direction from the Defense Intelligence Agency, we American attachés attended the funeral, only to be lambasted by his widow for being "imperialists."

I was asked if I believed the target could have been a chemical weapons (CW) production facility. I doubt Israel would go all the way to Dayr az-Zawr to hit a CW facility – the Syrians have had indigenously-produced GB/sarin and VX nerve agents for years. We also believe they have CW warheads for their SS-21, Scud C and Scud D missiles. In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency prepared a report for Congress (Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions) that detailed Syria’s possession of the chemical munitions.

The Israelis know about Syria’s chemical warfare capabilities and have chosen to accept them. It has been Syria's poor man's mutual assured destruction weapon - if they launch a first-strike CW attack against Israel, they know what is coming back at them. It does, they believe, provide a deterrent against a major Israeli attack on Syria - a properly delivered GB or VX warhead over Tel Aviv could kill 8000 people (based on computer modeling).

I don’t know what the target was, but it had to be more than another CW facility. To me, that means something more menacing, like a nuclear facility.

NBC Nightly News

I contributed to an NBC Nightly News report on an operation possibly targeting Usamah Bin Ladin in Afghanistan last month.

The text story:

Bin Laden may have just escaped U.S. forces
August mission in Tora Bora almost snared 'high value target'

By Justin Balding, Adam Ciralsky and Robert Windrem
NBC News

A little more than a month ago, with the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and fears of a new al Qaeda attack rising, some U.S. intelligence and military analysts thought they had found one of the world’s two most wanted men just where they last saw them six years ago.

For three days and nights — between Aug. 14 and 16 — U.S. and Afghanistan forces pounded the mountain caves in Tora Bora, the same caves where Osama Bin Laden had hidden out and then fled in late 2001 after U.S. forces drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan cities. Ultimately, however, U.S. forces failed to find Bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, even though their attacks left dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban dead.

One of the officials interviewed by NBC News, a general officer, admitted Tuesday that it was “possible” Bin Laden was at Tora Bora, saying, in fact, "I still don’t know if he was there."

Still, some in the special operations and intelligence community are telling NBC News that there was a lack of coordination particularly in the choice of support troops. But with intelligence limited on who was there, no one is willing to say that the lack of key units permitted Bin Laden or Zawahiri to escape.

When the operation began in early August there was no expectation that Bin Laden or Zawahiri would be there, say U.S. military and intelligence officials. Instead, there was intelligence of a pre-Ramadan gathering of al Qaeda including "leadership" in Tora Bora. Senior officials in the U.S. and Pakistan tell NBC News that planning for the attacks intensified around Aug. 10 once analysts suggested that either Bin Laden or Zawahiri may have be drawn to the conference at Tora Bora. (When U.S. forces attacked al Qaeda camps in August 1998, following the East Africa embassy bombings, Bin Laden was attending a pre-Ramadan conference of al Qaeda in the same general area of eastern Afghanistan).

While the intelligence did not provide “positively identification” that Bin Laden or Zawahiri were at the scene, there was enough other intelligence to suggest that one of the two men was there. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are not believed to have traveled together since mid-2003 for security reasons.

Another official said that intelligence analysts believed strongly that there was a high probability that “either HVT-1 or HVT-2 was there,” using U.S. intelligence descriptions — high value targets — for Bin Laden and Zawahiri. He added that while opinion inside the agency was divided, many believed it was Bin Laden rather than Zawahiri who was present. The reason: “They thought they spotted his security detail,” said the official, a large al Qaeda security detail — the kind of protection that would normally surround only Bin Laden, or Zawahiri.

Also, locals reported the presence of groups known to be part of Bin Laden’s security detail —Chechens, Uzbeks and other Arabs, men willing to die rather than surrender top al Qaeda officials.

The military operation included "several hundred" U.S. and Afghan ground forces, say officials. Elements from the 82nd Airborne blocked off escape routes through the mountains on the Afghanistan side of the border, while helicopters inserted U.S. Navy Seals at night. The Seals pinpointed enemy positions and called in air strikes; the 82nd came in and "mopped up."
On the other side of the border, a senior Pakistani official says the U.S. military helped thousands of Pakistani forces — including their elite commando units — set up a blockade to sweep up any al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan.

Any operation to take down Bin Laden or Zawahiri would have been formidable.

“He's surrounded by the true believers,” reported Rick Francona, who worked with CIA and special ops teams in Iraq in the 1990s. “And they will fight to the death to protect him, they will probably even kill him before they allow him to be captured. So if you're going to go in that area, you have to go in there with enough force that you think you can accomplish this mission successfully and not lose all of your guys in the process.”

One senior military official said Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace personally briefed the president on the specifics of the ongoing operation.

The operation closely parallels the killing of Abu Musab al Zarqawi last year. NBC News reported at the time that the U.S. military did not positively determine that Zarqawi was in the house that was bombed. Instead, they had surveillance on Zarqawi's spiritual adviser who led them to the house, and the decision was made to take the shot because they didn’t want to miss the chance to get Zarqawi. One general predicts, "That's the way we'll get Bin Laden." They may not have that positive ID, but there'll be enough intelligence to prompt an air strike and they'll find Bin Laden in the rubble.

What happened this time? Military officials admit there were unidentified "planning and coordination problems" even before it got to execution, “primarily between the operators and the generals who give the go-orders” added an intelligence official. A company of the 82nd Airborne was brought in since a Ranger team trained in special operations was not available. But the combination of the “dark side” — the SEALs — and the conventional — the 82nd Airborne — didn't work. "They didn't gel," said the military official. There was "a lack of responsiveness to the intelligence and a lack of aggressiveness."

Michael Sheehan, a former Army Special Operations colonel and counter terrorism ambassador, says he is not surprised.

“Our response is normally too big, too slow, too cumbersome and too risk adverse and those factors normally come from Washington,” said Sheehan.“The operators normally want to go in much smaller, much more low profile in order to be able to get to the target without being identified and as those plans go up the chain of command they normally get much bigger and much more cumbersome.”

But the bigger part of the picture is the question of allocation of resources from Afghanistan to Iraq. All Delta Force and “dark side” Rangers were moved to Iraq, said a special operations officer involved in the Afghanistan operation. Left behind in Afghanistan were SEAL Team Six and some Rangers. But apparently in this case, not enough “dark side” were available. The 82nd, said a second special operations officer, “is a poor substitute … [it is] a blunder to use them on an op with dark side operators.”

Justin Balding is a Producer for Dateline NBC. Adam Ciralsky is a producer with the NBC News investigative unit. Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News special projects.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

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The video can be seen on this page: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21000298/

Italy – you brought this on yourselves

According to reports out of western Afghanistan, two Italian soldiers have been kidnapped by members of the Taliban – many believe they are likely associated with the Italian military intelligence service SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare).

This comes in an area that has not been known for recent violence. Now we have two members of the Italian contingent possibly kidnapped. Why would two Italians be kidnapped in this area? Perhaps it is because Italy has gained the reputation as the country that pays ransoms for the release of its nationals, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their past dealings with insurgent hostage-takers:

• September 2004 – Italy paid a ransom (they said only “some money changed hands”) to Iraqi kidnappers to secure the release of two young aid workers, Simona Torretta and Simona Pari. The ransom amount was estimated to in the $25 million range.
  
  
• March 2005 – Italy paid a suspected $10 million for the release of leftist journalist Giuliana Sgrena, whose case became famous when her Italian military intelligence escorts tried to run an American roadblock in Baghdad. The American troops, following the long-established rules of engagements of which the Italians were aware, fired on the car, killing one SISMI officer and wounding Sgrena and a second SISMI officer. Bottom line: SISMI, not known for its capabilities, blew it.
  
  
• May 2005 – Italian aid worker Clementina Cantoni was kidnapped in Kabul and released three weeks later. Again, it was suspected that money was paid.
  
• October 2006 – Italy paid two million dollars for the release of journalist Gabriele Torsello in Afghanistan.
  
  
• March 2007 – Italy paid a ransom to the Taliban for the release of Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, soon after her Afghan national translator was beheaded. The journalist was released after the government of Hamid Karzai agreed to release five senior Taliban prisoners in Afghan custody.

In July of this year, the Taliban kidnapped over 20 South Koreans, two Germans and five Afghans. Why? They think kidnapping work. Why not – Italy caved in and paid money and announced a troop withdrawal from Iraq, Karzai released a senior Taliban official as part of the Mastrogiacomo deal, and South Korea paid money. If you are the Taliban, the message is that kidnapping works.

The Taliban has been taking heavy casualties since the spring, after their announced “offensive.” Unable to match US and NATO forces in battle, they have resorted to roadside bombs, suicide bombing and kidnapping as their primary means of insurgency.

The Italians have created this problem for themselves. When the Iraqi insurgents or the Taliban see an Italian, they see a paycheck walking.

Pick a side, Mr Barzani

KRG President Mas'ud Barzani and author
Salah ad-Din, Iraq - 1995

Iran has been providing money, weapons and training to Shi’a militias in Iraq for some time now. These weapons include the lethal explosively-formed projectile (EFP) used in improvised explosive devices that have killed and wounded hundreds of American troops. In recent weeks, both the Secretary of Defense and commander of the U.S. Central Command have accused Iran of providing these same EFP’s to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As part of the effort to interdict the flow of these weapons into Iraq and to prevent further casualties, U.S. forces have begun hunting down members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Qods Force who have infiltrated into Iraq. Five such operatives were detained in January in the Kurdish city of Arbil. Iran claims them to be diplomats, and the Iraqi foreign minister (himself a Kurd) demanded their release. They are still in U.S. custody.

Earlier this week, American forced arrested another Iranian accused of smuggling explosive materials into Iraq. The arrest occurred in as-Sulaymaniyah, the major city in northeast Iraq, part of the Kurdish autonomous region. Iran, as expected, called the detained member an economic envoy, and threatened economic retaliation against the prosperous Kurdish area – prosperity largely due to Iranian trade.

Kurdistan Regional Government president Mas’ud Barzani called the action illegal. Mr Barzani, you need to determine whose side you are on. Are you going to blindly support the Iranian regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmous Ahmadinejad, or back the American forces that have been responsible for the security and prosperity of Iraq’s Kurds for the last 15 years?

Of course, many of the KRG’s actions have not been helpful. They have, as is their right under the Iraqi constitution, formed an autonomous region comprising three provinces in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. Fine, that’s probably the wise thing to do given the situation in the rest of the country - the Kurds have successfully established a prosperous, secure zone.

However, the KRG acts like a sovereign nation, not an autonomous region under the jurisdiction of the central Iraqi government in Baghdad. Earlier this year, KRG President Barzani banned the Iraqi national flag from public buildings in the region, ordering instead the display of the Kurdish flag. Many consider this to be an indication that the Kurds intend to establish an independent state, a step sure to anger Turkey, Iran and Syria.

There are other steps that tend to indicate this intention. Last year, at least four Kurdish airlines opened for business, offering direct flights between cities in Europe and the Middle East and the newly refurbished and improved airports in Arbil and as-Sulaymaniyah.

KRG officials have also made independent deals for oil drilling and oilfield development without consulting or involving the oil ministry in Baghdad. The most recent was this month between the KRG and JB Hunt Oil, a Texas firm.

We all support the Kurds’ right to form and administer an autonomous region. I spent a lot of time with the Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1990’s – they’re my favorite Iraqis, to be sure. That said, they have to be part of Iraq. That entails supporting the American forces that are in the country and are responsible for the Kurds’ successes.

Pick a side, Mr. Barzani. Support the United States, or support Iran. Pick carefully, as I suspect there will be reckoning about Iran in the not too distant future.