OnePeople

If you’re under the impression that the military is a monolithic, unthinking, unquestioning bureaucracy, you’ll be surprised by Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College. Think of it like Foreign Affairs for senior Army officers. Many of the articles are very relevant right now, including The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk? and The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack, which discusses the moral and practical issues surrounding “noncombatant immunity” and the Pentagon’s “effects-based” bombing strategies. The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq is a wonderfully candid analysis of the new National Security Strategy. This is a wonderful resource, and unbelieveably, it’s free.

The front page of the Washington Post has a piece on how the Bush Administration completely screwed up its negotiations with Turkey. The Administration was foolish, setting a number of fictional deadlines without consequences. It was clumsy, allowing Turkey to think that they were far more important than they actually were. Finally, it was arrogant, asserting that we didn’t need Turkey anyway. This screwed up the war, the UN vote, and did permanent damage to the US relationship with Turkey — who will be desperately needed as Iraq’s reconstruction begins.

“One week into the war, the administration’s inability to win
Turkey’s approval has emerged as an important turning point in
the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now
acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It
is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S.
and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the
administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international
support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of
its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish
relations said.”

It hasn’t been posted yet, but one of CNN’s embeds just reported from inside the city of Nasiriya, which he said was occupied by the coalition. I’m posting a summary of the report here, because it seems like it’s typical of what’s going on in the contested cities right now. The embed said that the mission, which was supposed to take 6 hours and has lasted six days, has been slowly winding down over the last three days. He made it sound as though the coalition had taken control of the town, and that the guerilla problem was relatively under control. This is in stark contrast to the reports from the BBC.

He said militias on both sides are fighting in the streets. This is also interesting, because I haven’t heard any reports of a pro-coalition militia there.

These pro-Hussein militias have hidden their weapons inthe fields surrounding the cities, and the reporter described a big effort to remove the weapons caches.

This part is a scary. Knowing that the coalition will not attack civilians, the pro-Hussein militia members shoot at the coalition units, and then immediately drop their weapons and disappear into the crowds.

Fox News cited this article, but it’s missing from their website. No coverage on CNN. A collection Russian companies shipped night-vision equipment, radar jamming, and and antitank missles to Iraq. The State Department has been talking to the Russian government about this for over a year, but the effort was complicated by the nuclear weapons treaty negotiations and their bid to get Russian help in North Korea. The Russian government said the company doesn’t exist, then said they were watching the company closely, then that the goods were legal, then that they couldn’t stop the shipments if they wanted to.