Editorial Reviews
Book Description
For the 160 national guardsmen from America's heartland, Baghdad was more than just a long way from home. It also confronted the 233rd Military Police Company with America's most difficult challenge in Iraq: establishing security in a nation rife with religious, tribal, and sectarian conflict and violence.

The first MP company assigned to patrol the heart of Baghdad, the 233rd (from Springfield, Illinois) was a key part of the American occupation forces from April 2003 to April 2004. Charged with helping rebuild the city's police force-not just reopening stations but training a new force to replace its corrupt and hated predecessors-these men and women waged a "military police war" while witnessing all of the larger conflict's central themes, from the shortcoming of prewar planning to ongoing security problems, from media coverage to humanitarian efforts.

DePue recounts the 233rd's actions in the streets and alleyways of Baghdad and the inevitable clash of cultures, along with lootings, shootings, roadside and police station bombings, and the inevitable bureaucratic bumbling. Here are the horrors of firefights and summary executions and the drama of the UN bombing. Here too is the untold side of the war, as these volunteers on their own initiative reopened Baghdad schools and took under their wing a Catholic orphanage for handicapped children located in the heart of the city.

Based on extensive interviews with the unit's members and others associated with their mission, DePue's eye-opening account also covers what it was like for the 26 women of the unit, how a romance blossomed between two MPs, and how support groups back home-with the help of the Internet-helped families cope with worry over loved ones.

The 233rd's story is not only deeply compelling, it is also central to our understanding of one of the most momentous problems of our day and helps us understand what went wrong-and what went right-during that crucial first year. As one of a frustrating war's few success stories, it epitomizes the work of America's citizen-soldiers and attests to the vastly expanded role that guardsmen and reservists now play in our nation's defense.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

From the Back Cover
"This is the best unit memoir to come out of the Iraq War to date and is sure to become a military classic. It deserves the widest possible readership."-Michael D. Doubler, author of Civilian in Peace, Soldier in War: The Army National Guard

"DePue vividly captures the experiences of America's citizen-soldiers at war. One can almost taste the dust and feel the heat of Baghdad between the pages."-Peter R. Mansoor, director of the Counterinsurgency Center at Ft. Leavenworth and author of The GI Offensive in Europe

"A great read and an important story that urgently needs to get out to the public."-James S. Corum, author of Fighting the War on Terror: A Counterinsurgency Strategy

See all Editorial Reviews

Steam rises from the eight cooling towers at a power station in England, October 2006. Japan and the United States will lead a five-nation project to develop a coal-fired power plant which discharges no carbon dioxide into the air, a press report said Sunday.

Japan and the United States will lead a five-nation project to develop a coal-fired power plant which discharges no carbon dioxide into the air, a press report said Sunday.

The five nations, including China, India and South Korea, are expected to sign a deal this year on technological cooperation for the project, the leading business daily Nikkei said quoting Japanese government sources.

The new plant will cut carbon dioxide emissions by some 20 percent from the level of conventional models by gasifying coal with oxygen before burning it.

Then the carbon dioxide generated at the plant will be liquefied and locked in an underground storage facility, the report said.

At their meeting next Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President George W. Bush are expected to reaffirm cooperation in combating global warming, it said.

The paper said that Tokyo aims to strengthen its alliance with Washington in the development of technology to control carbon dioxide emissions amid intensifying competition with Europe.

A pilot plant, with a relatively small capacity of about 280,000 kilowatts, will be built in the United States, with each of the four other countries contributing at least 10 million dollars to the project, the Nikkei said.

Most of the cost, estimated to top one billion dollars, will be borne by the United States, with Japan and other participants supplying technology.

The costs of building and operating the new power plant will initially be twice as much as a conventional coal power station. But the costs will be reduced to make the project profitable by the 2020s, it said.

© 2007 AFP

April 22, 2007
The Riddle
Say It Loud. Improvise. Keep ’Em Guessing.

By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD

MOKTADA AL-SADR’S power is felt from Baghdad to the Beltway even when he has vanished from sight.

For the last month, from a secret location, the young Shiite cleric has fanned the flames of Iraqi nationalism and anti-American sentiment, a sure path to popularity in his frightened, frustrated land.

He organized a protest that drew tens of thousands of people to the Shiite holy city of Najaf to demand an end to the American military presence. They burned American flags and chanted, “Death to America!” Then, last week, he withdrew his six cabinet ministers from the government, complaining that it was not doing enough to rid the country of the Americans.

But press his aides for concrete details of a timetable to present to the Americans, and the picture becomes murkier. They say they want the Americans out. But not just yet.

“In order to drive out the occupation, we need to build up the security forces; then we can have a timetable,” said Abdul Mehdi Mutairi, one of Mr. Sadr’s top political officials, as he smoked at his desk inside the main Sadr office in Baghdad, his television tuned to an Iranian-financed satellite network. He was referring to the Iraqi government’s largely Shiite army and police, which by all accounts could not yet control Iraqi violence on their own.

The gap between Mr. Sadr’s public oratory and his actions shows that he, as much as any American or Iraqi official, is captive to the fact that there is no easy path to securing Iraq’s future. He does have a starkly plain vision — a centralized Islamist Iraq ruled by nationalist Shiites who are distanced from, if not openly hostile to, the United States. But he also has a problem all too familiar to the Bush administration: he does not know exactly how to realize his vision, given the complexities of the conflict.

He has become a great improviser, the Miles Davis of the war.

He publicly courts anti-American Sunni nationalists while his Mahdi Army militia kills Sunni Arabs. He denounces Shiite groups backed by Iran while he is said to be hiding in Iran and taking instructions from clerics there. He promotes Shiite unity while Mahdi fighters battle other Shiite groups in cities across the south, as they did this month in Diwaniya.

There is even widespread talk that he has ordered an elite wing of the Mahdi Army, known as the Thahabiya, or Golden Unit, to assassinate rogue militiamen from his own organization.

Last week, as his allies quit the cabinet, he said he could no longer work with the government. But he left his 30 legislators in the Parliament.

A secular senior Iraqi official said Mr. Sadr’s thinking was in constant evolution, groping for a workable strategy for the war.

“The Sadrists, I’ve said all along, operate on a Hezbollah model,” the official said, referring to the nationalist Lebanese Shiite group that has successfully fought Israel. “But Hassan Nasrallah is much more sophisticated than Moktada al-Sadr. Mookie is a reflection of the rough world of Iraqi Shia, and Hassan Nasrallah is a reflection of the sophisticated world of Lebanese Shia.”

Perhaps nothing is more surprising than the fact that Mr. Sadr’s attitude toward the Americans actually reflects a degree of ambivalence.

Anti-Americanism is the basis of his unflagging popularity. More than any other Iraqi politician, he is willing to recognize, validate and capitalize on the refusal of large segments of the Shiite population, especially the poor and dispossessed, to buy into any government that has the support of the Americans. It is one of the most vexing problems for the Americans, since President Bush’s whole strategy rests on the premise that formerly oppressed Shiites will work with the Americans.

“How can we accept the fact that our country is taken over or occupied, especially since we’ve seen nothing from the occupier but destruction for four years, and they’ve succeeded only in planting sectarian strife?” Mr. Mutairi said.

“Our priority is to drive the occupation from the country,” he said.

But there is an unacknowledged dependence by Mr. Sadr on the Americans themselves.

While Mr. Sadr’s aides criticized Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki last week for refusing to set a timetable for American withdrawal, Mr. Sadr himself has not come forward with deadlines. (The Democrats in Congress have taken a stronger stand.)

One leading Sadr legislator, Bahaa al-Aaraji, said the Americans should stay no longer than two more years. But like Mr. Mutairi, he insisted that the Iraqi security forces had to be well-trained before the Americans left.

In other words, beneath all his fiery talk, Mr. Sadr seems to understand that the Shiite-dominated security forces — which include many recruits from his militia — still need training and equipment from the Americans to take on the relentless Sunni militants in the widening civil war. The horrific bombings in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad on Thursday, which killed at least 171 people, underscored the fears of some Shiites that they are perhaps farther than ever from defeating the Sunni-led insurgency.

That might help explain why Mr. Sadr, despite his chest-beating, has also pulled his punches on President Bush’s new Baghdad security plan, and in the process has drawn some less-than-enthusiastic comments from members of his fractious militia.

When President Bush said this winter that he was sending nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq, Mr. Sadr said through his aides that he would comply with the plan. He ordered his militia to lie low. There has since been a drop in death squad killings, and American military commanders attribute some of it to Mr. Sadr’s orders. Meanwhile, the Americans have continued to arrest militiamen and raid safehouses.

Some Mahdi Army commanders are all too aware of the awkward situation.

“Take for example something that happened in the Orfeli area of Sadr City,” said Abu Tiba, who leads 30 to 40 men in the Sadr City slum. “The Americans recently tried to arrest a Mahdi Army commander named Abu Ali. The Americans couldn’t find the commander, so they arrested two civilians instead. We were very angry, but we didn’t do anything because we have orders to be quiet, not to attack.”

“We’re never afraid,” he said. “We have all our weapons. We’re ready, we’re just awaiting orders.”

The endless stream of Sunni-built car bombs, and the inability of the Americans to stop them, has also tested the patience of Sadr officials. “It’s on its way to failure,” Mr. Mutairi said of the security plan.

One of the biggest threats to the plan is the possibility that as the bombings continue, Shiite militiamen will step up their killings of Sunni Arabs, plunging the capital back into a cycle of sectarian revenge.

Should that happen, it would expose once again another glaring contradiction in Mr. Sadr’s policies — his attempts to ally with anti-American Sunni Arabs even as his militiamen slaughter them.

During the mass protest in Najaf on April 9, Sadr officials brought in a few conservative Sunni Arabs in a show of cross-sectarian unity. But the violence on the ground, especially in Baghdad, where Shiite militias have driven Sunni Arabs from entire neighborhoods, suggests that Mr. Sadr is just paying lip service to Sunni-Shiite harmony.

Just as complicated is Mr. Sadr’s relationship with Iran. Like many prominent Shiite leaders, Mr. Sadr has kept close ties to Iran, and the Americans have said he has been in hiding there during the current troop buildup. Yet, Mr. Sadr’s main distinction from his greatest Shiite rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is that his father, a powerful cleric, stayed inside Iraq to oppose Saddam Hussein while Mr. Hakim’s family fled to Iran and founded the Supreme Council there.

Because of that, Mr. Sadr has a much greater popular base here than Mr. Hakim or any other Shiite politician. Mr. Sadr’s rivalry with Mr. Hakim has been the greatest threat to Shiite unity. It has often exploded in violence, as it did in the clashes in Diwaniya this month, and is fueled by widely-held suspicions that Mr. Hakim is Iran’s favorite among the various Shiite leaders.

Mr. Mutairi said that an alliance with Iran had limited appeal for Mr. Sadr.

“Speaking on a religious level, it’s possible,” he said. “But the Sadrists are a nationalist movement. We reject the interference of any country. We don’t want Iran’s problems to be settled on our land.”

A few minutes later, a suicide car bomb exploded on a crowded boulevard nearby, killing at least 13 people and rattling the windows in Mr. Mutairi’s office.

Someone was settling their problems in Mr. Sadr’s backyard. Whoever it was, he, like everyone else, had issues with Mr. Sadr’s vision for Iraq.

Hosham Hussein contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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Here are comments on the article which Military strategist says is blatant pork barrel spending. Its time for a new look our global defense strategy.

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ARTICLE: "Pentagon Invites Kremlin to Link Missile Systems: A Package of Incentives; U.S. Offer Cooperation on a Defense Project Based in Europe," by Thom Shanker, New York Times, 21 April 2007, p. A1.
First off, strategic missile defense has never worked and shows no signs of working.
Second, this is just an attempt to keep that Cold War program chugging along, sucking up billions, by spreading the wealth.
Third, this is about pork barrel for East Central Europe to bind them to our strategic stance.
Fourth, how can I talk about integrating the Middle East to the world while simultaneously trying to wall it off? Why does rejecting bin Laden's offer of civilizational apartheid somehow translate into offering strategic apartheid in the meantime?
Fifth, Russia doesn't need any protection from Iranian missiles any more than Poland or the Czech Republic do.
This is nothing more than the Defense Department's biggest case of Waste, Fraud and Abuse masquerading as a diplomatic initiative. This has nothing to do with bringing peace to the Middle East or shrinking the Gap and everything to do with keeping defense contractors happy along with their Hill sponsors.
No one is going to strike anybody else with a missile in this day and age, because it's traceable and will lead to massive retaliation. Anyone who wants to blow off a nuke will smuggle it in, not loft it all obvious-like over the borders of several states.
This Reagan-era myth persists only because so much money is to be made on it.
Tell me, who's more likely to nuke Poland based on past history? Israel or Iran? How many millions of Persians were exterminated in Poland?
This is just cynical teet-sucking of the past, instead of serious dealings with the future. Shame on everybody for peddling this.

Comments by Thomas Barnett ...www.thomaspmbarnett.com

Dr. Clotaire Rapaille presents “Culture Codes: Why People Around the World Buy as They Do”

Dr. Clotaire Rapaille entranced a packed room of business marketers at the Mobium New Paradigm breakfast as he spun extemporaneous yarns spanning everything from business in China, investing in India, to love, sex and rock and roll. All of them based on his research in the role that cultural perceptions play in communications.

Understanding these inner cultural structures can enable companies to develop offerings that will hold true globally.

The Three Brains

Human beings are born, says Dr. Rapaille, with a reptilian brain (which chiefly deals with survival and procreation). The emotional part of our brain (which is concerned with love, relationships and seduction) develops in early childhood, and the intellectual brain begins to develop around age seven.

Business marketers, he warned, like to think that we live life rationally, making decisions from the intellectual and occasionally the emotional parts of our brain. In fact, many companies create international brand offerings based on research that appeals to how people say they act.

But according to Dr Rapaille, business marketers will never understand how real decisions are made around the world until they understand the real decision maker -- the reptilian brain.

The Cultural Collective Unconscious

Everything that is in a culture’s experience is “imprinted” in that reptilian part of the brain at a certain time and in a certain context and therefore has a different meaning in each culture. Imprinting is a process in which the brain forms impressions. Over time, it creates mental pathways that, once made, are difficult to change.

As a result, each culture has a collective unconscious of shared imprints that helps its members understand the world and that molds their behavior. Moreover, emotions are the mechanism that creates the imprints that are stored in the reptilian brain.

So each culture imprints its own survival kit for how to succeed in life based on whatever that culture’s vision of success is. Most relevant to marketers, each culture collectively experiences things in different contexts and has different expectations.

Marketing to the Reptilian Brain

Safety, for example, is a key motivator to the reptilian brain. Boeing is using that insight to get a leg up on Airbus. America’s cultural code is heavily invested in being the biggest in everything; so not competing with Airbus to build the biggest airliner was difficult for Boeing to overcome. But instead they concentrated on a more global-centric code of safety and personal security. Speaking to the reptilian brain, key messages include things like, “In a plane crash, would you like to try to get out of a plane stuffed with 900 other passengers or one with 300?” Air quality was found to be most important in perceptions of comfort and security, so the 787 has temperature and humidity controls at each seat.

In the reptilian brain, love is viewed as a “temporary disease” in Japan. Parents are respected for their knowledge of the world, so they are much more qualified to pick a good spouse. The U.S., on the other hand, is a divorce culture—not a love culture—with over half of marriages ending before they begin. These differences in the way two cultures view this basic reptilian motivator are relevant because many products and services, even business-to-business brands, are tied to a culture’s experience of “love.”

Ventures in China, Investments in India

Dr. Rapaille’s consultancy recently completed “discoveries” of China and India in which numerous multinationals participated. He cautioned U.S. business marketers to take care when venturing into China.

According to Chinese culture codes, China invented everything long ago, and in their minds Europeans have been plundering their innovations for centuries. So today, they believe they have the right to take back that which they originated long ago without remuneration. This is a deeply held, unconscious rationalization of reciprocity that operates within Chinese-foreign ventures and relationships.

According to Dr. Rapaille, India is a different story. The country is a mess from an infrastructure perspective, but its culture does not contain China’s deep suspicion and hostility to foreigners. So if business marketers base their decisions on intellectual reasoning it may look like a risky investment, but based on its cultural code, investments in India should produce very handsome returns in the long term.

“Culture Codes: Why People Around the World Buy as They Do” is another chapter in Mobium’s New Paradigm Series—exploring the revolutionary changes that are altering business-to-business communications, and one of the BIGfrontier breakfast seminars.