October 12, 2007
Relations Sour Between Shiites and Iraq Militia

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 — In a number of Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents are beginning to turn away from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia they once saw as their only protector against Sunni militants. Now they resent it as a band of street thugs without ideology.

The hardening Shiite feeling in Baghdad opens an opportunity for the American military, which has long struggled against the Mahdi Army, as American commanders rely increasingly on tribes and local leaders in their prosecution of the war.

The sectarian landscape has shifted, with Sunni extremists largely defeated in many Shiite neighborhoods, and the war in those places has sunk into a criminality that is often blind to sect.

In interviews, 10 Shiites from four neighborhoods in eastern and western Baghdad described a pattern in which militia members, looking for new sources of income, turned on Shiites.

The pattern appears less frequently in neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shiites are still struggling for territory. Sadr City, the largest Shiite neighborhood, where the Mahdi Army’s face is more political than military, has largely escaped the wave of criminality.

Among the people killed in the neighborhood of Topchi over the past two months, residents said, were the owner of an electrical shop, a sweets seller, a rich man, three women, two local council members, and two children, ages 9 and 11.

It was a disparate group with one thing in common: All were Shiites killed by Shiites. Residents blamed the Mahdi Army, which controls the neighborhood.

“Everyone knew who the killers were,” said a mother from Topchi, whose neighbor, a Shiite woman, was one of the victims. “I’m Shiite, and I pray to God that he will punish them.”

The feeling was the same in other neighborhoods.

“We thought they were soldiers defending the Shiites,” said Sayeed Sabah, a Shiite who runs a charity in the western neighborhood of Huriya. “But now we see they are youngster-killers, no more than that. People want to get rid of them.”

While the Mahdi militia still controls most Shiite neighborhoods, early evidence that Shiites are starting to oppose some parts of the militia is surfacing on American bases. Shiite sheiks, the militia’s traditional base, are beginning to contact Americans, much as Sunni tribes reached out early this year, refocusing one entire front of the war, officials said, and the number of accurate tips flowing into American bases has soared.

Shiites are “participating like they never have before,” said Maj. Mark Brady, of the Multi-National Division-Baghdad Reconciliation and Engagement Cell, which works with tribes.

“Something has got to be not right if they are going to risk calling a tips hot line or approaching a J.S.S.,” he said, referring to the Joint Security Stations, the American neighborhood mini-bases set up after the troop increase this year.

“Everything is changing,” said Ali, a businessman in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Ur, in eastern Baghdad, who, like most of those interviewed, did not want his full name used for fear of being attacked. “Now in our area for the first time everyone say, ‘To hell with Mahdi Army.’

“Not loudly on the street, but between friends, between families. Every man, every woman, say that.”

The street militia of today bears little resemblance to the Mahdi Army of 2004, when Shiites following a cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, battled American soldiers in a burst of Shiite self-assertion. Then, fighters doubled as neighborhood helpers, bringing cooking gas and other necessities to needy families.

Now, three years later, many members have left violence behind, taking jobs in local and national government, while others have plunged into crime, dealing in cars and houses taken from dead or displaced victims of both sects.

Even the demographics have changed. Now, street fighters tend to be young teenagers from errant families, in part the result of American military success. Last fall, the military began an aggressive campaign of arresting senior commanders, leaving behind a power vacuum and directionless junior members.

“Now it’s young guys — no religion, no red lines,” said Abbas, 40, a Shiite car parts dealer in Ameen, a southern Baghdad neighborhood. Abbas’s 22-year-old cousin, Ratib, was shot in the mouth this spring after insulting Mahdi militia members.

“People hate them,” Abbas said. “They want them to disappear from their lives.”

One of the most notorious killers in Topchi, who residents say was a Mahdi Army fighter, Haidar Rahim, was born in 1989. On a hot August afternoon, he and two accomplices shot and killed a woman named Eman, a divorced mother, in front of her house, residents said. The fighters said she was a prostitute, but shortly after her death they brought tenants to rent her house.

“They are kids with guns, who have cars and money,” said Eman’s neighbor, referring to the fighters. “Being kids, they are tempted by all of this.”

Residents’ fear was so great that Eman’s body lay untouched in a pool of blood for more than an hour, until the Iraqi authorities took it away, said the neighbor. She watched Eman’s 8-year-old son crying next to his mother’s body.

“They are bloodthirsty,” said a man whose father, a neighborhood council member from Topchi, was killed on Sept. 26. “They can kill an entire family for a $10 mobile phone scratch card.”

Mr. Rahim was killed a month later. His young face is emblazoned on a memorial sign, planted near a giant wheel of rotisserie chicken in Topchi. Some said Americans killed him. Others said Iraqis.

A spokesman for the Sadr office in Shuala, the large Shiite neighborhood north of Topchi, said that he had no information on the killings, but that any illegal actions were the work of criminals who merely called themselves Mahdi Army members.

“The claims of membership in the Mahdi Army are huge at this time,” said the spokesman, who goes by Abu Jafar. “The Sadr office is not responsible for anyone who terrorizes the people, Sunnis or Shiites.”

Patterns of violence are different in the Shiite south, where competing Shiite militias with political ties are vying for power.

The militia in Baghdad, always loosely organized, swelled with recruits after a bombing of a Shiite shrine in February 2006. The change disrupted the organization and injected it with angry young men, some with criminal pasts, who were thirsty for revenge.

Criminals began to give the organization a bad name. The price for used cars plummeted as militiamen sold vehicles that had belonged to their dead victims. A Sadr City sheik issued a religious edict permitting the confiscation of the property of Sunni militants who see Shiites as heretics. But many took it as a blank check to seize property, as long as the victim was Sunni.

A 36-year-old Mahdi Army leader from western Baghdad described a system in which victims’ cars were shipped to northern Iraq in convoys of Kurdish soldiers returning from military leave. New documents were drawn up there.

For Yasir, 35, a former member of the militia who had witnessed its breakdown firsthand, a final blow came when his cousin, a wealthy businessman, was kidnapped by young Mahdi members from the neighborhood. He was later killed.

“Don’t call it the Mahdi Army,” Yasir said. “It was the Mahdi Army when people in it had a conscience.”

In a last-ditch effort to re-establish control and respect, Mr. Sadr issued an order halting all Mahdi Army activity in August.

Abu Jafar, the spokesman, said that “the goal of this statement is to uncover the bad people that claim membership in the Mahdi Army and to let the security forces deal with them.”

While the turbulence continued in Topchi, a frontier neighborhood where local militia members are poorer, much of the activity stopped in Sadr City, the base for the most senior leaders, who have grown wealthy and are established politically, residents said.

“At first, we couldn’t drive our cars, we couldn’t walk because they have weapons, AK, pistols on the street,” said Ali, the Ur businessman. “Now they disappeared. There is nothing. You can’t see anything from these people.”

Like many Shiites, Abbas, the car parts dealer, attributes part of the drop-off to a new precision in American arrests, fed by tips from Shiite residents. Abbas said he and his friends had a name for the Americans, the Janet Brothers, a tongue-in-cheek term of tribal respect that plays off an American name. Another name, Madonna Brothers, refers to the American pop star.

American commanders like Lt. Col. David Oclander, of the Second Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, whose area includes Sadr City and other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, have seized on that cooperation. In the past month and a half, he said, Shiite leaders have begun to make contact with the Americans. The brigade is now working with 25 sheiks in the Shiite neighborhoods of Shaab and Ur and is interviewing up to 1,200 candidates for semiofficial neighborhood guard positions.

The lieutenant colonel compares the shift among the Shiites to the one in Sunni neighborhoods that began to turn against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign led.

In some cases, residents seem more willing to stand up to the Mahdi Army. In Topchi, several businessmen refused to pay protection money to Mahdi Army members this month. The news spread through the neighborhood. Four months ago, a truck driver was killed in Lieutenant Colonel Oclander’s sector, after the driver’s boss refused to pay protection money. Such retribution is much rarer now, he said.

Ali, the Ur businessman, said he expected the Mahdi Army to be much smaller in the future. People simply do not believe its leaders anymore. “There is no ideology among them anymore,” he said.

As proof, he told a story from his neighborhood about a religious man and a car acquisition.

“He was a poor man, but now he has a Mercedes-Benz,” Ali said. “The Prophet Muhammad, he didn’t even have a horse.”

Reporting was contributed by Johan Spanner, Ahmad Fadam, Kareem Hilm and Qais Mizher from Baghdad.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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October 11, 2007
Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq

By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

As described by officials who had been briefed on the closed-door discussion, the idea represents the first tangible new thinking to emerge since the White House last month endorsed a plan to begin gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq, but also signals that American forces likely will be in Iraq for years to come.

At the moment, there are no major Marine units among the 26,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan. In Iraq there are about 25,000 marines among the 160,000 American troops there.

It is not clear exactly how many of the marines in Iraq would be moved over. But the plan would require a major reshuffling, and it would make marines the dominant American force in Afghanistan, in a war that has broader public support than the one in Iraq.

Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have not spoken publicly about the Marine concept, and aides to both officials said no formal proposal had been presented by the Marines. But the idea has been the focus of intense discussions between senior Marine Corps officers and other officials within the Defense Department.

It is not clear whether the Army would support the idea. But some officials sympathetic to the Army said that such a realignment would help ease some pressure on the Army, by allowing it to shift forces from Afghanistan into Iraq, and by simplifying planning for future troop rotations.

The Marine proposal could also face resistance from the Air Force, whose current role in providing combat aircraft for Afghanistan could be squeezed if the overall mission was handed to the Marines. Unlike the Army, the Marines would bring a significant force of combat aircraft to that conflict.

Whether the Marine proposal takes hold, the most delicate counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, including the hunt for forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, would remain the job of a military task force that draws on Army, Navy and Air Force Special Operations units.

Military officials say the Marine proposal is also an early indication of jockeying among the four armed services for a place in combat missions in years to come. “At the end of the day, this could be decided by parochialism, and making sure each service does not lose equity, as much as on how best to manage the risk of force levels for Iraq and Afghanistan,” said one Pentagon planner.

Tensions over how to divide future budgets have begun to resurface across the military because of apprehension that Congressional support for large increases in defense spending seen since the Sept. 11 attacks will diminish, leaving the services to compete for money.

Those traditional turf battles have subsided somewhat given the overwhelming demands of waging two simultaneous wars — and because Pentagon budgets reached new heights.

Last week, the Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon spending bill, an increase of $43 billion, or more than 10 percent over the last budget. That bill did not include, as part of a separate bill, President Bush’s request for almost $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior officials briefed on the Marine Corps concept said the new idea went beyond simply drawing clearer lines about who was in charge of providing combat personnel, war-fighting equipment and supplies to the two war zones.

They said it would allow the Marines to carry out the Afghan mission in a way the Army cannot, by deploying as an integrated Marine Corps task force that included combat aircraft as well as infantry and armored vehicles, while the Army must rely on the Air Force.

The Marine Corps concept was raised last week during a Defense Senior Leadership Conference convened by Mr. Gates just hours after Admiral Mullen was sworn in as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

During that session, the idea of assigning the Afghan mission to the Marines was described by Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant. Details of the discussion were provided by military officers and Pentagon civilian officials briefed on the session and who requested anonymity to summarize portions of the private talks.

The Marine Corps has recently played the leading combat role in Anbar Province, the restive Sunni area west of Baghdad.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Army officer in Iraq, and his No. 2 commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, also of the Army, have described Anbar Province as a significant success story, with local tribal leaders joining the fight against terrorists.

Both generals strongly hint that if the security situation in Anbar holds steady, then reductions of American forces can be expected in the province, which could free up Marine units to move elsewhere.

In recent years, the emphasis by the Pentagon has been on joint operations that blur the lines between the military services, but there is also considerable precedent for geographic divisions in their duties. For much of the Vietnam War, responsibility was divided region by region between the Army and the Marines. As described by military planners, the Marine proposal would allow Marine units moved to Afghanistan to take over the tasks now performed by an Army headquarters unit and two brigade combat teams operating in eastern Afghanistan.

That would ease the strain on the Army and allow it to focus on managing overall troop numbers for Iraq, as well as movements of forces inside the country as required by commanders to meet emerging threats.

The American military prides itself on the ability to go to war as a “joint force,” with all of the armed services intermixed on the battlefield — vastly different from past wars when more primitive communications required separate ground units to fight within narrowly defined lanes to make sure they did not cross into the fire of friendly forces.

The Marine Corps is designed to fight with other services — it is based overseas aboard Navy ships and is intertwined with the Army in Iraq. At the same time, the Marines also are designed to be an agile, “expeditionary” force on call for quick deployment, and thus can go to war with everything needed to carry out the mission — troops, armor, attack jets and supplies.

General Petraeus is due to report back to Congress by March on his troop requirements beyond the summer. His request for forces will be analyzed by the military’s Central Command, which oversees combat missions across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and by the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. All troop deployment orders must be approved by Mr. Gates, with the separate armed services then assigned to supply specific numbers of troops and equipment.

Marines train to fight in what is called a Marine Air-Ground Task Force. That term refers to a Marine deployment that arrives in a combat zone complete with its own headquarters, infantry combat troops, armored and transport vehicles and attack jets for close-air support, as well as logistics and support personnel.

“This is not about trading one ground war for another,” said one Pentagon official briefed on the Marine concept. “It is about the nature of the fight in Afghanistan, and figuring out whether the Afghan mission lends itself more readily to the integrated MAGTF deployment than even Iraq.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-army10oct10,0,6610262.story
From the Los Angeles Times

Rethinking the U.S. Army
Some military officials call for many specialized units to train foreign forces; others say the generalist approach works best.
By Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 10, 2007

WASHINGTON — Absorbing the lessons of a troubled war, U.S. military officials have begun an intense debate over proposals for a sweeping reorganization of the Army to address shortcomings that have plagued the force in Iraq and to abandon some war-fighting principles that have prevailed since the Cold War.

On one side of the widening debate are officers who want many Army units to become specialized, so that entire units or even divisions are dedicated to training foreign militaries. On the other are those who believe that military units must remain generalists, able to do a wide range of skills well.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates is expected to weigh in today in a major address in which he will warn that the Army is unlikely to face a conventional war in the future and must reorganize to fight in unconventional conflicts.

According to senior Pentagon officials who have been briefed on the speech, Gates will not take a hard position in the debate over training foreign militaries but is expected to emphasize that the task is important and could prevent future wars. His comments are expected to accelerate the debate within the Army about how best to prepare for the next phase of the Iraq war and for future conflicts.

Gates also will single out the need for changes in Army personnel policies to better recognize and reward young officers who show promise in less traditional areas, including those skilled in foreign languages and in advising foreign forces.

Gates, who will address the largest annual gathering of Army officers in Washington, is expected to emphasize that many of these nontraditional skills were learned during the Vietnam War but quickly forgotten, leaving the Army unprepared for ensuing conflicts in Haiti, Somalia and ultimately Iraq.

"He doesn't believe anyone is going to take us on conventionally in the near future," said one Pentagon official familiar with Gates' thinking. "We can't forget the things we learned in Iraq after Iraq."

Radically different view

The view of the Army in the current debate is radically different than under the previous Defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld advocated a smaller Army with faster, more technological units that did not participate in nation-building activities. Rumsfeld considered training foreign militaries to be the duty of small numbers of special operations forces, not conventional Army units.

The debate over training foreign security forces has grown more urgent following the decision by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, to begin drawing down forces in Iraq over the next year. Decisions over the shape and organization of the Army will directly affect the post-"surge" phase of the war, which will see fewer combat troops and an increased emphasis on training and advising Iraqi forces.

In sometimes emotional sessions underway at the Pentagon and military institutes, including a recent war game exercise, Defense officials have been weighing proposals ranging from modest alterations that would add new specialties to major changes in the way the Army fights.

Most officers believe the Army will need to focus on training other foreign militaries in years to come, both in Iraq and in other countries.

Some officers, including one of the Army's most prominent counterinsurgency theorists, believe a designated force of trainers, or "advisor corps," is needed.

But others, including Gates' senior military advisor, oppose creating specialized units. They argue that a more effective strategy would be to ensure that all military leaders are able to train security forces.

Army officers at Ft. Leavenworth, where the Army's most important doctrine is created, have been working for two months on specific proposals to create training units for the Pentagon's worldwide commands. Last week, officials from the Pentagon, State Department, Special Operations Command and other military groups took part in the war game to evaluate various proposals for the teams.

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who oversees the Army schools and research institutes at Leavenworth, said the proposals would create a dedicated unit of trainers who could be assigned to each of the commanders of the worldwide regions.

"The concept here is a very specific focus: They do not do direct action; they do not command and control combat forces; they are not a combat force," Caldwell said. "Their mission is to do security-force assistance."

The size of the proposed units is undecided, and the war game at Leavenworth examined at least three different organizational structures. Army officers familiar with the proposals say the units could be supplemented by other soldiers when needed. But where those supplemental forces would come from is one of the key issues in the debate.

A senior Pentagon official said Gates in his address today would stop short of directly advocating an advisor corps. But Gates reportedly will emphasize that shoring up allies will be central to the Army's mission, even after Iraq.

The leading advocate of establishing a stand-alone advisor corps within the Army is Lt. Col. John Nagl, a co-author of the Army's new counterinsurgency field manual who is considered a rising star within the service.

In an article published in a policy journal in June, Nagl, who served as an operations officer in a battalion in Iraq three years ago, proposed a permanent force of 20,000 advisors.

"It requires a different focus in training. It requires a different mind-set," Nagl said in an interview. "Forces practicing advisory skills also need a particular way of looking at the world."

As the number of combat troops in Iraq goes down, the demand for advisors will increase, Nagl expects. Under current plans, the Army's strategy to expand by 65,000 soldiers would add new combat troops to traditional infantry brigades. However, some have argued that these new soldiers could be assigned to the advisory and training missions as well.

"If we need advisory teams for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, it makes sense to build this force structure permanently," Nagl said.

In his speech, Gates is expected to emphasize that such training missions could prevent future wars. The senior Pentagon official said Gates still believed the Army should continue training for conventional wars -- skills that have begun to atrophy as it focuses on counterinsurgency missions in Iraq. But by emphasizing training and advisory missions, he appears to be aligning himself with reformers like Nagl.

"We don't want to do the fighting; we want our friends to do the fighting," said Nagl, who trains military advisors at Ft. Riley, Kan. "And the better our training teams are, the more rapidly we increase the abilities of our friends and our allies."

High-level disagreement

But the proposal has sparked disagreement. In an article in the current issue of the academic Army journal Military Review, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the former day-to-day commander in Iraq who is now Gates' military assistant, argued against the creation of a dedicated advisor corps.

As a division commander in Iraq, Chiarelli was one of the first officers to create teams to train Iraqi forces. But Chiarelli argued that training should be performed by special operations forces, the military units that have traditionally done most advisory and training work.

When a training mission grows too large, Chiarelli wrote, the military should draw additional trainers from existing brigades. Such an arrangement would ensure that the trainers and combat units worked closely and supported one another's efforts.

In the article, Chiarelli argued that the Army must adapt to changes in warfare but that specialized units would be a mistake.

"We simply don't have the resources to divide the military into 'combat' and 'stability' organizations," he wrote. "Instead we must focus on developing full-spectrum capabilities across all organizations in the armed forces."

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

julian.barnes@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-army10oct10,0,6610262.story

Rethinking the U.S. Army
Some military officials call for many specialized units to train foreign forces; others say the generalist approach works best.
By Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 10, 2007

WASHINGTON — Absorbing the lessons of a troubled war, U.S. military officials have begun an intense debate over proposals for a sweeping reorganization of the Army to address shortcomings that have plagued the force in Iraq and to abandon some war-fighting principles that have prevailed since the Cold War.

On one side of the widening debate are officers who want many Army units to become specialized, so that entire units or even divisions are dedicated to training foreign militaries. On the other are those who believe that military units must remain generalists, able to do a wide range of skills well.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates is expected to weigh in today in a major address in which he will warn that the Army is unlikely to face a conventional war in the future and must reorganize to fight in unconventional conflicts.

According to senior Pentagon officials who have been briefed on the speech, Gates will not take a hard position in the debate over training foreign militaries but is expected to emphasize that the task is important and could prevent future wars. His comments are expected to accelerate the debate within the Army about how best to prepare for the next phase of the Iraq war and for future conflicts.

Gates also will single out the need for changes in Army personnel policies to better recognize and reward young officers who show promise in less traditional areas, including those skilled in foreign languages and in advising foreign forces.

Gates, who will address the largest annual gathering of Army officers in Washington, is expected to emphasize that many of these nontraditional skills were learned during the Vietnam War but quickly forgotten, leaving the Army unprepared for ensuing conflicts in Haiti, Somalia and ultimately Iraq.

"He doesn't believe anyone is going to take us on conventionally in the near future," said one Pentagon official familiar with Gates' thinking. "We can't forget the things we learned in Iraq after Iraq."

Radically different view

The view of the Army in the current debate is radically different than under the previous Defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld advocated a smaller Army with faster, more technological units that did not participate in nation-building activities. Rumsfeld considered training foreign militaries to be the duty of small numbers of special operations forces, not conventional Army units.

The debate over training foreign security forces has grown more urgent following the decision by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, to begin drawing down forces in Iraq over the next year. Decisions over the shape and organization of the Army will directly affect the post-"surge" phase of the war, which will see fewer combat troops and an increased emphasis on training and advising Iraqi forces.

In sometimes emotional sessions underway at the Pentagon and military institutes, including a recent war game exercise, Defense officials have been weighing proposals ranging from modest alterations that would add new specialties to major changes in the way the Army fights.

Most officers believe the Army will need to focus on training other foreign militaries in years to come, both in Iraq and in other countries.

Some officers, including one of the Army's most prominent counterinsurgency theorists, believe a designated force of trainers, or "advisor corps," is needed.

But others, including Gates' senior military advisor, oppose creating specialized units. They argue that a more effective strategy would be to ensure that all military leaders are able to train security forces.

Army officers at Ft. Leavenworth, where the Army's most important doctrine is created, have been working for two months on specific proposals to create training units for the Pentagon's worldwide commands. Last week, officials from the Pentagon, State Department, Special Operations Command and other military groups took part in the war game to evaluate various proposals for the teams.

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who oversees the Army schools and research institutes at Leavenworth, said the proposals would create a dedicated unit of trainers who could be assigned to each of the commanders of the worldwide regions.

"The concept here is a very specific focus: They do not do direct action; they do not command and control combat forces; they are not a combat force," Caldwell said. "Their mission is to do security-force assistance."

The size of the proposed units is undecided, and the war game at Leavenworth examined at least three different organizational structures. Army officers familiar with the proposals say the units could be supplemented by other soldiers when needed. But where those supplemental forces would come from is one of the key issues in the debate.

A senior Pentagon official said Gates in his address today would stop short of directly advocating an advisor corps. But Gates reportedly will emphasize that shoring up allies will be central to the Army's mission, even after Iraq.

The leading advocate of establishing a stand-alone advisor corps within the Army is Lt. Col. John Nagl, a co-author of the Army's new counterinsurgency field manual who is considered a rising star within the service.

In an article published in a policy journal in June, Nagl, who served as an operations officer in a battalion in Iraq three years ago, proposed a permanent force of 20,000 advisors.

"It requires a different focus in training. It requires a different mind-set," Nagl said in an interview. "Forces practicing advisory skills also need a particular way of looking at the world."

As the number of combat troops in Iraq goes down, the demand for advisors will increase, Nagl expects. Under current plans, the Army's strategy to expand by 65,000 soldiers would add new combat troops to traditional infantry brigades. However, some have argued that these new soldiers could be assigned to the advisory and training missions as well.

"If we need advisory teams for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, it makes sense to build this force structure permanently," Nagl said.

In his speech, Gates is expected to emphasize that such training missions could prevent future wars. The senior Pentagon official said Gates still believed the Army should continue training for conventional wars -- skills that have begun to atrophy as it focuses on counterinsurgency missions in Iraq. But by emphasizing training and advisory missions, he appears to be aligning himself with reformers like Nagl.

"We don't want to do the fighting; we want our friends to do the fighting," said Nagl, who trains military advisors at Ft. Riley, Kan. "And the better our training teams are, the more rapidly we increase the abilities of our friends and our allies."

High-level disagreement

But the proposal has sparked disagreement. In an article in the current issue of the academic Army journal Military Review, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the former day-to-day commander in Iraq who is now Gates' military assistant, argued against the creation of a dedicated advisor corps.

As a division commander in Iraq, Chiarelli was one of the first officers to create teams to train Iraqi forces. But Chiarelli argued that training should be performed by special operations forces, the military units that have traditionally done most advisory and training work.

When a training mission grows too large, Chiarelli wrote, the military should draw additional trainers from existing brigades. Such an arrangement would ensure that the trainers and combat units worked closely and supported one another's efforts.

In the article, Chiarelli argued that the Army must adapt to changes in warfare but that specialized units would be a mistake.

"We simply don't have the resources to divide the military into 'combat' and 'stability' organizations," he wrote. "Instead we must focus on developing full-spectrum capabilities across all organizations in the armed forces."

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

julian.barnes@latimes.com

October 10, 2007
Gates and the SysAdmin

Thayer Scott sent Tom the transcript from DEFSEC Gates' speech at the AUSA convention in Washington, D.C. Here is the important section:

In addition, arguably the most important military component in the War on Terror is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern their own countries. The standing up and mentoring of indigenous armies and police – once the province of Special Forces – is now a key mission for the military as a whole. How the Army should be organized and prepared for this advisory role remains an open question, and will require innovative and forward thinking.
The same is true for mastering foreign language – a particular interest of mine – and building expertise in foreign areas. And until our government decides to plus up our civilian agencies like the Agency for International Development, Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure, and promoting good governance. All these so-called “nontraditional” capabilities have moved into the mainstream of military thinking, planning, and strategy – where they must stay.

Finally, there is a generation of junior and mid level officers and NCOs who have been tested in battle like none other in decades. They have seen the complex, grueling face of war in the 21st century up close. They’ve lost friends and comrades. Some have been deployed multiple times and want to have a semblance of a normal life – get married, start a family, continue their schooling.

These men and women need to be retained, and the best and brightest advanced to the point that they can use their experience to shape the institution to which they have given so much. And this may mean reexamining assignments and promotion policies that in many cases are unchanged since the Cold War.

Tom says:

I would say John Nagl is having some serious impact. Prior to going to Ft. Riley, where I soon plan to meet up with him, he was military adviser to DEPSECDEF Gordon England.