Overseas crews coming to battle Calif. wildfires
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Jul 12, 7:59 AM (ET)

By DON THOMPSON and TERENCE CHEA

(AP) Firefighter Nicole Scott, of the Novato Fire District, takes a break while working on the Butte...

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PARADISE, Calif. (AP) - As hundreds of blazes continue to char California, additional National Guard troops and overseas crews are being called in to assist exhausted firefighters, and President Bush has scheduled a visit to the state.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday ordered 2,000 more National Guard troops to join the 400 already on firefighting duty. Australia, Canada, Greece, Mexico and New Zealand are also sending firefighters and equipment, federal officials said.
"We are stretched thin, and our firefighters are exhausted," Schwarzenegger said. "The fire season as we've known it is pretty much over. ... Now we have fire season all year round."
Federal officials said they would send more equipment and personnel to California. The federal government has committed $100 million and 80 percent of its firefighting resources to California, said Glen Cannon, an assistant administrator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

(AP) A firefighter hoses downs some flames from the Butte Lightening Complex fire near Jarbo Gap,...
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"We've put a significant amount of resources there, and we'll continue to add resources until we bring the fires under control," Cannon said.
Meanwhile, President Bush scheduled a visit to survey the damage from the wildfires that have burned more than 1,100 square miles and destroyed about 100 homes.
White House spokesman Trey Bohn did not say where Bush would go to get his briefing on Thursday, when the president also plans to attend a private Republican fundraising event in Napa.
Investigators believe the hundreds of blazes that have tormented the state for the last three weeks claimed their first civilian casualty in the rural Sierra Nevada foothills this week, although an autopsy will be needed to confirm the cause of death.
The badly burned body was found in the smoldering ruins of one of several homes destroyed by the wind-whipped blaze that swept through Concow, about 90 miles north of Sacramento.

(AP) The remains of a home which burned down in the Pine Hills and Pine Meadows neighborhood of Spokane...
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The fire was so hot that it melted beer bottles, mason jars and windows into puddles of glass. Cans of food had swelled then exploded from the heat. Crews also found the remains of at least two dogs.
Concow, where 50 homes were destroyed, was under a mandatory evacuation order when flames approached the community early Tuesday, "but unfortunately not everyone chose to leave and you cannot force them to," said Sgt. Steven Pelton, a Butte County deputy coroner-sheriff. "This appears to be one of those people."
Tom Tirey, 49, who has lived in the area for 10 years, said he rode out the fire despite orders to evacuate, spending more than two hours in a hog-trough while the blaze flared around him. He survived, but his trailer and barn didn't.
"We'd been through so many evacuations and false warnings. You cry wolf too many times. This time it really did it," he said.
State officials said the current fire season has seen the most fires burning at one time in recorded California history. Aided by unusually dry and hot conditions, wildfires have burned more than 1,100 square miles and destroyed about 100 homes statewide since a lightning storm ignited 1,460 separate blazes on June 21. By Friday, more than 320 fires still were active, state officials said.
Considering the scope of the wildfires, there so far have been few fatalities and major injuries, officials said. During the first fire in Paradise last month, an elderly woman died after suffering a heart attack while voluntarily leaving her home. On July 2, a volunteer firefighter collapsed on the fire line in Mendocino County and died at a hospital a day later.
In Butte County, crews made progress Friday in containing a blaze burning in the mountains near the town of Paradise, where an earlier fire last month destroyed 74 homes. On Friday evening, officials downgraded the evacuation order that had affected about 10,000 residents since Tuesday and told people they could return home as long as they remained ready to leave on short notice.
Elsewhere in California, state transportation officials on Friday evening reopened a slice of coastal Highway 1 that had been closed for more than two weeks as a wildfire bore down on the tourist town of Big Sur. The full, 15-mile stretch of the highway is scheduled to reopen on Sunday, officials said.
The Big Sur fire was about 41 percent contained Friday after having burned 170 square miles and destroyed 26 homes.
Farther south, a separate blaze in Santa Barbara County that prompted mass evacuations last weekend was 80 percent contained after blackening more than 15 square miles. At the southern tip of Sequoia National Forest, 90 miles north of Los Angeles, a 54-square-mile blaze was almost one-third contained.
A letup in the wind aided firefighters in eastern Washington state battling a wildfire that erupted Thursday in a heavily wooded part of the Spokane Valley. It destroyed at least 13 houses and forced 200 residents to evacuate. No injuries have been reported.
The cause of the suburban Spokane fire, which grew to nearly 2 square miles, was not immediately known.

July 13, 2008
U.S. Considers Increasing Pace of Iraq Pullout

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.

One factor in the consideration is the pressing need for additional American troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and other fighters have intensified their insurgency and inflicted a growing number of casualties on Afghans and American-led forces there.

More American and allied troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May and June, a trend that has continued this month.

Although no decision has been made, by the time President Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, at least one and as many as 3 of the 15 combat brigades now in Iraq could be withdrawn or at least scheduled for withdrawal, the officials said.

The desire to move more quickly reflects the view of many in the Pentagon who want to ease the strain on the military but also to free more troops for Afghanistan and potentially other missions.

The most optimistic course of events would still leave 120,000 to 130,000 American troops in Iraq, down from the peak of 170,000 late last year after Mr. Bush ordered what became known as the “surge” of additional forces. Any troop reductions announced in the heat of the presidential election could blur the sharp differences between the candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, over how long to stay in Iraq. But the political benefit might go more to Mr. McCain than Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain is an avid supporter of the current strategy in Iraq. Any reduction would indicate that that strategy has worked and could defuse antiwar sentiment among voters.

Even as the two candidates argue over the wisdom of the war and keeping American troops there, security in Iraq has improved vastly, as has the confidence of Iraq’s government and military and police, raising the prospect of additional reductions that were barely conceivable a year ago. While officials caution that the relative calm is fragile, violence and attacks on American-led forces have dropped to the lowest levels since early 2004.

“As the Iraqi security forces get stronger and get better, then we will be able to continue drawing down our troops in the future,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said in Fort Lewis, Wash., on Tuesday. “And I think that this transition of control and of responsibility, primary responsibility for security is a process that’s already well under way and based on everything that I’m hearing will be able to continue.”

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, has already begun the review of security and troop levels. He and Mr. Bush promised in April that such a review would take place. General Petraeus is expected to be more cautious than some policy makers in the administration and at the Pentagon might like. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing military planning, said he was more likely to recommend a smaller reduction, but still a withdrawal.

One senior administration official cautioned that the president, who will have the final say, would be reluctant to endorse deep or rapid reductions if they jeopardized his goal of establishing a stable and democratic government in Baghdad.

Still, there is broad consensus in Washington and Baghdad that more American forces can now leave Iraq and that more are needed in Afghanistan.

“There hasn’t really been any discussion of numbers, and it’s definitely based on conditions on the ground,” a military officer in Baghdad said. And conditions, he went on, “are a lot more favorable than in December or April or even two months ago.”

General Petraeus, who will step down as commander in Iraq in September, will soon take over as the commander of the United States Central Command. In that position, he will oversee American forces and operations throughout the Middle East and Central and South Asia, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate confirmed him and his replacement as commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, to their new positions on Thursday.

The Pentagon has previously signaled that commanders wanted additional troops in Afghanistan — as many as 10,000 more than the roughly 32,000 there now — but with two wars seriously straining the Army and Marines in particular, officials have struggled to produce the extra forces.

A reduction of combat brigades in Iraq would free additional troops that could instead be sent to Afghanistan, though officials said that no additional forces would go until next year, when fighting is expected to intensify with the arrival of spring.

Mr. Gates has already extended the deployment of a force of 3,200 marines in southern Afghanistan by one month, essentially until winter arrives and closes many of the country’s mountain passes and remote villages.

The Pentagon also announced the redeployment of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its support ships from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea to provide what one official described as greater air power and surveillance for the mission in Afghanistan until next spring.

“We have clearly seen an increase in violence in Afghanistan,” Mr. Gates said at Fort Lewis, discussing the carrier’s redeployment. “At the same time, we’ve seen a reduction in violence and casualties in Iraq. And I think it’s just part of our commitment to ensure that we have the resources available to be successful in Afghanistan over the long haul.”

Last year Mr. Bush accepted General Petraeus’s recommendation to gradually withdraw the five extra combat brigades that he had ordered to Iraq. The last of those, Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division, is completing its withdrawal this month, bringing the number of combat brigades to 15 and the overall troop levels to about 140,000.

If the withdrawals continued at the same pace, roughly one every 45 days, three more brigades could leave Iraq by the end of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

In April, Mr. Bush approved the general’s plan to “pause” the withdrawals for 45 days, basically until mid-September, while reviewing the effect of having fewer American troops in the country. The Bush administration has been wrongly optimistic before about the future of the war in Iraq. But with major military operations in Basra, Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, and Mosul, violence has continued to drop, and Iraqi forces have increased their share of the fighting.

The White House declined to discuss the withdrawals now under consideration, but a spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, cautioned that while the president hoped to bring more troops home, he would await General Petraeus’s recommendation in September.

“For now,” he said, “we will continue discussions with the Iraqis on our shared goals of a reduced U.S. troop presence.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

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Iraq handing out cash to people on the streets
By SALLY BUZBEE and QASSIM ABDULZAHRA,Associated Press Writers AP - Sunday, July 13
BAGHDAD - It is a politician's dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq's prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally.

The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized _ as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don't get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.

The cash handouts are just one small _ if eye-catching _ part of a major investment push this summer by Iraq's government. The aim is to rebuild basic services and jumpstart Iraq's damaged economy by quickly distributing as much of the country's glut of oil revenue as possible.

U.S. officials and a fed-up American public are urging exactly that _ for Iraq to spend its own money, not America's, to rebuild the country now that violence has eased.

Yet the new Iraqi effort runs a high risk of failure: The government is disorganized, fears of favoritism remain and the shadow of corruption haunts every step.

"Money is not a problem," al-Maliki told a recent gathering of tribal chiefs in the southern city of Basra, after government forces had defeated Shiite extremists there. "But we must put it in honest hands to spend."

Despite such problems, Iraq's oil revenues, an estimated $70 billion this year, still provide the best chance of leveraging the country's fragile period of calm into something more lasting, many officials say.

Top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus has repeatedly called money a crucial weapon to lure neighborhoods from extremists and stabilize Iraq. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, urged the government to pass out money even faster this week on a trip to devastated Mosul in the north.

The United States has been doling out cash itself, most effectively to former Sunni militants who switched sides to fight al-Qaida. The military has also provided money and assistance to projects like fixing damaged roads in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City after battles there.

Yet most recent big spending announcements have been Iraqi: $100 million to rebuild Sadr City; another $100 million to the Shiite city of Basra after fighting there; $100 million for another southern Shiite town, Amarah; and $83 million to help internal refugees return home.

It's unclear how fast the project money will actually get out. Past U.S. surveys have found Iraqi officials actually spent only tiny portions of the money they had allocated, often because of disorganization in government offices or a lack of technical know-how.

Also, discrepancies feed fears of favoritism. One violence-battered and needy northern province, Ninevah, which is mostly Sunni and Kurdish, has received only 20 percent of what the central government has promised, U.S. officials said this week.

Many of the provinces where al-Maliki, a Shiite, has recently pledged money are Shiite.

Yet there are signs of small improvement, other officials say. First Lt. Paul Horton, an assistant civil military operations officer in Diyala, a mixed area north of Baghdad, sees it in efforts to get government money to local farmers suffering from drought.

"We're starting to get a lot more attention and a lot more love," he said.

As for al-Maliki, Arab leaders have long used personal handouts to also gain political loyalty.

Most of the grants the prime minister gives out are only $200 to $400 to help those needing medical care, widows or people without jobs. On one recent visit to the riverside Abu Nawas park in Baghdad, he gave a group of boys each the equivalent of $40 in dinars to buy soccer balls. The biggest grants require documentation like letters from a hospital, his aides say.

On a trip last month to Amarah, an Associated Press reporter saw the prime minister approached by several supplicants during a meeting he was chairing of tribal sheiks. An aide from al-Maliki's office handed out cash at his direction, making each beneficiary sign a receipt.

Asked the reason for such handouts, a senior adviser to the prime minister, Sadiq al-Rikabi, said: "Citizens must realize that security is not just making the law prevail ... Reconstruction and jobs are a big part of it."

___

Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi and Robert Burns contributed to this report from Baghdad.

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June 24, 2008
Why stability operations matter to Gen. Caldwell
Greetings from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas! I am visiting here for the first time, and I must say this base feels very different than other military installations. Instead of rows and rows of Humvees and Bradleys, Fort Leavenworth has a series of learning and training centers. It is in the military’s academic hub, home to the Counterinsurgency Center, United States Army Command and General Staff College, and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center. And throughout, soldiers here talk about Iraq, Afghanistan and the future of the military in academic terms.

At its helm is Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who I first met in Baghdad. Through this base, Caldwell sets the tone for how the military trains and talks about its future. It’s a freedom few base commanders enjoy. Caldwell’s focus is stability operations, or how the military trains to stabilize nations. He picks who writes doctrine, what kind of classes are taught and on and on.

I assumed that his drive was shaped by Iraq or his colleagues’ experiences in Afghanistan. But as it turns out, it is based on his tours in Panama and Haiti and the first Gulf War, examples where he says the military figured out how to win the war, but not the peace.

In Panama, he was part of the U.S. effort to remove Manual Noriega, who surrendered. But then what? “All we ever planned for the initial assault takedown and transition of authority within the government. Nobody ever talked about picking up trash, reestablishing the police force, figuring out what do with their military. …So we go in, take down the government, then somebody turns around and said ‘How are we going to get the police back out on the street?’”

After the first Gulf War, he was at the Euphrates River when Saddam Hussein’s government began slaughtering the Shiites in the south. Caldwell watched the violence unleashed across the river, night after night. His unit was ordered to stay out, but was allowed to move a hospital nearby. They treated “lots and lots of causalities” until one day they were ordered to leave.

“We did a great military operation but didn’t think through the end state again.”

And in Haiti, the U.S. military helped put Jean-Bertrand Aristide in power. Afterward, “it was all the same stuff.”

With Iraq and Afghanistan, Caldwell fretted that if the military didn't talk about stability operations during those conflicts, it would not learn the importance of stability operations. Through Fort Leavenworth, he can lead the discussion, by deciding who writes the doctrine and leads the training. “We’ve been learning the same lessons because we never codified it in writing. We never wrote the doctrine that said stability operations were critical to winning the peace.

“We have to get it right this time. …We can’t afford to lose the lessons.”

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The State Department Confronts the Synergy Crisis

by Austin Bay
June 24, 2008
The Internet won't solve the U.S. government's "synergy crisis." However, the State Department's innovative Economic Empowerment in Strategic Regions (EESR), which leverages Internet connectivity, may well help Third World entrepreneurs in hard corners like Afghanistan make business contacts, get MBA-level advice and attract financing.

It is an example of the type of "connecting, communicating and profiting" economic and political initiative it takes to win the Global War on Terror.

What's the synergy crisis? It is a soundbite for a complex, long-term problem involving bureaucratic turf battles and lack of focused leadership that costs America lives, time and money. America has trouble synchronizing its "tools of national power" -- synergizing its diplomatic, information, military and economic power to achieve a policy goal, like winning a war.

This isn't a new affliction. Arguably, the "interagency process" that the White House uses to coordinate and synergize the Pentagon, State, Treasury, and every other department and agency hasn't worked well since the Eisenhower administration. Not only does the government fail to bring "unified" governmental power to bear, but America's private sector strengths are -- at best -- applied haphazardly, if at all.

No strategist disputes the fact America's systemic power, the global tsunami of its $14 trillion economy, the nonstop avalanche of cultural and technological creativity, gives the United States an awesome though unfocused advantage in any conflict, be it diplomatic, economic or military. It takes time, however, and the sustained application of American political will and its other "power tools" for the systemic edge to defeat an opponent. Time in war is measured in loss of lives.

I guarantee EESR isn't a magic bullet, but it is precisely the kind of experimental, inter-agency initiative that eludes rigid hierarchies and finesses turf debates by leveraging the Internet's democratic capacities for lateral communication.

The program also recognizes that the Global War on Terror is a long struggle, a fight over the terms of 21st century modernity, where winning the economic and political battles will ultimately be decisive.

"I can't tell you how many times I've spoken with people from Afghanistan and Pakistan who say to me all of this (complex war) is economics," Steve Kaplitt, director of EESR, told me. "Solve the economics, and all of this will melt away."

Neither Kaplitt nor I think it's quite that simple. But terrorist and tyrant elites certainly leverage grievances magnified by systemic poverty and corruption.

Via the Internet, EESR provides "business development advocacy" and what Kaplitt calls "customized matchmaking" to help entrepreneurs in "targeted countries" (e.g. Afghanistan, Pakistan) find business partners and resources. "We solicit business proposals from entrepreneurs," Kaplitt said, "then try and match them with partners in the U.S. private sector, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and philanthropic foundations."

Translation: An entrepreneur in Kabul or a nurse who wants to open a clinic in Peshawar can get support, advice and financing from around the world.

"We call these business proposals instead of business plans," Kaplitt continued, "because some proposals will be straightforward for profit, some might be philanthropic. Say we have a proposal for a hospital -- that might be a hybrid (i.e., attracting private, public and philanthropic interest and support). Our key requirement is that a proposal produce sustainable private-sector jobs" in areas plagued by conflict.

Kaplitt emphasized that a proposal seeking direct U.S. government funds must meet all current funding requirements. "We're not offering or providing any kind of mechanism to have a fast track to get around those processes. We simply sort the opportunities and the entrepreneurs with potential partners."

Kaplitt added that this is a "free market approach," where the idea succeeds or fails based on market interest (in this case, investors and donors). The Internet, however, casts a wide net.

A proposal that meets basic criteria will be passed on to a team of volunteer MBA students for analysis and comment. The MBA teams work directly with the project's principal to refine the proposals. After polishing, the proposal is posted on the EESR Website and then "actively marketed" to public- and private-sector individuals or organizations who may ultimately become partners, investors, sources of advice or donors.

Kaplitt credits Dan Sullivan, the State Department's assistant secretary for economic, energy and business affairs, for pushing EESR as a concept and program. Sullivan served a tour as a Marine reserve office on the CENTCOM staff and saw the critical need for this type of local talent-developing initiative.