State: We Don’t Know How Many Contractors in Iraq, Hah hah hah

October 5, 2011 // No Comments »

Daily Press Briefing, Tuesday, 4 October, State Department Spokesman Victoria Nuland:

QUESTION: There’s a hearing in the House on wartime contractors. A lot of concern about the civilian contractors that will be going into Afghanistan with State. And do you have any update on the status – I – we have figures of 17,000 contractors that State will be bringing in, including 5,500 security contractors –

MS. NULAND (pictured bowing to George Bush): Are you in Iraq or are you Afghanistan, or are you in both, Jill?

QUESTION: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m in Iraq. I was not quite sure where I was. (Laughter.) But I’m now in Iraq. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: D.C.

MS. NULAND: I’m glad I’m not the only one who sometimes doesn’t know where she is.

QUESTION: It felt like I was in Afghanistan. But, too bad. It was Iraq.

MS. NULAND: I don’t have the figures here. Those figures sound high to me, but obviously we’re going to have –

QUESTION: Can you get those?

MS. NULAND: — I believe the hearing was – it either was this morning or it’s going to be tomorrow, I can’t remember. But this is an effort to make clear on the Hill some of the underpinnings for the State Department budget request, where – in an environment where U.S. forces are withdrawing, who have in the past provided security for our civilian programs, we’re going to have to do some contract security. But those numbers do sound high to me. But let us get back to you.

Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!

Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq, Other Ideas

Interview on WUSA, Channel 9, Washington DC

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Thanks to JC, and WUSA, channel 9 in Washington DC, for a great interview today.

If the video is not showing above, click on over to WUSA to watch.

Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!

Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq, Other Ideas

I can’t stand by and watch Peter Van Buren’s account of the PRTs stand

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It is a long, sort of nerdy, boring article, but someone named Steve Donnelly has written what he calls a rebuttal to me, my book and my view of the PRT program in Iraq.

The piece is somewhat odd, in that he ends up agreeing with most of my points (waste, stupidity, mismanagement) while trying to say I was wrong. Whatever, it’s modern journalism.

For example, this:

As our group set off for Iraq, all of us felt as very well-briefed and trained as we could be under the chaotic and fast-track circumstances, although the parallels to disaster movies like Meteor, where a group of drillers are rapidly assembled and shot into space to emplace a nuclear device on a meteor threatening Earth, was not lost on any of us.

Our biggest challenge, as was predicted, was to get out of Embassy Baghdad and up to our duty stations. Transportation out of Baghdad for the uninitiated was not easy, as Embassy staff held one mandatory “briefing” after another as different departments could tell us little but implored us to report what we found to them (not the guy in the stove-piped office next door).

Not unlike my own points made in the excerpt now online, albeit not as clever. Actually, I’m jealous, as he said his training at State included Arabic cuss words.

Have a look at the whole article at Foreign Policy.

Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!

Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq, Other Ideas

Nation Building in Iraq: A Cartoon Summary

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This cartoon was sent to me by an anonymous soldier who had worked on civil affairs in Iraq.

Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!

Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq, Other Ideas

State and the Army: Looking Away and Looking Forward

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Much is made of the difference between State and Defense; an Internet favorite is an essay called “State is from Venus, DOD is from Mars.” Later this week I’ll be on PRI Radio with author Stephen Glain, who wrote the book State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America’s Empire to discuss this topic.

Stephen and I will hammer through the usual stuff about budgets and bureaucracies, but one point of difference, maybe one of the key points we will need to dissect, is the military’s (good) obsession with learning, with lessons learned, with self-criticism. This happens behind the scenes, of course, so while you should not expect to see much at press briefings, it is happening.

I had a chance to understand this this past weekend, when I was invited to speak to the US Army Civil Affairs Conference in Los Angeles, courtesy of the 425th Civil Affairs Battalion. Civil Affairs, CA, is the branch of the military that does reconstruction, nation building, the hearts and minds stuff that makes up my book. A bunch of soldiers, almost all of whom had already served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, spent a weekend talking critically among themselves and listening to speakers chosen for their varying points of view. So, in addition to a number of military speakers, I shared the stage with Nathan Hodge, author of Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders, Carter Malkasian, a former contractor PRT leader from Afghanistan and author of Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare PB (Companion), Teru Kuwayama, a brilliant combat photographer now on fellowship at Stanford and author of The Freedom: Shadows And Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, Steve Zyck of the NATO Civil Military Fusion Centre, as well as a professor who studies the role of gender in post-conflict situations and a Marine working on the use of women soldiers to better interact with the gender-separate societies typical of Islam (interesting point: women soldiers were seen as a third gender when in uniform; however, when they wore a head scarf they sexualized themselves in the eyes of Muslim men and were treated poorly). The whole thing was like a Small Wars Journal piece come to life. Ground zero for development and reconstruction nerds.

Reality. The soldiers were laser-like in criticizing mistakes they had made in the past, both personal and institutional. Every break saw mini-debates form around the water fountains and while these tended to segregate by rank, I moved among them to hear no shortage of straight talk about the business of nation building, good and bad things about various PRTs they had served with in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanders who got it and those who did not.

Though every PRT in Iraq had been lead by a State Department Foreign Service Officer, and though every PRT in Afghanistan had had at least one FSO on staff, the State Department did not send a representative (I was present in my private capacity). The Army did invite local press, as well as ROTC cadets from nearby colleges. Both were encouraged to join in the discussions.

And there’s the money shot: as the US seems edging toward a new stream of reconstruction work (the rumors in the room spoke of work to come in Libya, Yemen and maybe even Syria), the Army is preparing by looking back on its work since 2001. Units preparing for yet another deployment to Afghanistan were there to soak in lessons learned. Where was the State Department? Self-criticism and frank talk seem to be missing inside Foggy Bottom; PRT leaders are not systematically debriefed upon return to the US, and only the US Institute for Peace has made an (uneven) effort with its PRT Oral History Project. A lot of knowledge has been lost, in part due to the lack of interest in writing it down, but perhaps in larger part due to a culture that seems to fear taking a hard look at itself. Maybe they are afraid of what they would see?

Go Army!

Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!

Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq, Other Ideas

Quick Corruption Update: $192k, Afghanistan

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Not to disturb anyone’s TV viewing, but a former senior construction manager pleaded guilty today to seeking $190,000 in payments as a reward for steering U.S.-funded contracts in Afghanistan.

Neil P. Campbell, 61, of Queensland, Australia, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to one count of accepting an illegal payment. According to court records, starting in January 2009, Campbell worked in Afghanistan as a contractor and acted as an agent for the International Organization on Migration. The IOM has received more than $260 million in your taxpayer money from USAID since 2002 to construct hospitals, schools and other facilities.

And also to pay bribes. Thank you for your time citizens, and we’ll return now to your normal programming.

Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!

Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq, Other Ideas