Pentagon Wants Bush To Drawdown Iraq Forces, Beef Up Afghanistan Forces

With violence on the decline in Iraq but on the upswing in Afghanistan, President Bush is facing new pressure from the U.S. military to accelerate a troop drawdown in Iraq and bulk up force levels in Afghanistan, according to senior U.S. officials.

Administration officials said the White House could start to debate the future of the American military commitment in both Iraq and Afghanistan as early as next month. Some Pentagon officials are urging a further drawdown of forces in Iraq beyond that envisioned by the White House, which is set to reduce the number of combat brigades from 20 to 15 by the end of next summer. At the same time, commanders in Afghanistan are looking for several additional battalions, helicopters and other resources to confront a resurgent Taliban movement.

Bush's decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan could heavily influence his ability to pass on to his successor stable situations in both countries, an objective his advisers describe as one of the president's paramount goals for his final year in office. They say Bush will listen closely to his military commanders on the ground before making any decisions on troops but is unlikely to do anything he believes could jeopardize recent, hard-won security improvements in Iraq.

Administration officials say the White House has become more concerned in recent months about the situation in Afghanistan, where grinding poverty, rampant corruption, poor infrastructure and the growing challenge from the Taliban are hindering U.S. stabilization efforts. Senior administration officials now believe Afghanistan may pose a greater longer-term challenge than Iraq.

"There's a real dilemma there for the U.S.," said retired Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the former commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. "In some ways, the paradox is you could make an argument that the insurgency is diminishing in Iraq and increasing in Afghanistan."

Administration officials said the White House is considering a range of steps to stem the erosion, including the appointment of a leading international political figure to try to better coordinate efforts in Afghanistan. European newspapers have focused on Paddy Ashdown, a British politician and envoy, but a former senior military officer said his appointment would be considered controversial and seems unlikely.

Bush also plans to step up his personal diplomacy with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and will soon start regular videoconferences with him aimed at more closely monitoring and influencing the situation there, officials said. Bush has long held such videoconferences with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Afghanistan is so poor and so starved for modern infrastructure, one senior administration official said, that it could well be "a longer, if not larger, challenge than Iraq." The senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the situation in Afghanistan is "not getting better. It's not getting worse. In a war footing, that's not good enough."

U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, is asking for an additional three battalions of troops from NATO countries - the equivalent of another brigade combat team - but colleagues believe that would not be enough. U.S. officials are doubtful that allies will provide all the requested troops, and predict Bush will be faced with a request for even more U.S. troops, possibly after attending a NATO summit in April in Bucharest, Romania.

The United States has about 26,000 troops in Afghanistan. NATO provides most of the additional 28,000 foreign troops in the country. Among NATO-led forces, Britain, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia have assumed the heaviest part of the combat burden alongside U.S. troops.

"I suspect that we will see increasing enemy pressure over time, which may well create demands for combat forces in the future beyond the three battalions cited now," said Barno.

U.S. officials said Bush may also consider revamping the current military structure in Afghanistan, which has McNeill serving alongside a four-star NATO commander. Restrictions by NATO members on how their troops can be used - Germany, for instance, limits where its forces can be deployed - have made it difficult to mount a coherent response to the Taliban resurgence. U.S. forces, which have been largely confined to a small part of the country in the east, have little presence in the south, where much of the insurgency has taken hold.

Debate within the administration on Afghanistan and Iraq will come to a head this spring. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is planning to return to Washington with his own assessment of whether recent security gains in that country can be sustained with fewer U.S. troops. The NATO summit is expected to focus heavily on the situation in Afghanistan.

As the White House looks at Iraq, it once again faces competing pressures from different quarters of the military. At Petraeus's recommendation, Bush has already agreed to withdraw five combat brigades by July, bringing the total down to 15. The Joint Chiefs of Staff want to pull out another five by the end of 2008, on the assumption that 10 brigades would be a sustainable force that would allow them to ease the broader stresses on the armed forces, administration officials say.

Petraeus has been more cautious and may want to keep more troops in Iraq to ensure that security gains are not lost. As violence in Iraq falls, Petraeus's stock has risen sharply within the administration, particularly since his strategy appears to be having an effect, and his views may carry the day with Bush. By contrast, many in the Pentagon opposed this year's troop "surge" and are likely to see their influence with the White House diminished.

"The president will have a lot of different advice between now and March, when General Petraeus and Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker come back from Baghdad and report to the Congress," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "He's going to listen to what everyone has to say, but at the end of the day, he wants to know what his commanders on the ground say. So he will listen to what General Petraeus says he needs to maintain the security gains we have made in Iraq."

Some who follow Iraq closely say that the current drop in violence is only a temporary result of American and Iraqi money spread to certain tribes, and a calculated gambit by insurgent forces and militias to wait out an anticipated U.S. withdrawal. "Quiet doesn't signify loyalty and quiet doesn't signify surrender," said Michael Rubin, a former political adviser to the initial U.S. occupation authority in Iraq and now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Quiet signifies that [they] get more from being quiet. ... What we've gotten is a breather. It's not a permanent truce."

Administration officials and outside experts predicted that Bush will be very cautious about accelerating withdrawals. They note that he was the main instigator of the buildup in Iraq, which added 30,000 troops to the war effort earlier this year, despite heavy pressure from inside and outside the administration to begin withdrawing troops.

A new White House emphasis on Afghanistan would probably expose Bush to even more criticism from Democrats, who have long accused him of taking his eye off the hunt for Osama bin Laden with the invasion of Iraq. "It's about time they recognized the problem" in Afghanistan, said former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, a Democrat, who says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley called him last spring to say that a newspaper column he wrote raising concerns about conditions in Afghanistan was too pessimistic.

Even friends of the White House have voiced concerns. "The strategic consequences of failure in both [Iraq and Afghanistan] are pretty severe," said retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, former NATO supreme commander, in an interview last month, before his appointment by Rice as a Middle East adviser. "The rest of the world is listening to what we are talking about, and we are not talking about Afghanistan on a daily basis. ... To the extent that we let that slip out of the headlines, that's a mistake."

A Growing Edge To Russian Military Sales Part Two

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

Russia's ability to sell vast quantities of tough, durable, modern weapons systems to nations around the world is rooted in the military experience and consequent design experience of its arms industry -- one very different from that of the United States.

For decades, U.S. military supremacy in war, as well as its prosperous and remarkably growing dynamic economy and society in peacetime, has been based on the principle of cutting-edge technology and innovation. This was how the United States in the past quarter century was able to dramatically outpace Japan and Germany in applying the lessons of the information technology revolution from communications to iPods and personal computers.

This philosophy has served the United States well in its wars, too. The Union Army during the Civil War pioneered the use of railroad logistics, supply and rapid transportation of larger military forces. Even then, U.S. use of air power in the forms of observation balloons and sea power in terms of pioneering ironclad, armored, powered warships was remarkably innovative and years, sometimes decades, ahead of European practice.

By contrast, Russia was the world's dominant land continental power for hundreds of years, dominating vast tracts of both Europe and Asia, and repeatedly forced to fight for its very survival in long, bloody land wars involving hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions of troops on both sides.

Russia was a predominantly command economy with the state directing and controlling the lion's share of resources even under the czars and even then, military power and overwhelming superiority in numbers of troops and weapons over neighbors was the primary concern of the state. This tendency only intensified under the Soviet system after the 1917 communist revolution.

The Soviet Union won its 1941-45 Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany -- the longest, bloodiest and most intense single military conflict in recorded history -- in large part because it was able to manufacture enormous numbers of extremely cheap, mass-produced, durable weapons systems that were simple but highly effective and easily replaced.

The U.S. achievement in producing enormous numbers of weapons -- especially combat bombers, fighters, transport aircraft, trucks, heavy artillery and warships during World War II -- was even more impressive than the Soviet Union's.

Nevertheless, the motivating traditions that came out of the U.S. World War II experience were very different:

In large part because of the outstanding achievements of such aircraft as the Boeing B-29 Superfortress strategic bomber and the North American P-51 Mustang air superiority combat fighter, and the remarkable achievement of designing and constructing the world's first atomic bombs, the United States came out of the war with conviction that cutting-edge superiority in advanced technology was the dominant factor in building weapons systems to assure America's security and dominant global position.

The trauma caused by the sensational series of Soviet space firsts from the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 launched in October 1957 to Col. Yury Gagarin's achievement as the first man in space and the first human to orbit the Earth in April 1961 intensified this American obsession on regaining and maintaining high-tech dominance.

It led directly to the creation in 1958 of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and it has served the American public and economy as well as the U.S. military exceptionally well over the past six decades.

But the fact remains that this fundamental difference in design philosophy underlies why the Russian arms industry, while decade behind the United States in many advanced technology areas, still manages to perform so well today.

(Next: Where the Russian advantage works)

PKK threatens retaliation after Turkish raids

Turkey says Iraq raids hit targets All Kurdish rebel positions targeted in weekend air strikes in northern Iraq were hit and there were no civilian casualties, the Turkish military said Monday. "Initial evaluations show all planned targets received direct hits," a general staff statement said, adding that casualty and damage assessment was continuing. No civilians were targeted in Sunday's strikes on positions along the Turkish border and in the Qandil mountains to the east, where the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is known to have a major base, it said. "All targets were set after careful and detailed analysis and were included on the list after it was firmly determined that they were not in civilian inhabited areas," it said, denying reports that civilians were targeted. The PKK said seven people were killed, two of them civilians. Locals said schools and bridges were destroyed in the foothills of the Qandil mountains. Turkish chief of staff General Yasar Buyukanit has said the United States gave tacit consent for the operation by providing "intelligence" and opening Iraqi airspace. After talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington in November, US President George W. Bush called the PKK a "common enemy" and promised to provide Turkey with real-time intelligence on rebel movements. Bush's pledge was seen as barely veiled US approval for limited cross-border Turkish strikes against PKK targets in northern Iraq.

The separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) threatened retaliation on Monday following Turkish air strikes on its bases in northern Iraq at the weekend.

"Our people have every right to defend themselves and to retaliate. This right is sacred and our people will do what is required," the PKK said in a statement carried by the Firat news agency, considered to be a rebel mouthpiece.

The PKK said five of its militants and two civilians were killed in Sunday's raids on positions along the Turkish border and in the Qandil mountains to the east along the Iraqi-Iranian frontier, where the PKK is known to have bases.

The Turkish army strongly denied its warplanes targeted civilians. It has not yet given a casualty figure.

Chief of staff General Yasar Buyukanit said the United States gave tacit consent for the operation by providing "intelligence" and opening Iraqi airspace.

The PKK said its positions also came under artillery fire from Iran following the Turkish air raid and put the "primary" blame on the United States.

"Even though this attack ... was conducted by the Turkish and Iranian armies, it is obvious that the United States is primarily responsible for providing this opportunity," the statement, published on Firat's website, said.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, enjoys refuge in the rugged mountains of Kurdish-populated northern Iraq and uses bases there as a springboard for attacks in southeast Turkey.

It has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Iran, which has its own restive Kurdish minority, also complains that Kurdish rebels from PJAK, a PKK-linked group, take refuge in northern Iraq.

related report
Iraq parliament condemns 'cruel' Turkish air strikes
Iraq strongly condemned Monday Turkish air strikes on Kurdish rebel bases in its northern territory, branding them a "cruel attack" on Iraqi sovereignty that claimed innocent lives.

Amid expressions of concern from the European Union, the Turkish military denied there were any civilian casualties, while the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) vowed retaliation against Turkish targets.

"We strongly condemn this cruel attack on Iraqi sovereignty and on the principle of friendly neighbourhood," the Iraqi parliament said in a statement that spoke of "several innocent civilian casualties".

Sunday's raids saw Turkish warplanes bomb a number of villages in northern Iraq, targeting rear-bases of the PKK, which said seven people were killed, including two civilians.

"Our people have every right to defend themselves and to retaliate," the rebel group said in a statement carried by the Firat news agency, considered to be a PKK mouthpiece.

"This right is sacred and our people will do what is required," the statement said.

Locals said schools and bridges were also destroyed in the foothills of the Qandil mountains along the border.

"We all were asleep when the warplanes struck our village," said Hassan Ibrahim, 75, a farmer from the village of Qalatuqa along the Iraq-Turkey border.

"When the attack came I got out of the house. We were all suffocating because of the dust."

He said Turkish warplanes had been overflying the region for the past month.

"Earlier it was Saddam who destroyed our homes, now it is the Turks," an angry Ibrahim told AFP as he prepared to leave his home.

Witnesses said the bombings had razed dozens of buildings in Qalatuqa, including a soon-to-be-opened school building.

Asaka Abdullah, 40, said she woke up shocked with the noise of the bombings.

"I was asleep when the sound of the explosion woke me up. When I stepped out of my house I saw people fleeing barefoot," she said.

"We really have no choice but to flee to the mountains to escape the bombs."

In Baghdad, the parliament demanded that Ankara exercise military restraint and focus on dialogue to solve the PKK problem.

The PKK has been fighting for self-rule in southeastern Turkey since 1984. More than 37,000 people have died on both sides of the conflict.

Turkey has threatened a full-scale incursion against PKK bases in northern Iraq unless Baghdad and the United States make greater efforts to curb the rebels' cross-border operations.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari condemned the Turkish air strikes.

"We understand Turkish concerns over the presence of PKK, but yesterday there was some collateral damages to civilians... Such action must be coordinated with the Iraqi government," said Zebari, who did not give casualty figures.

The European Union also expressed concern in a statement issued by Portugal, which holds the EU's rotating presidency.

"The presidency calls on the Turkish authorities to exercise restraint, to respect the territorial integrity of Iraq and refrain from taking any military action that could undermine regional peace and stability," it said.

On Sunday, Ankara's most senior general Yasar Buyukanit said Turkey had received tacit US consent for the operation by providing "intelligence" and opening up northern Iraqi airspace.

The US State Department declined to confirm or deny what help might have been given, saying only that the strikes were "in keeping with" past air raids in northern Iraq.

"That said, we want to make sure that the actions that are taken are done in an appropriate way, that hit only those targets that are PKK and avoid civilian casualties," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.