GEN McCaffrey Report - April 2006

[Airbornelawyer]

Retired GEN Barry McCaffrey recently returned from Iraq and provided his latest assessment of the situation (some may remember his report from his 2005 trip, for which we had a thread here). I don't have the full report, but here are some excerpts, by way of a friend of a friend in the milblogging community:

US Forces

The morale, fighting effectiveness, and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring. In every sensing session and interaction - I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers, an understanding of the larger mission, a commitment to creating an effective Iraqi Army and Police, unabashed patriotism, and a sense of humor. All of these soldiers, NCOs and young officers were volunteers for combat. Many were on their second combat tour - several were on the third or fourth combat tour. Many had re-enlisted to stay with their unit on its return to a second Iraq deployment. Many planned to re-enlist regardless of how long the war went on.

Iraqi Army

The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight. They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion level formations are in many cases excellent - most are adequate. ... The recruiting now has gotten significant participation by all sectarian groups to include the Sunni. The Partnership Program with U.S. units will be the key to success with the Embedded Training Teams augmented and nurtured by a U.S. Maneuver Commander. This is simply a brilliant success story.

Iraqi Police

The Iraqi police are beginning to show marked improvement in capability since MG Joe Peterson took over the program. The National Police Commando Battalions are very capable - a few are simply superb and on par with the best U.S. SWAT units in terms of equipment, courage, and training. Their intelligence collection capability is better than ours in direct HUMINT. ... The police are heavily infiltrated by both the AIF and the Shia militia. They are widely distrusted by the Sunni population. They are incapable of confronting local armed groups. They inherited a culture of inaction, passivity, human rights abuses, and deep corruption. This will be a ten year project requiring patience, significant resources, and an international public face. This is a very, very tough challenge which is a prerequisite to the Iraqis winning the counter-insurgency struggle they will face in the coming decade. We absolutely can do this. But this police program is now inadequately resourced.

Iraqi political situation

The creation of an Iraqi government of national unity is a central requirement. We must help create a legitimate government for which the Iraqi security forces will fight and die. If we do not see the successful development of a pluralistic administration in the first 120 days of the emerging Jawad al-Maliki leadership - there will be significant chance of the country breaking apart in warring factions among the Sunnis and Shia - with a separatist Kurdish north embroiled in their own potential struggle with the Turks. ... There is total lack of trust among the families, the tribes, and the sectarian factions created by the 35 years of despotism and isolation of the criminal Saddam regime. This is a traumatized society with a malignant political culture. ...

However, in my view, the Iraqis are likely to successfully create a governing entity. The intelligence picture strongly portrays a population that wants a federal Iraq, wants a national Army, rejects the AIF as a political future for the nation, and is optimistic that their life can be better in the coming years. Unlike the Balkans—the Iraqis want this to work. The bombing of the Samarra Mosque brought the country to the edge of all-out war. However, the Iraqi Army did not crack, the moderates held, Sistani called for restraint, the Sunnis got a chill of fear seeing what could happen to them as a minority population, and the Coalition Forces suddenly were seen correctly as a vital force that could keep the population safe in the absence of Iraqi power. In addition, the Shia were reminded that Iran is a Persian power with goals that conflict with the Shia Arabs of southern and central Iraq.

Enemy Situation

The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to the creation of an Iraqi government. Aggressive small unit combat action by Coalition Forces combined with good intelligence - backed up by new Iraqi Security Forces is making an impact. The foreign fighters remain a serious tactical menace. However, they are a minor threat to the heavily armed and wary U.S. forces. They cannot successfully stop the Iraqi police and army recruitment.

U.S. State Department role

The U.S. Inter-Agency Support for our strategy in Iraq is grossly inadequate. A handful of brilliant, courageous, and dedicated Foreign Service Officers have held together a large, constantly changing, marginally qualified, inadequately experienced U.S. mission. ... U.S. consultants of the IRMO do not live and work with their Iraqi counterparts, are frequently absent on leave or home consultations, are often in-country for short tours of 90 days to six months, and are frequently gapped with no transfer of institutional knowledge. ...

The State Department actually cannot direct assignment of their officers to serve in Iraq. State frequently cannot staff essential assignments such as the new PRTs which have the potential to produce such huge impact in Iraq. The bottom line is that only the CIA and the U.S. Armed Forces are at war. This situation cries out for remedy.

Detainee treatment

Thanks to strong CENTCOM leadership and supervision at every level, our detainee policy has dramatically corrected the problems of the first year of the War on Terrorism. Detainee practices and policy in detention centers in both Iraq and Afghanistan that I have visited are firm, professional, humane, and well supervised. However, we may be in danger of over-correcting. The AIF are exploiting our overly restrictive procedures and are routinely defying the U.S. interrogators. It is widely believed that the US has a “14 day catch and release policy” and the AIF “suspect” will soon be back in action.

This is an overstatement of reality, however, we do have a problem. Many of the AIF detainees routinely accuse U.S. soldiers of abuse under the silliest factual situations knowing it will trigger an automatic investigation. In my view, we will need to move very rapidly to a policy of the Iraqis taking legal charge of the detainees in our Brigade Detention Centers--- with us serving a support not lead role. We may need to hire U.S. contractor law enforcement teams at U.S. tactical battalion level to support the function of “evidentiary packages” as well as accompanying prisoners to testify in court in Baghdad.

Political and economic assistance

CENTCOM and the U.S. Mission are running out of the most significant leverage we have in Iraq - economic reconstruction dollars. Having spent $18 billion - we now have $1.6 billion of new funding left in the pipeline. Iraq cannot sustain the requisite economic recovery without serious U.S. support. The Allies are not going to help. They will not fulfill their pledges. Most of their pledges are loans not grants. ...

There is a rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces toward the U.S. media. We need to bridge this gap. Armies do not fight wars - countries fight wars. We need to continue talking to the American people through the press. They will be objective in reporting facts if we facilitate their information gathering mission.

Conclusions

The Iraqi political system is fragile but beginning to play a serious role in the debate over the big challenges facing the Iraqi state - oil, religion, territory, power, separatism, and revenge. The neighboring states have refrained from tipping Iraq into open civil war. The UN is cautiously thinking about re-entry and doing their job of helping consolidate peace. The Iraqis are going to hold Saddam and his senior leadership accountable for their murderous behavior over 35 years. The brave Brits continue to support us both politically and militarily. NATO is a possible modest support to our efforts.

There is no reason why the U.S. cannot achieve our objectives in Iraq. Our aim must be to create a viable federal state under the rule of law which does not: enslave its own people, threaten its neighbors, or produce weapons of mass destruction. This is a ten year task. We should be able to draw down most of our combat forces in 3-5 years. We have few alternatives to the current US strategy which is painfully but gradually succeeding. This is now a race against time. Do we have the political will, do we have the military power, will we spend the resources required to achieve our aims?

It was very encouraging for me to see the progress achieved in the past year. Thanks to the leadership and personal sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of men and women of the CENTCOM team and the CIA – the American people are far safer today than we were in the 18 months following the initial intervention.

For some analysis of McCaffrey's report:

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/...ip-report.html

http://washingtontimes.com/functions...2-110459-2311r

[The Reaper]

Hmm.

Looks a lot like someone is reading our playbook.

TR

SOF Imperatives
o Understand the operational environment
o Recognize political implications
o Facilitate interagency activities
o Engage the threat discriminately
o Consider long-term effects
o Ensure legitimacy and credibility of Special Operations
o Anticipate and control psychological effects
o Apply capabilities indirectly
o Develop multiple options
o Ensure long-term sustainment
o Provide sufficient intelligence
o Balance security and synchronization

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Hmm.

Looks a lot like someone is reading our playbook.

My thought exactly. He probably had a copy of the SOF Imperatives to use as his outline.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Great post AL. Thanks.

[CoLawman]

Thanks AL. This will insure his only air time will come from Fox!

The full report is available in a thread on SWC, second and third replies.

Martin

[Warrior-Mentor]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Hmm.

Looks a lot like someone is reading our playbook.

TR

SOF Imperatives
o Understand the operational environment
o Recognize political implications
o Facilitate interagency activities
o Engage the threat discriminately
o Consider long-term effects
o Ensure legitimacy and credibility of Special Operations
o Anticipate and control psychological effects
o Apply capabilities indirectly
o Develop multiple options
o Ensure long-term sustainment
o Provide sufficient intelligence
o Balance security and synchronization

Funny you say that...last time Joint Pub 1 came around for review & comment, I proposed that we recognize the new operational environment and submitted "The Joint Operational Imperatives" (the SOF imperatives wth word tweaks to adapt to GPF). Not sure how far up the approval chain it made it...would be nice to see it added...we need it.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Thanks, AL.

[sg1987]

I didn’t see this posted elsewhere so I post here with a question. Does anyone here know the General’s rationale when he says we are breaking the US Army?

Also why would he choose the term civil war in this report?


http://www.west-point.org/publicatio...8McCaffrey.pdf

[enterfirst]

There is a rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces toward the U.S. media. We need to bridge this gap. Armies do not fight wars - countries fight wars. We need to continue talking to the American people through the press. They will be objective in reporting facts if we facilitate their information gathering mission.

I hope the next administration will spend ample time in planning the objective, appropriate, and beneficial distribution of news regarding the war on terror in Iraq, Iran, and abroad. Although the CinC means well, I think he has certainly lacked in this department.

[Dad]

Does the success in Iraq the past year relate more to the surge or a change in tactics? Or are they inseparable? Thank you

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Dad

Does the success in Iraq the past year relate more to the surge or a change in tactics? Or are they inseparable? Thank you

I think it is too soon to tell. If I were waging this war on the bad guys side I would be allowing limited success to play into the US media to manipulate public opinion. They know there is an election going on. I also would let the US play out its effort, providing limited resistance, real enough to encourage the effort and take the major effort to ground, rebuild my infrastructure, and wait for a more favorable time to rise again. The surge only addresses a small part of the entire effort needed over there and that is the military part to provide enough security for the host nation to put into place those efforts required to quell the insurgency. Basically, I do not see the host nation addressing those needs and until they do the primacy of a military effort only is bound to fail.
It is a waiting game for them and they know that our country has lost patience and does not understand that this is going to have to be along term effort to succeed. Politics and the press are providing them all the measures of success they need to continue the effort.

[sg1987]

Guess it ain't broke after all.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — One year ago, as President Bush decided to send more troops to Iraq, the conventional wisdom in Washington among opponents of the war was that the U.S. Army was on the verge of breaking.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,339296,00.html