Hey General Petraeus, Wake Me When September Ends

by
Larry C Johnson

Wait until September has been the watchword. As Green Day has sung, Wake Me Up When September Ends. Someone also should smack General David Petraeus upside the head and wake his ass.

It is truly astonishing that Petraeus is being given the hero treatment when his record is neither distinguished nor honorable. I was reminded of this last week during a conversation with an active duty Army officer who was at Fort Leavenworth Kansas last year when Petraeus was supposedly thinking great thoughts about counterinsurgency ops. According to this officer, Petraeus declined to dig into the details of the manual he supposedly authored. Truth is he ignored the substance and scholarship that went into drafting the counterinsurgency manual for the Army.

Pat Lang, a retired U.S. Army Colonel who taught at West Point in the seventies, said Petraeus as a student was considered the kind of sycophant who would marry the Superintendent’s daughter just to get a leg up. Guess who Petraeus married? That’s right, the Superintendent’s daughter.

So how did Dave do during his second tour in Iraq (June 2004 – September 2005). Have you seen Frontline’s program, The Gangs of Iraq? Check it out. It seems that it was under the watchful eye of General Petraeus that the Iraqi Interior Ministry started its campaign of death squads, torture, and murder.

Martin Smith’s interview of Petraeus is especially telling:

Let me jump ahead. Just after you leave, we have the bunker incident. We find the structure has been infiltrated, or has devolved into militia groups; that the police within them have formed militias. Now clearly, you must have seen this coming.

Editor’s Note: Two months after Petraeus rotated out of Iraq, a U.S. general found a ministry building, called the Jadiriyah bunker, containing 169 prisoners and evidence of torture; almost all of the detainees were Sunnis.

I did not. I did not see militia groups in the special police during the time that I was there. Now, first of all, we brought in militia members as a matter of Iraqi policy. … It was actual [policy] to, in fact, recruit and bring into the army and the police militia members who met the qualification for those respective services, so there’s no question but that there were militia members in these organizations. The objective was to spread them out, not to have, for example, an entire battalion or company to be from one militia. Our belief was, at that time, that that had not taken place. Certainly Gen. Adnan Thabit and Minister Naqib, during their watch, felt that that was not the case.

There was a shift, of course, in the ministry in the late spring of 2004 from a Sunni Arab to a Shi’a Arab minister. [When] Minister [Bayan] Jabr took over, there were concerns raised. … We addressed this with the new minister right away, in fact, because Minister Naqib and others said: “Hey, watch out. This is happening; that could happen.”

Petraeus did not authorize or approve the actions of the death squads. But the key point is that he failed to put in place a system to ensure that there would not be those kinds of abuses. That lack of attention to detail was not, in my opinion, an aberration.

Besides whacking folks the Iraqi security forces also had trouble hanging on to their weapons. Back in October 2006 there was this account:

The inspector general’s office released its report Sunday in a series of three audits finding that:

•Nearly one of every 25 weapons the military bought for Iraqi security forces is missing. Many others cannot be repaired because parts or technical manuals are lacking.

•”Significant challenges remain that put at risk” the U.S. military’s goal of strengthening Iraqi security forces by transferring all logistics operations to the defense ministry by the end of 2007.

•”The unstable security environment in Iraq touches every aspect” of the Provincial Reconstruction Team program, in which U.S. government experts help Iraqis develop regional governmental institutions.

The Pentagon cannot account for 14,030 weapons — almost 4% of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003.

The missing weapons will not be tracked easily: The Defense Department registered the serial numbers of only about 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided — less than 3%.

Whoops!! Hold the presses. It wasn’t 14,030 weapons. It was 190,000 assault rifles. And who was in charge of this fucked up effort? General David Petraeus. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler reported this weekend that:

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.

Heck of a job Dave!

So now things are running smoothly in Iraq. In case you haven’t heard, we’re winning (or so say Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack). The White House already signaled in July the way things are going. The interim report in July from the Bushies on progress in achieving success in Iraq concluded that 60% of the benchmarks had been achieved. Hell, didn’t Bush graduate from Yale with a comparable GPA? Here’s the White House scorecard:
Section 1314 (b)(1)(A) The United States Strategy in Iraq, hereafter, shall be conditioned on the Iraqi Government meeting benchmarks . . . including:

(i) Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward forming a Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and then completing the constitutional review.
(ii) Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba’athification reform.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba’athification reform.
(iii) Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.
Assessment: The current status is unsatisfactory, but it is too early to tell whether the Government of Iraq will enact and implement legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to all Iraqis.
(iv) Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.
(v) Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections.
Assessment: There are multiple components to this benchmark, each deserving its own assessment:
• Establishing the IHEC Commission: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward establishing an IHEC Commission. The Commission has been established.
• Elections Law: The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward establishing a provincial elections law. Drafting of the law has just begun.
• Provincial Council Authorities: The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward establishing provincial council authorities. The COR is working on legislation, which has had its second reading; however, the COR committee continues to work on revisions to the draft law, and it remains unclear when the legislation will come to a third and final vote by the full COR.
• Provincial Elections Date: The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward establishing a date for provincial elections. Legislation required for setting the date has not been enacted.
(vi) Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty.
Assessment: The prerequisites for a successful general amnesty are not present; however, in the current security environment, it is not clear that such action should be a near-term Iraqi goal.
(vii) Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the constitution of Iraq.
Assessment: The prerequisites for a successful militia disarmament program are not present.
(viii) Establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan.
(ix) Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.
(x) Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions in consultation with U.S. Commanders without political intervention to include the authority to pursue all extremists including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions in consultation with U.S. Commanders without political intervention to include the authority to pursue all extremists including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
(xi) Ensuring that Iraqi Security Forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has not at this time made satisfactory progress in ensuring that Iraqi Security Forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law; however, there has been significant progress in achieving increased even-handedness through the use of coalition partnering and embedded-transition teams with Iraqi Security Force units.
(xii) Ensuring that, as Prime Minister Maliki was quoted by President Bush as saying, “the Baghdad Security Plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation.”
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress in ensuring the Baghdad Security Plan does not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of their sectarian or political affiliations.
(xiii) Reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq with substantial Coalition assistance has made satisfactory progress toward reducing sectarian violence but has shown unsatisfactory progress towards eliminating militia control of local security.
(xiv) Establishing all of the planned joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq — with substantial Coalition assistance — has made satisfactory progress toward establishing the planned JSSs in Baghdad.
(xv) Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently.
Assessment: The Iraqi Government has made unsatisfactory progress toward increasing the number of Iraqi Security Forces units capable of operating independently.
(xvi) Ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.
(xvii) Allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis.
Assessment: The Iraqi Government is making satisfactory progress in allocating funds to ministries and provinces, but even if the full $10 billion capital budget is allocated, spending units will not be able to spend all these funds by the end of 2007.
(xviii) Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the ISF.
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made unsatisfactory progress in ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the ISF.

So, when September rolls around do not be shocked to learn that General Petraeus will report that things are swell, progress is on the march, and we simply need more time and soldiers to complete the mission. When is that? Beats the hell out of me, but who needs precision when it isn’t your son or daughter being fed into the meat grinder. Surely things will be better after we drop another ONE TRILLION dollars in Iraq. Just because that money could be spent on bridges, roads, and schools in the United States is a selfish distraction. Remember, we’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here (but they are too damn scared to drive over our bridges to even risk coming to the United States.)