The Gloves Come Off, Maybe, Sort of
a serious contender for the too-little-too-late award
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (32) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Iranian Quds Brigade troops parade in Tehran
The Washington Post runs a story today headline Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq. It breathlessly announces:
The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.
For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.
Last summer, however, senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran's regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing. The country's nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions against the Tehran government, and Iran was aggravating sectarian violence in Iraq.
Read on.
In a war widely portrayed as being fought with near reckless disregard for international law and convention, the war in Iraq has been lawyered into near passivity.
The panic stricken into the hearts of senior commanders and military lawyers by Abu Ghraib and unfortunate occurrences at military checkpoints has resulted in a situation were prisoners can be detained only a few days before release and where troops often have to accept being shot at first in order to return fire.
Among the most egregious effects of this was allowing Iranian Quds brigade special forces operatives to work with virtual impunity within Iran. As they were operating covertly they could have been whisked off to Diego Garcia or some other exotic clime and their employer would have been unable to complain. Instead, when apprehended they were photographed, fingerprinted and released. How this gained a benefit to us, I’m not sure, but what it did for the Iranians was obvious. Their tradecraft improved, they became more formidable, and they lost any fear of American troops.
Maybe this is changing.
Of course, there are potential downsides:
Officials said Hayden counseled the president and his advisers to consider a list of potential consequences, including the possibility that the Iranians might seek to retaliate by kidnapping or killing U.S. personnel in Iraq.
Two officials said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, though a supporter of the strategy, is concerned about the potential for errors, as well as the ramifications of a military confrontation between U.S. and Iranian troops on the Iraqi battlefield.
Any action has potential negative consequences. As Iranians are already in Iraq for the purpose of killing Americans, worrying about them killing Americans seems like a waste of time. Likewise, as Iranian troops aren’t supposed to be in Iraq how a confrontation between them, so long as we’re allowed to shoot, is a bad thing.
To the contrary, this is the type of job that should be handed over to SOCOM and every Iranian agent in Iraq should be constantly looking over their shoulders for a Delta trooper.
Part of the plan, though, seems like some kind of three-cushion bank shot.
Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that Tehran will back down from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders. But if Iran responds with escalation, it has the means to put U.S. citizens and national interests at greater risk in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Personally, I think this is about as dunderheaded as it comes. The idea that a country that has been behind kidnapping US military and intelligence officials and direct attacks on US facilities is going to give up because a few troops get whacked is just an exercise in wishful thinking.
There are signs that the Administration may still be actively pursuing the Long War
A senior intelligence officer was more wary of the ambitions of the strategy.
"This has little to do with Iraq. It's all about pushing Iran's buttons. It is purely political," the official said. The official expressed similar views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States' increasing inability to stanch the violence there.
But some officials within the Bush administration say that targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guard Command, and specifically a Guard unit known as the Quds Force, should be as much a priority as fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Quds Force is considered by Western intelligence to be directed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to support Iraqi militias, Hamas and Hezbollah.
In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the "SS." They also referred to Guard members as "terrorists." Such a formal designation could turn Iran's military into a target of what Bush calls a "war on terror," with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.
Asked whether such a designation is imminent, Johndroe of the NSC said in a written response that the administration has "long been concerned about the activities of the IRGC and its components throughout the Middle East and beyond." He added: "The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force is a part of the Iranian state apparatus that supports and carries out these activities."
If so, this is one of the first indications we’ve seen that the Administration realizes the pernicious effect Iran exerts on the CENTCOM area of operations and just might be willing to do something about it.
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The Gloves Come Off, Maybe, Sort of 32 Comments (0 topical, 32 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
as there was no way to work it into the direction I wanted to go, but this type of leak is really dangerous.
Before today we could snarf up or kill Iranians on sort of a no-harm-no-foul basis. They weren't officially in Iran and we weren't officially killing them so neither government had to do anything.
Now the world knows. Now Iran will have to show it won't stand idly by as Quds bridade troops disappear.
This is just a lot less than helpful.
...going after the enemy no matter who they may be, but do we have to announce it to the world?
It’s bad enough it’s taken over a year to respond to this threat but to turn right around and inform the enemy of your intentions seems to be yet another example of our countries inability to make war like it should… Kill and Break Things!!!
Founder and contributor to The Minority Report and Senior writer for The Hinzsight Report
My jaw hit the floor when I saw this story. My non-military brain said the following, "You have absolutely, positively got to be kidding me. This hasn't been our policy all along!?!?!?" We should be periodically taking out cars driving in from Iran on a random basis to send a message (plus its not like we'll accidentally knock out the guy who is about to cure cancer).
I really hope there is more to this story than there appears. If we haven't been doing this already, it took this authorization to start a policy we should have been pursuing for four years, and somehow it leaked out of our intelligence services, then we are a joke and deserve to lose.
My deepest hope is that we've been killing troublemaking Iranians all along and this is the just some kind of PR/psy-ops campaign.
Such a formal designation could turn Iran's military into a target of what Bush calls a "war on terror," with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.
And pigs could fly, if they had wings and the right sense of adventure.
The way one gets taken to secret CIA detention is, or should be, by getting caught as a foreign enemy combatant not wearing an identifying marking. What the Bush Administration declares about Iran is, or should be, immaterial. If the Administration has followed another policy, changing to this one would be a positive step.
If you're fighting in uniform ("recognizable markings"), you are a legal combatant and have certain rights. If you are not in a uniform but not fighting, you are a civilian and have even more rights. If you're in a war zone, out of uniform, and fighting, you are an illegal combatant, and having forfeited your rights deserve whatever befalls you.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
"As Iranians are already in Iraq for the purpose of killing Americans."
Actually they have been in Iraq to build their influence with their long-time clients SCIRI and the Dawa party (you know the people we put into power), plus build relations with al-Sadr.
Most violence against U.S. troops has come from Sunni extremists with little or no Iranian help. Iran/SCIRI/Dawa have been waiting, building strength, while we beat up on their Sunni enemies.
"Every Iranian agent in Iraq should be constantly looking over their shoulders for a Delta trooper."
Which will mean every Delta trooper will have to look over their shoulder for an Iranian agent. Since we have almost no intel on the Iranians, while the Iranians have throughly penetrated the entire Iraqi defense structure, who do you think is in more danger? Put another way - it will be far easier for them to find and kill our guys then for us to find and kill their guys.
For more information on Iran's use of the Iraq war to bring Iraq into it's orbit see this recent paper:
http://jamestown.org/docs/Jamestown-IranContributionIraq.pdf
From the paper:
"There is a strong history of Iranian-sponsored unrest in Iraq that continues to the present. Captured Iraqi intelligence documents, now maintained by the Foreign Military Studies Office, show Iran’s deep penetration in Iraqi society and institutions. Iran clandestinely supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq and took measures to turn it to her advantage.
The Iranian government maintained armed formations, such as the Badr Corps, inside Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. . . . Iran anticipated and welcomed the U.S. invasion since it would destroy her chief enemy in the region.
Iran has now moved covertly and overtly onto Iraq to subvert Iraqi institutions and eventually to assume total control. Iran has now entered a wider and more dangerous game by subverting the Iraqi police and armed forces into a “greater Shia” cause, which Iran hopes will lead to the fragmentation of Iraq and the inoration of oil–rich Shia lands into Iran."
Thanks to the GOP for installing an Iranian protectorate over Iraq.
Actually they have been in Iraq to build their influence with their long-time clients SCIRI and the Dawa party (you know the people we put into power), plus build relations with al-Sadr.
The've been doing that through their diplomatic mission. We aren't talking about offing diplomats.
Most violence against U.S. troops has come from Sunni extremists with little or no Iranian help.
Actually, the evidence shows that the Iranians have been providing technical assistance to anyone willing to use it. Passive infra-red triggers in al-Anbar have been traced to Iran.
Which will mean every Delta trooper will have to look over their shoulder for an Iranian agent. Since we have almost no intel on the Iranians, while the Iranians have throughly penetrated the entire Iraqi defense structure, who do you think is in more danger? Put another way - it will be far easier for them to find and kill our guys then for us to find and kill their guys.
Put another way it shows you don't know what you are talking about.
Delta doesn't work with the Iraqi defense establishment and I have no doubt who will come out ahead. Iranians, I am told by friends who have served in Iraq, are pretty easy to pick out once you've been there for a while. And I'm pretty sure that the Delta guys are looking over their shoulder now but the Iranians don't have to.
Thanks to the GOP for installing an Iranian protectorate over Iraq.
That will only happen if the Democrats get their way on foreign policy.
"Iranians, I am told by friends who have served in Iraq, are pretty easy to pick out once you've been there for a while."
OK - Are you going to kill ALL of the Iranians in Iraq? The problem is not finding the Iranians, the problem is finding the Iranians agents. How are we going to find them? Do they smell different?
"Delta doesn't work with the Iraqi defense establishment"
Delta may not but lots of U.S. forces do. In fact the new "surge" plan calls for increasing U.S. embeds with different Iraqi forces. The Iranians will not go after Delta. They will take out plenty of soft embed targets like say these guys.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_con...
Simply put Iraq is a far more permissive environment for Iran than for the U.S. and any move we make against Iran will cause SCIRI / Dawa / and Sadr to make our position far less stable.
If you can name a time when Iran has exerted greater strategic control over Iraq in the last 100 years please let me know. Those are the facts on the ground now and the product of GOP policy to date.
OK - Are you going to kill ALL of the Iranians in Iraq? The problem is not finding the Iranians, the problem is finding the Iranians agents. How are we going to find them? Do they smell different?
No one said kill them all, genius. I know to you all those brown folks probably look alike but Arabs and Persians are different. Look it up.
Delta may not but lots of U.S. forces do. In fact the new "surge" plan calls for increasing U.S. embeds with different Iraqi forces. The Iranians will not go after Delta. They will take out plenty of soft embed targets like say these guys.
You get sloppy, you get hurt. This isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last. But what does it have to do with anything?
"Soft embed target" eh? You know your article doesn't refer to embeds, right? Well you would have know about that if you had read your own article.
Simply put Iraq is a far more permissive environment for Iran than for the U.S. and any move we make against Iran will cause SCIRI / Dawa / and Sadr to make our position far less stable.
woe is me, woe is me.
You're right, there is no wonder we're losing with nonsense like this.
Yes - Persians and Arabs are different, but how do you tell the Persian agents of the Iranian special forces from all the other Persians running around?
The unit that got attacked was not an embed unit, but I cited them to show vulnerable an embed would be. If a stand alone unit could be hit like this, how much easier will it be to hit U.S. embeds without an effective security perimeter.
This is not a case of getting sloppy, it was probably a message The U.S. can not operate in Iraq without the tacit permission of the large Shia militias and political parties. They are more loyal to Iran than to the U.S. If we take on Iran and they take Iran's side against us, how can we win in Iraq?
The U.S. can not operate in Iraq without the tacit permission of the large Shia militias and political parties.
You say these things as if they are material, or the words mean different things to you. We are currently operating in Iraq. We must therefore already have the "tacit permission of the large Shia militias and political parties".
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
We have there permission now because Iraqi Shia and the Iranians want us to fight the Iraqi Sunnis for them. If, as the original post suggests, we start to go after the Iranians, my claim is that we will lose this tacit permission very quickly and our operations in Iraq would be crippled.
Their sole power is the power not to be destroyed, while inflicting terror on the civilian population. They have achieved that power largely by political interference from the Maliki government; that interference is going away, because we showed Maliki that the militias are funded and guided by Iran. He probably knew this already, of course, but in any case we confronted him with the fact the we knew.
If the militias had the power to engage us or assert their will against us, would they not have done so?
I tire of you, so you get the last word.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
I missed that in our recent attempt to wipe out Sadr and his cronies. I think it is about one of his major commanders a week taking a dirt nap; all with the tacit permission of Iraq. (you do remember he is a Shia)
Now to complete the job we will start taking it to Iran, who is by the way violating Iraq's sovereignty. Shia or not, how long do you think they would last when the populace figures out Shia are behind the most egregious bombings.
So it really does not appear Maliki wants to become the next Lebanon any time soon. Do you really think he is that dumb?
The only accomplishment here is to display your DISTM (Degree in Sophism).
Try fishing or some other sport that does not require so much intellectual expenditure.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Contributor to The Minority Report
I cited an outside source. Do you have any evidence to support your claim that "about one of . . . [Sadr's] major commanders a week [is] taking a dirt nap".
"So it really does not appear Maliki wants to become the next Lebanon any time soon. "
Here is the official platform of the Dawa party of which Maliki is the deputy leader:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Dawa_Party
"The political ideology of al-Da'wa is heavily influenced by work done by Baqr al-Sadr who laid out four mandatory principles of governance in his 1975 work, Islamic Political System. These were:
1. Absolute sovereignty belongs to God.
2. Islamic injunctions are the basis of legislation. The legislative authority may enact any law not repugnant to Islam.
3. The people, as vice-regents of Allah, are entrusted with legislative and executive powers.
4. The jurist holding religious authority represents Islam. By confirming legislative and executive actions, he gives them legality."
Have you learned nothing from American politics?
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it"-Winston Churchill
The've been doing that through their diplomatic mission. We aren't talking about offing diplomats.
I just hope we (or the Iraqi's) have registered and documented who is an Iranian with diplomatic cover. Of course we both know this doesn't mean "diplomats" aren't just intel officers but you still can't off them if they have the paperwork.
Actually, the evidence shows that the Iranians have been providing technical assistance to anyone willing to use it. Passive infra-red triggers in al-Anbar have been traced to Iran.
The Iranian's have played both sides of the street as quietly as possible for over two years to the extent they can find sunni insurgens willing to just kill Americans and not Shi'a too.
Rant Street! www.rant.st
"As Iranians are already in Iraq for the purpose of killing Americans."
Actually they have been in Iraq to build their influence with their long-time clients SCIRI and the Dawa party (you know the people we put into power), plus build relations with al-Sadr.[my emph]
That does not contradict the assertion that the Iranians have been there to kill Americans. And the emphasized portion is disingenuous, with that drive-by TalkyPointy™ feel, to boot. We supported the elections, and that's who got elected as part of the governing coalition. They don't always do what we say, as you no doubt are aware, in no small part because of the influence of the Iranians.
But the real prize pile of pasture pillow is this:
The Iranian government maintained armed formations, such as the Badr Corps, inside Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. . . . Iran anticipated and welcomed the U.S. invasion since it would destroy her chief enemy in the region.
And Saddam was ok with that?
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
that "this was a region of Iraq not under Saddam's control", or some such nonsense. To hear the left tell it Saddam was powerless outside his own palace.
The Iranians did not want to kill Americans because we were helping put their friends into power. They saw us as an unwitting friend doing their dirty work for them.
Saddam was very much not OK with the Iranian network in Iran. That is why they operated secretly. Removing Saddam allowed the Iranian network inside Iraq to expand and go public.
In effect, we are now starting to do the job (of killing Iranian agents in Iraq) to which Saddam had devoted much his life.
lose the attitude.
You've already demonstrated that you have no command of the facts on this subject and certainly have no experience.
Lose the attitude because right now you're doing nothing but blowing smoke and wasting bandwidth.
we are now starting to do the job (of killing Iranian agents in Iraq) to which Saddam had devoted much his life.
Everytime I start to think that calling liberals "dictatorship lovers" is OTT, I read people like you, or this guy, and I have to admit there is something to it.
You say that "we have almost no intel on the Iranians", while above you learn that;
U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.
Lack of intel does not seem to have been the problem so much as lack of will to do something with it.
You are a CIA agent sitting in the Green Zone. You have a photo, a retina scan, and a fingerprint for Iranian X who is at large somewhere in Iraq. I tell you to kill him. How do you find him? This is not CSI where you get to look his address up in AFIS. You have to go out on the street, waiting every second for an IED, and find him.
Oh and by the way. Your liaison to the Iraqi police, the ones going door to door with his photo, probably works for Iran or at least owes his job to a militia / party with strong Iranian ties.
Good luck
The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries.
Use the lowest possible level of force to deal with each problem, then slowly increase it if it is found to be inadequate. Maybe the parallels to Vietnam are not so over-blown.
This has been a known issue for years. Had Bush publically confronted Iran on this and rallied America to oppose the people killing our troops, we would be in a very different place today.
Any time I read words like this in the Washington Post I wonder how it has come to pass that anyone in our intelligence agencies are allowed to talk to the Washington Post, except for the express purpose of spreading their harebrained theories:
"This has little to do with Iraq. It's all about pushing Iran's buttons. It is purely political," the official said. The official expressed similar views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States' increasing inability to stanch the violence there.
I really think that some of these "officials" are the ones who should have the Delta trooper looking over their shoulders.
Is it possible to indict the Washington Post for treason and throw everyone associated with their stories in jail? I am seriously beginning to think that the Bush Administration should end the term with a series of treason prosecutions and convictions of journalists and their sources. What has America come to when the most important political newspaper in our country is also the most important vehicle for opinions of people who want us to lose the war?
We should start looking at the WaPo and its leaker sources as treasonous liars and just invoke the power of the Presidency to shut them down permanently. I mean, they're evil. They want us to lose the war. They want to kill our people and make the United States fail. I think that's treason, and we should start treating them like it.
Since the officer in question was not divulging any classified information, what reason does the WaPo have for keeping his identity a secret?
shanghai a couple of members of my old staff and spend a few quality weeks interviewing employees at CIA and State. I'd do it for free and guarantee I'd leave one Helluva bunch of empty chairs there. This stuff ain't rocket science and it is beyond my comprehension why the Administration allows it to go on. I'd have everybody in the whole damned town looking over their shoulder and running from reporters.
In Vino Veritas
we don't get to ask the WH what the heck its up to in letting all this stuff slide. But if RS gets another interview with Snow or someone like him maybe a few pointed questions would be in order.
It's hard for us to defend people who seem so anxious to be treated like human pinatas.
it is: First, they are deathly afraid of the bad press if they fire and prosecute anyone in the bureaucracy for this sort of leaking and coziness with the Media; and, I'm sure that all the HR/LR infrastructure in the Executive Branch is a bunch of holdovers and congenital 'crats, so they get "you can't do anything" advice from them, and consequently, political management is afraid of "trying" to fire people.
When we first took over here after a decade long drift from two years of Hickel being a lame duck and Knowles' complete lack of adult supervision, we knew we had to break up the cells of bad actors and make sure that our supervisors and managers knew that they were once again free to do their jobs. We went on a heavy-handed campaign to discipline and fire a targeted list of people who had been behaving badly for so long that they no longer even realized they WERE behaving badly. We literally called it the "Empty Chairs Plan." It is amazing what it does for morale and discipline when a couple of suits form headquarters shows up and people disappear never to return. We didn't even let them pack their desks; we just packed up their crap and sent it to them. You can't show the flag everywhere, so you carry a big flag and make lots of smoke and noise. After about the first three months, it was quiet as a mouse.
Sure, there'll always be some of it, but after a good campaign of empty chairs, it is only high-level players, usually holdovers, who think they have, and sometimes do, enough political swack that you can't do anything to them. When you get it to that level, you can take them on if you catch them with something good enough, or you can just fashion a work-around. As I said, it ain't rocket science.
In Vino Veritas
Just who is leaking this information to the press so soon after Sen. Harry Reid warned that the president has no authority to go after Iran without coming to Congress?
Is this what Hayden means by "out of the news as source or subject?"
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman