Pentagon chief talks tough on Russia

By Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 17, 2008

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Sunday expressed frustration with Russian leaders about the pace of talks over a new U.S. missile defense site in Eastern Europe.

Gates, who will be joined in Moscow by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for two days of talks with Russian leaders starting today, said the Bush administration in October had offered a "very forward-leaning" proposal that would allow Russia to participate directly in the controversial new system.

"At some point, the Russians are going to have to decide whether they want to be true partners, which we're offering, or whether this is just all a sham game on their part to stall the whole deal," Gates told reporters aboard his plane en route to Moscow.

Gates' remarks were among the most pointed by a senior administration official about the stalled bilateral talks and reflected a growing frustration that the Kremlin may be looking to wait out the current administration in Washington, betting that Poland and the Czech Republic will not agree to allow the United States to begin construction on the sites without Russian acquiescence.

The missile defense system has become among the thorniest issues between Moscow and Washington, with senior Russian officials accusing the Bush administration of building the system to counter Russian ballistic missiles.

The Bush administration has vehemently denied the accusations, insisting the system is aimed at shooting down Iranian long-range missiles that could reach NATO allies in Western Europe and the U.S. mainland sometime in the next decade.

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

Commentary: Why Fallon Resigned

By Martin Walker

The White House has formally denied that U.S. President George W. Bush forced the premature retirement this week of Admiral William Fallon as head of Central Command, after the publication of a magazine article which depicted the admiral as a lone voice against a U.S. military strike on Iran.

The article in "Esquire," by Thomas Barnett, a former Naval War College professor, was written with Fallon's cooperation but contained no quotation that could be construed as a direct criticism of the Bush administration or its policies in the region. The nearest Fallon has come to a public critique came in an interview to Al-Jazeera television in November, when he said that a "constant drumbeat of conflict" from Washington against Iran was "not helpful and not useful."

In an earlier interview with the "Financial Times," he stressed that a U.S. attack was not "in the offing" and went on to repeat what had been the administration's stated policy all along: "Getting Iranian behavior to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book."

"None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war, which is just not where we want to go," he added.

While this was in line with stated U.S. policy and far from insubordinate, some hawkish White House officials saw this as undermining the psychological pressure they sought to put on Tehran. "The New York Times" reported "a senior administration official saying that, taken together, Fallon's comments 'left the perception he had a different foreign policy than the president.'"

But the likelihood of a U.S. strike on Iran's purported nuclear sites had never been as high as alarmists suggested, because the scale of Iranian defenses and the number of targets would have required some days of preparatory bombing. This would have caused a political upheaval in the U.S. Congress, among U.S. allies, and in the Middle Eastern region as a whole. The prospects of a strike became even slimmer after the publication in December of a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iran had suspended is nuclear-weapons development program in 2003.

So there are holes in the popular theory that, as "The New York Times" put it, Fallon's "outspoken public statements on Iran and other issues had seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration." Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, may have been nearer the mark when he said Fallon's departure represented "yet another example that independence and the frank, open airing of experts' views are not welcome in this administration."

That was not quite the impression left by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said: "I don't know whether he was misinterpreted or whether people attributed views to him that were not his views. But clearly it was a concern that he had. We have tried between us to put this misperception behind us, over a period of months and, frankly, just have not been successful in doing so."

Fallon, like any other responsible senior commander, would certainly have warned of the risks involved in attacking Iran, the vulnerability of U.S. troops in the region and of U.S. allies, the likely impact on already soaring oil prices, and the prospect of an escalating conflict at a time when U.S. military reserves were already under strain. Equally, he would dutifully have carried out any orders he was given by his civilian masters, or he would have resigned. If such a controversial order were the reason for his resignation, he has certainly not gone public to say so.

The other theory to explain the resignation is that it concerns not Iran, which appears to be on the White House's back burner, but a dispute over troop levels in Iraq and the urgent need for more troops to cope with the expected spring offensive by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sources in Congress and in the Pentagon have suggested that Fallon, whose Central Command includes the Afghan and Iraqi theaters, saw the situation improving in Iraq and deteriorating in Afghanistan, and wanting to redeploy troops accordingly.

This was staunchly opposed by the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, whose "surge" of troop reinforcements and new counterinsurgency strategy have sharply reduced the violence and brought some relative stability in that country. There is now considerable speculation that Petraeus will be promoted to replace Fallon as commander-in-chief of Central Command, and replaced as commander in Iraq by Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, who directed the "surge" on the ground.

It is no secret among senior officers that there is little love lost between Fallon and Petraeus, nor that Fallon, from his previous job as commander-in-chief of Pacific Command, saw U.S. relations with China as being far more strategically important in the long run than the Iraq and Afghan engagements. Fallon's only explanation came in his formal resignation statement that "recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president's policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts" across the region.

Whatever Fallon's motives, his retirement seems to have caused little lasting controversy in Washington, probably because it was overtaken in the media by the scandal of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigning after being found consorting with prostitutes. But the issues at stake, of troop deployments in Iraq and in Afghanistan and Iran's nuclear ambitions, and of America's distraction from the profound strategic changes in Asia and the Pacific, are certain to endure beyond the Bush presidency.

Martin Walker is global affairs columnist for United Press International and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington

Pentagon Cites Tapes Showing Interrogations

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is conducting an extensive review of the videotaping of interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, and so far it has identified nearly 50 tapes, including one that showed what a military spokesman described as the forcible gagging of a terrorism suspect.

The Pentagon review was begun in late January after the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that it had destroyed its own videotapes of harsh interrogations conducted by C.I.A. officers, an action that is now the subject of criminal and Congressional investigations.

The review was intended in part to establish clearer rules for any videotaping of interrogations, Defense officials said. But they acknowledged that it had been complicated by inconsistent taping practices in the past, as well as uncertain policies for when tapes could be destroyed or must be preserved.

The officials said it appeared that only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of interrogations worldwide since 2001 had been recorded.

The officials said the nearly 50 tapes they identified documented interrogations of two terrorism suspects, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri, and were made at a Navy detention site in Charleston, S.C., where the two men have been held.

The initial findings of the Pentagon review represent the first official acknowledgment that military interrogators had videotaped some sessions with detainees and could widen the controversy over the treatment of prisoners in American custody. A Pentagon spokesman, Geoff Morrell, cautioned that the review was incomplete, and a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Don Black, said that interrogation videotapes had been routinely destroyed if they were judged to have no continuing value.

The only tape the officials described is of Mr. Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was arrested in December 2001 while in college in Illinois and moved five years ago to the jail after being designated an “enemy combatant.” Government officials say they believe he was an operative for Al Qaeda who was plotting attacks.

Two government officials said that the tape showed Mr. Marri being manhandled by his interrogators, but did not show waterboarding or any other treatment approaching what they believed could be classified as torture. According to one Defense Department official, the interrogators dispensing the rough treatment on the tape were F.B.I. agents.

An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment, citing a continuing review of detention practices that is being carried out by the Department of Justice’s inspector general.

Mr. Black, the spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said its director, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, had reviewed the tape and was satisfied that Mr. Marri’s treatment was acceptable.

He said that Mr. Marri was chanting loudly, disrupting his interrogation, and that interrogators used force to put duct tape on his mouth, while Mr. Marri resisted. Mr. Black said most of the videos showing Mr. Marri’s interrogations had been destroyed. The government has never charged Mr. Marri, but because of his designation as an enemy combatant, the Pentagon is allowed to hold him indefinitely.

The scale of detention and interrogation by the military, with tens of thousands of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, dwarfs that of the C.I.A., which has held fewer than 100 high-level Qaeda suspects. The C.I.A. has acknowledged videotaping only two terrorism suspects, in 2002, and military officials said that the review, ordered in late January by James R. Clapper, the Pentagon’s senior intelligence official, had similarly found that only a small number of detainee interrogations had been videotaped.

“This is not a widespread practice,” said Mr. Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. He said that it was up to individual military commanders whether to tape interrogations and that the videotapes were often used as the basis of written intelligence reports. In addition to the existing interrogation videotapes, there are existing recordings that show interactions between military guards and terrorism suspects, including detainees’ forcible removal from cells at Guantánamo, military officials said.

Images of rough treatment of detainees is a delicate subject for the Pentagon. Soldiers’ snapshots of the abusive treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq set off a firestorm and led to prison terms for a number of military personnel.

Congress imposed a ban in 2005 on all harsh interrogation methods by the military but left a loophole for the C.I.A. Last month, Congress voted to extend the ban to the C.I.A., but President Bush vetoed the bill.

The C.I.A. acknowledged in December that in 2005 it had destroyed the only interrogation videotapes that its officers had made; the tapes showed two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al- Rahim al-Nashiri.

Lawyers for Mr. Marri, who have challenged his imprisonment in court, sought access to any tapes or other records of his interrogations, but in 2006 a federal judge in South Carolina said the government did not have to produce any tapes. That decision is being appealed.

Jonathan Hafetz, one of the lawyers, said Mr. Marri had heard guards describe “a cabinet full of tapes” showing his interrogations, but had never had independent confirmation that such tapes existed. Mr. Marri has alleged that earlier in his imprisonment he was deprived of sleep, isolated and exposed to prolonged cold.

Mr. Hafetz said he planned to file papers in court on Thursday describing the psychological harm done to Mr. Marri. “Locking someone up for five years without charges is a disgrace and a betrayal of American and constitutional values,” he said.

The difficulties in the Pentagon’s review can be glimpsed in a seven-page court filing last month by Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, the military commander at Guantánamo Bay.

Admiral Buzby’s report describes an array of digital video recorders used to capture “activities” — it does not specify whether interrogations are included — in at least four subcamps at Guantánamo. But the systems automatically recorded over older material when they reached capacity, he wrote.

In some cases, Admiral Buzby wrote, “We suspect that the recording devices contain recorded data but we are unable technologically to confirm whether data remains.”

Mideast Commander Retires After Irking Bosses

By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Adm. William J. Fallon, the commander of American forces in the Middle East whose outspoken public statements on Iran and other issues had seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

Admiral Fallon had rankled senior officials of the Bush administration in recent months with comments that emphasized diplomacy over conflict in dealing with Iran, that endorsed further troop withdrawals from Iraq beyond those already under way and that suggested the United States had taken its eye off the military mission in Afghanistan.

A senior administration official said that, taken together, the comments “left the perception he had a different foreign policy than the president.”

Admiral Fallon, 63, took over the Central Command only a year ago, becoming the first admiral to become the top officer there. In a statement issued by his headquarters, he acknowledged that “recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president’s policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts” across his region.

His premature retirement was announced by his civilian boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who said he accepted the admiral’s request to retire “with reluctance and regret.”

The White House issued a statement from President Bush that, while complimentary, was pale by comparison to other messages of farewell for senior officials with whom Mr. Bush has worked more closely. The statement said Admiral Fallon had served his country with “honor, determination and commitment” and deserved “considerable credit” for the progress in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In his statement, Admiral Fallon said, “I don’t believe there have been any differences about the objectives of our policy” in the Middle East. Indeed, many of his public statements have fallen within the range of views expressed by Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But there was no question that the admiral’s premature departure stemmed from what were perceived to be policy differences with the administration on Iran and Iraq, where his views competed with those of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, who is a favorite of the White House.

During a news briefing to announce the retirement of Admiral Fallon, a man hailed by the defense secretary as one of the most brilliant strategic minds in the military, Mr. Gates was asked whether the unexpected departure could be seen as a prelude to preparation for a war with Iran.

“It’s just ridiculous,” Mr. Gates responded.

Across the officer corps, a large number of senior military leaders share Admiral Fallon’s broad assessment that a war with Iran would bring unexpected and, perhaps, unmanageable, risks elsewhere in the Muslim world and around the globe.

But many said they agreed that once it became clear he had lost the confidence of his civilian bosses, it was the responsibility of the four-star admiral to retire. That was especially so, they said, as it became obvious that no great effort was being made by civilian leaders to persuade him to remain in command.

At the same time, some younger officers who have been critical of senior commanders for not speaking up about the risks of invading Iraq now see a senior officer who did speak his mind publicly being prompted to choose early retirement.

A number of officials said the last straw came in an article in Esquire magazine by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a respected military analyst, that profiled Admiral Fallon under the headline “The Man Between War and Peace.”

The article highlighted comments Admiral Fallon made to the Arab television station Al Jazeera last fall, in which he said that a “constant drumbeat of conflict” from Washington that was directed at Iran was “not helpful and not useful.”

“I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for,” Admiral Fallon was quoted as saying. “We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.”

Readers of the Esquire article who are among the admiral’s supporters said they did not believe after reading it that the admiral had made comments that could be viewed as insubordinate to the president. But the cast of the lengthy article put him at odds with the White House.

“If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it’ll all come down to one man,” the article begins, referring to Admiral Fallon. “If we do not go to war with Iran, it’ll come down to the same man.”

Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen have maintained an unwavering public line that disagreements with Iran should be resolved diplomatically, and that any military option was only the last resort. That view is frequently expressed by Mr. Bush, although some White House officials are said to hold far more hawkish views on dealing with Iran.

Mr. Gates said Tuesday that Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the Army officer who is No. 2 at Central Command and has served two tours in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, would temporarily take Admiral Fallon’s place when the admiral retires at the end of this month, and would serve until a permanent replacement was nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, pounced on the retirement announcement, calling it “yet another example that independence and the frank, open airing of experts’ views are not welcome in this administration.”

When Admiral Fallon was nominated in January 2007 to be the commander of American military forces across a region where they are engaged in two ground wars, the choice struck many analysts as odd.

Admiral Fallon replaced Gen. John P. Abizaid of the Army. At the time, a range of senior Pentagon civilians and military officers said Mr. Gates had recommended that Admiral Fallon move from his post as commander of American forces in the Pacific to bring a new strategic view — as well as maritime experience — to the Middle East.

Although known for being tough on his subordinates, he also developed a reputation for nuanced diplomatic negotiations with friendly nations, and with some with whom the United States has more prickly ties.

Steven Lee Myers and David Stout contributed reporting.

Iraq Attacks Lower, but Steady, New Figures Show

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC SCHMITT

BAGHDAD — Newly declassified statistics on the frequency of insurgent attacks in Iraq suggest that after major security gains last fall in the wake of an American troop increase, the conflict has drifted into a stalemate, with levels of violence remaining stubbornly constant from November 2007 through early 2008.

The new figures, presented Tuesday at a Senate hearing in Washington by David M. Walker, the top official at the Government Accountability Office, emerged a day after eight American soldiers were killed in bomb attacks, five in downtown Baghdad and three in Diyala Province. And the trend appeared to continue Tuesday, as bombings and small-arms attacks led to casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces in or near at least eight cities.

In the deadliest of those attacks, a roadside bomb between the southern cities of Nasiriya and Basra struck a bus full of Iraqi civilians, killing at least 16 and wounding 22, Iraqi police officials said. But Iraqi security forces also reported deadly attacks in Hilla, Karbala, Baquba, Mosul, Kut, Baghdad and Dulia, just north of the capital.

In a report presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mr. Walker, the comptroller general, acknowledged that the insurgent attacks tallied by the American military had decreased to an average of about 60 a day in January, in the latest available count, from about 180 a day in June 2007.

But that lower number, which is roughly equivalent to the levels of violence in the spring of 2005, has remained essentially unchanged since the last significant decrease between October and November.

“While security has improved in Iraq, a permissive security environment has yet to be achieved,” Mr. Walker wrote, using a term meaning an environment safe for ordinary business and social activity.

Mr. Walker and two other federal officials also testified about concerns over corruption in contracting and about problems tracking arms shipments to Iraqi and American forces.

American commanders in Iraq have been warning for months that the security gains were far from irreversible, particularly since progress in Iraqi political reconciliation, which would presumably address the tensions underlying the violence, has been halting.

Smaller security improvements in the past have been followed by surges in violence. Modest gains in security near the end of 2005, for example, were obliterated a few months later when the bombing of a sacred mosque in Samarra set off nearly a year of sectarian killings.

Based on reports from February, violence may already be increasing. An independent tally by The Associated Press recorded a jump last month in the average number of Iraqis killed per day compared with January’s figures.

The accountability office figures use a different measure, the number of attacks recorded against security forces and Iraqi civilians.

Daily reports of violence are, by their nature, grainy and uncertain measures of trends in Iraq, but following the large American death toll the day before, the attacks on Tuesday were strikingly widespread.

A health directorate official in Kut said clashes between the police and the Mahdi Army, the dominant Shiite militia, left 14 people dead and 47 wounded. In Dulia, a police official said, a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint, killing five and wounding 30.

And in Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a neighborhood council meeting, killing one council member and wounding eight others, while gunmen in another part of the city attacked a prison for juveniles, wounding three guards and freeing three inmates, an Interior Ministry official said.

The Senate hearing also dealt with findings by both the accountability office and an independent federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, that thousands of pistols, automatic rifles and other equipment delivered to Iraq cannot be accounted for.

Under questioning by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the Defense Department’s inspector general, Lt. Gen. Claude M. Kicklighter, said a system was in place to prevent “a major leakage” of weapons to insurgents or the black market. He said weapons of Iraqi forces and the American-led coalition were now accounted for by serial number, down to the company level.

“That’s not awfully comforting,” Mr. Leahy said. “I mean, I’m not trying to quibble words here, but obviously the first sets of weapons came out with really no adequate way of checking them.”

James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Ramadi, Kut, Karbala, Basra, Diyala and Salahuddin.

Ex-Defense Official Assails Colleagues Over Run-Up to War

By Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 9, 2008; A01

In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country.

Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush's policies.

Among the disclosures made by Feith in "War and Decision," scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush's declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that "war is inevitable." The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a "momentous comment."

Although he acknowledges "serious errors" in intelligence, policy and operational plans surrounding the invasion, Feith blames them on others outside the Pentagon and notes that "even the best planning" cannot avoid all problems in wartime. While he says the decision to invade was correct, he judges that the task of creating a viable and stable Iraqi government was poorly executed and remains "grimly incomplete."

Powell, Feith argues, allowed himself to be publicly portrayed as a dove, but while Powell "downplayed" the degree and urgency of Iraq's threat, he never expressed opposition to the invasion. Bremer, meanwhile, is said to have done more harm than good in Iraq. Feith also accuses Franks of being uninterested in postwar planning, and writes that Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser during most of Feith's time in office, failed in her primary task of coordinating policy on the war.

He describes Bush as having wrestled seriously with difficult problems but as being ill-served by subordinates including Powell and Rice. Feith depicts former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with almost complete admiration, questioning only his rough handling of subordinates.

Feith left the administration in mid-2005 and is now on the Georgetown University faculty. He was the subject of an investigation early last year by the Pentagon's inspector general for his office's secret prewar intelligence assessments outlining strong ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. His reports, deemed "inconsistent" with those of the intelligence community, were judged "inappropriate" but not illegal.

In his book, Feith defends the intelligence activities on grounds that the CIA was "politicizing" intelligence by ignoring evidence in its own reports of ties between Hussein and international terrorists.

A copy of the nearly 900-page manuscript -- midway through the editing process -- was obtained by The Washington Post. Reached at his home yesterday evening, Feith declined to discuss its contents.

Despite its bulk, the book does not address some of the basic facts of the war, such as the widespread skepticism inside the top of the U.S. military about invading Iraq, with some generals arguing that doing so would distract attention from the war against global terrorists. Nor does Feith touch on the assertion of his fellow war architect, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, that Iraq would be able to pay for its reconstruction with oil revenue.

Feith says surprisingly little new about the conduct of the war on the ground, instead focusing on the policy battles in Washington and asserting that most accounts thus far have been written from the point of view of the State Department and the CIA. He attacks those criticisms as "fear-mongering" that serves the interests of certain officials and journalists.

Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, are described as repeatedly working behind the scenes to undercut sound proposals by Feith and other Pentagon officials and to undermine decisions Bush had made. Feith criticizes Powell's failure to persuade France and Germany to support U.S. war policy at the United Nations, and to gain Turkey's approval for U.S. troop movements in its territory, as failures of effort and commitment. Feith also asks what would have happened if Powell had argued with Bush against overthrowing Hussein. Powell might have persuaded the president, Feith writes, or, if not, could have resigned.

Feith's disdain for Armitage, with whom he sparred at NSC deputies meetings, is palpable. Powell's deputy, he says, "reflexively opposed any idea originating at the Pentagon."

In an introduction to the manuscript, Feith writes that he has tried to avoid polemic and seeks only to contribute to the historical record. He argues, as have other Iraq hawks such as Richard Perle -- a former Reagan administration Pentagon official and outside Rumsfeld adviser -- that the administration's careful approach to Iraq, including a swift transition to Iraqi control, was prevented from succeeding by ill-informed or disloyal subordinates.

The idea to which Feith appears most attached, and to which he repeatedly returns in the book, is the formation of an Iraqi Interim Authority. Feith's office drew up a plan for the body -- to be made up of U.S.-appointed Iraqis who would share some decision-making with U.S. occupation forces -- in the months before the invasion. But while he says that Bush approved it, he charges that Bremer refused to implement it.

The key mistake that the United States made in Iraq, Feith asserts, was "the mishandling of the political transition." The good that Bremer did, he concludes, "was outweighed by the harm caused by the fact of occupation."

In an interview yesterday, Bremer disputed Feith's narrative, saying he believes that Bush gave up on the idea of a quick transition shortly after Baghdad fell and widespread looting broke out in April 2003.

"By the time I sat down with the president on May 3, it was clear that he wasn't thinking about a short occupation," Bremer said. After consulting his records, Bremer also said that at a White House meeting on May 8, Vice President Cheney said, "We are not yet at the point where people we want to emerge can yet emerge." He said that Feith omits that comment. On May 22, he added, the president wrote to him, saying that he knew "our work will take time."

Others have criticized Feith's plan as relying too heavily on Iraqi exile politicians, including Ahmed Chalabi. Feith says that he considered Chalabi one of the most astute and democratically minded Iraqis but that he had no special brief for him. Instead, he charges that the State Department, the CIA and the military's Central Command were pathologically opposed to the exiles and to Chalabi in particular.

Feith continually denounces the CIA, accusing it of producing poor intelligence, intruding on the formulation of policy, and then using leaks to the media to defend itself and attack its bureaucratic opponents. Most notably, he charges that intelligence officials ignored and refused to investigate possible links between al-Qaeda and Hussein's government.

He reports, as others have, that Franks, who commanded the U.S. invasion force, treated him disrespectfully, sometimes rolling his eyes when Feith asked a question. But he indicates that Franks's disregard grew partly out of the general's lack of interest in planning for the postwar period. When Feith tried to talk to him about one aspect of that, Franks walked around the table, leaned over and said, "Doug, I don't have time for this [expletive]." He concludes that Franks failed in part because of advice he received from his advisers at the CIA and the State Department.

In contrast with the reputation of Gen. Richard B. Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for pliability, Feith reports that Myers grew irate at what he saw as administration attempts to get around the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners following the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Myers, he writes, threatened to bypass Rumsfeld and take his concerns directly to Bush, but calmed down after being told that the administration would distinguish between legitimate prisoners of war and al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.

In summarizing his view of what went wrong in Iraq, Feith writes that it was a mistake for the administration to rely so heavily on intelligence reports of Hussein's alleged stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and a nuclear weapons program, not only because they turned out to be wrong but also because secret information was not necessary to understand the threat Hussein posed.

Hussein's history of aggression and disregard of U.N. resolutions, his past use of weapons of mass destruction and the fact that he was "a bloodthirsty megalomaniac" were enough, Feith maintains.

He blames both the CIA and Powell, who outlined the weapons case in a February 2003 speech at the United Nations, for overemphasizing the threat. But Feith appears to ignore the crucial role that statements from Cheney and Rice, about the imminence of "mushroom clouds" emanating from Iraqi nuclear weapons, played in the case the administration made for war.

Chinese Military Spending Rises Sharply

By DAVID LAGUE

BEIJING — China announced a further sharp increase in military spending on Tuesday, a day after the United States renewed its warning that a lack of openness surrounding the rapid buildup of the Chinese armed forces posed a threat to stability in Asia.

China’s military budget for 2008 will increase by 17.6 percent to 417.77 billion yuan, or about $58.8 billion, Jiang Enzhu, spokesman for the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, told a news conference.

This follows a 17.8 percent increase in 2007.

Before the annual legislative session, which begins Wednesday, Mr. Jiang also said the situation in the Taiwan Strait was “grim and complex” and called on the Taiwanese president, Chen Shui-bian, to halt what Beijing described as unacceptable moves toward independence. China considers the island of Taiwan a breakaway province.

China has increased annual defense outlays by double-digit percentages most years in the past two decades to pay for an array of modern weapons and better training and conditions for its 2.3 million-person military, the world’s biggest standing force.

Foreign security experts in the United States and elsewhere say Beijing’s real military spending is two or three times the announced figure. They say these sustained increases have put China on track to become a major military power and the country most capable of challenging American dominance in East Asia.

They also say that China’s main objective is to develop the firepower to overwhelm Taiwan in the event of conflict while deterring or delaying any American forces sent to help defend the island.

Senior Chinese officials dismiss these assessments.

Mr. Jiang said the increase in spending this year was purely defensive and would allow for upgraded equipment along with better pay and benefits for service personnel.

As a proportion of government outlays, the amount is less than what the United States, Russia, India and France spend on their militaries, he said.

“China’s limited armed forces are totally for the purpose of safeguarding independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Mr. Jiang said. “China will not pose a threat to any country.”

In its annual report to Congress on the Chinese military, released on Monday, the Pentagon said the outside world had limited knowledge of the motivation behind China’s accelerating buildup and the capabilities it was developing.

Beijing had yet to give detailed reasons for its modernization or publish complete figures on military spending, the report said.

“The lack of transparency in China’s military and security affairs poses risks to stability by increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation,” it said.

In Beijing, the Chinese government criticized the Pentagon report, saying it distorted the facts.

Americans Fire Missiles Into Somalia

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and ERIC SCHMITT

NAIROBI, Kenya — American naval forces fired missiles into southern Somalia on Monday, aiming at what the Defense Department called terrorist targets.

Residents reached by telephone said the only casualties were three wounded civilians, three dead cows, one dead donkey and a partly destroyed house.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman in Washington, said the target was a “known Al Qaeda terrorist,” and another American military official said the attack was carried out with at least two Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a submarine. The official said the missiles were believed to have hit their targets, but did not elaborate on the targets.

Witnesses on the ground, though, described the attack differently.

“I did not know from where they were launched, but what I know is that they hit a house in this town,” said Mohammed Amin Abdullahi Osman, a resident of Dhobley, a small town in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border.

Mr. Mohammed said two missiles crashed into the house around 3:30 a.m.

It was not the first time that American forces fired missiles into Somalia in pursuit of what the Pentagon has called terrorist operatives in the country. They did so at least three times last year.

Dhobley lies in the growing swath of southern Somalia that seems to be falling under the control of the country’s Islamist movement once again. The Islamists rose to power in 2006 and brought a degree of law and order to Somalia for the first time since the central government collapsed in 1991.

But they were driven out of Somalia in late 2006 and early 2007 by a joint Ethiopian-American offensive. The Americans and Ethiopians suspected Somalia’s Islamists of harboring Qaeda terrorists, including men connected to the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Thousands of Ethiopian troops poured across the border, backed up by American airstrikes and American intelligence. The Islamist movement then went underground.

But in the past several months, the Islamists seem to be making a comeback, taking over towns in southern Somalia, including Dhobley, and inflicting a steady stream of casualties on Ethiopian forces with suicide bombs and hit-and-run attacks. Efforts by foreign diplomats and the United Nations to broker a truce have failed, and concerns are rising that Somalia could be headed toward another war-induced famine like the one it suffered in the early 1990s.

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

Gates praises Indonesian military but cautions on human rights

The Defense secretary says the U.S. is willing to sell weapons to the key Southeast Asian ally.
By Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

12:12 PM PST, February 25, 2008

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that the U.S. was still willing to sell Indonesia new weaponry, particularly for its navy and air force. But he cautioned that democracies must have firm civilian control of their militaries, which must be disciplined for human rights abuses.

Gates praised Jakarta for moving to professionalize its military, which for decades under former President Suharto ruled the archipelago with an iron fist until the late dictator was deposed a decade ago.

Although Gates did not criticize the Indonesian military's current conduct, he made a point to emphasize that democracies must investigate and prosecute allegations of corruption or abuse within their armed forces.

"In addition to the importance of civilian control of the military, there cannot be even a taint of corruption or a hint of tolerance for human rights abuses," Gates told the Indonesian Council on World Affairs.

During the last three years, the Bush administration has moved to lift restrictions on military ties between the two countries that were first cut after Indonesian military atrocities committed in East Timor in 1991.

Congress has moved to withhold some of the aid until past abuses by the Indonesian military were accounted for, and human rights groups have argued that the armed forces still are not fully answerable to civilian authorities.

Gates' address followed his afternoon meetings with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono. U.S. officials traveling with Gates said he pushed to deepen security ties with Indonesia, which as the world's largest Muslim country has become a key ally in the region and a model of the kind of secular Muslim state the Bush administration hopes to replicate elsewhere.

Although Indonesia has become the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the region, at about $15.7 million this year, Indonesian government officials have expressed repeated frustration with the slow pace of U.S. military sales.

In recent months, Indonesia has discussed acquiring weapons from China and Russia, with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin vowing during a visit here in September to sell Jakarta $1 billion of advanced weaponry.

The discussions with the Russians and Chinese were seen by analysts as a hedge against inaction, but Gates emphasized that all U.S. restrictions on arms sales to Indonesia were lifted by the Bush administration in November 2005. At a news conference with Gates after their talks, Indonesia's defense minister said his consideration of non-U.S. weaponry was sound acquisition policy.

"We review all equipment from all countries, including the United States, in a balanced and very fair-minded way," Sudarsono said.

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

Turkey Says 127 Killed in Iraq Battles; U.S. Urges Restraint

By Ken Fireman and Mark Bentley

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Turkey said the death toll in three days of battles with Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq reached 127, as the U.S. urged a swift end to the incursion.

Turkey's armed forces have killed 112 militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, including 33 today, the military said on its Web site. Fifteen Turkish soldiers have also died in the conflict, it said.

``We will continue the operation with the same determination and heroism until planned targets are reached,'' the military said, adding that jets, artillery and helicopters had hit 63 suspected PKK targets since troops went over the border on Feb. 21.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Turkey should wrap up the military campaign, adding Turkey won't be able to solve the problem of cross-border Kurdish raids through purely military means.

``I would hope that it would be short, that it would be precise and avoid the loss of innocent life, and that they leave as quickly as they can accomplish their mission,'' Gates told reporters today in Canberra, Australia.

Turkey has fought the autonomy-seeking PKK for two decades at the cost of almost 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish. The U.S. and the European Union brand the group as terrorists.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Canberra at kfireman1@bloomberg.net Mark Bentley in Ankara at mbentley3@bloomberg.net

Democrats' Chances to Alter Iraq Strategy Dwindling

Reid Says Next Showdown May Not Occur Until New War-Funding Request, Perhaps Early Next Year

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 29, 2007; A10

Senate Democrats' failure to reach agreement with wavering Republicans on legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq forced party leaders to concede yesterday that they are running low on options for altering President Bush's war strategy this year.

The breakdown, coming at the end of days of debate over defense policy legislation, makes it increasingly likely that Congress will conclude 2007 without passing a single Iraq bill of policy-altering significance. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said yesterday that the next big Iraq showdown could come over an emergency war-funding bill that may not be considered until early next year, as he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turn their attention to the domestic policy front, where Democrats' prospects for success are brighter.

"We've done a lot of talking," Reid said of efforts to attract GOP votes. But the bottom line is: "People either want something or nothing."

One of the few remaining windows for Democrats on Iraq is on the spending front. Until war funding is secured for the next year, Democrats say that action to force Bush to change course is still possible, said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.

The latest attempt to find consensus fizzled late Thursday. Last week, Democrats failed to pass a proposal to bring home most troops by next June and to narrow the U.S. mission. But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (Mich.) still held out hope that at least 10 Republicans -- enough to break a filibuster by Bush's GOP allies -- might agree to a more flexible June goal.

Both sides were optimistic about a deal until Republican negotiators demanded that the timetable be pushed from June to sometime after the 2008 presidential election. Levin balked.

"It introduces a political element, putting it into the next administration," Levin explained. "For a lot of Democrats, that's inappropriate."

Levin and the Republican negotiators, Sens. George V. Voinovich (Ohio) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), tried to blend several proposals that have been floating around, including the Democratic plan to specify a withdrawal deadline, new Pentagon reporting requirements that some GOP moderates have been advocating and a bipartisan initiative -- co-sponsored by Alexander -- to turn last year's recommendations by the Iraq Study Group into law.

It was Alexander's idea to extend the time frame, to match the 15-month transition period that the study group recommended. But even with the additional six months, Voinovich could not promise Levin a large number of Republican votes. And when Levin shopped it around in his caucus, the response was an emphatic no.

The House and Senate will debate fiscal 2008 defense spending in the coming weeks. Although war opponents are expected to renew their bid to restrict Iraq funding as part of the debate, some Democratic leaders are cool to the idea of holding up the entire Pentagon budget. The administration is expected to make an additional request for Iraq funding, but action on that package could be delayed until February. "I think that's where you're going to see the next dogfight," Reid predicted.

War opponents are bound to be disappointed if the Iraq debate slows down. Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), an outspoken antiwar Democrat, even protested a stopgap resolution approved late Thursday that would keep government funds flowing beyond the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year, while Congress completes work on the next fiscal year's spending bills. The resolution, Feingold noted, would also extend Iraq funding.

"We need to keep the federal government operating and make sure our brave troops get all the equipment and supplies they need, but we should not be giving the president a blank check to continue a war that is hurting our national security," Feingold said.

But at a certain point, Levin said yesterday, Democrats must concede to political reality. Despite voter disapproval with both the war and Bush, only a handful of Senate Republicans have switched sides on binding Iraq legislation.

"We can't break a filibuster," said Levin, referring to the 60-vote threshold that GOP leaders have demanded on Iraq bills. "We spent a lot of time on it. We just didn't succeed."

Democrats did attach three Iraq-related amendments to the defense bill this week: a statement of support for a federalist-style political system; the creation of an independent commission to investigate contracting abuse; and the easing of restrictions for Iraqi refugees.

The party's liberal base would prefer that Democrats take a more defiant approach, refusing to yield to Republican procedural objections even if it brings the Senate to a standstill.

But Levin said: "There's so much that we can do here, in the majority, that we can succeed on. Unless there's some prospect that we can accomplish our goal, it seems to me it would be almost a sign of weakness" to draw out the Iraq fight on the floor. "I don't think we have to prove our commitment to bringing an end to this war, changing the mission," he added.

Gates Steps In to Defuse Clinton-Pentagon Dispute

By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 21, 2007; A06

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sought to defuse a row between a top Pentagon aide and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday over her request for details of plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

In May, the New York Democrat sought information about the Pentagon's plans for pulling troops out of the war zone. In response to her inquiry, Undersecretary Eric S. Edelman dispatched a letter accusing her of reinforcing "enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies" by discussing a timetable, an answer that Clinton deplored yesterday as "an unacceptable and outrageous political attack."

Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, capitalized on the contretemps all day, announcing that she will introduce legislation with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) that would require the military to plan for a troop withdrawal from Iraq and issuing a letter to Gates demanding further answers about the military's exit strategy. Though Clinton voted for the war and has never apologized for her vote, she has sharpened her criticism of its execution while playing catch-up on the issue with Democratic rivals, particularly Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who opposed the invasion from the start.

In a statement, Gates said that he had not seen Clinton's original letter, but he added that he welcomes congressional involvement.

"I have long been a staunch advocate of Congressional oversight, first at the CIA and now at the Defense Department," Gates said. "I have said on several occasions in recent months that I believe that Congressional debate on Iraq has been constructive and appropriate. I had not seen Senator Clinton's reply to Ambassador Edelman's letter until today. I am looking into the issues she raised and will respond to them early next week."

"Redeploying out of Iraq will be difficult and requires careful planning," Clinton said. "I continue to call on the Bush administration to immediately provide a redeployment strategy that will keep our brave men and women safe as they leave Iraq -- instead of adhering to a political strategy to attack those who rightfully question their competence and preparedness after years of mistakes and misjudgments."

Gates Defers Travel Plans To Help With Iraq Report

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 9, 2007; A08

On the eve of a trip to Central and South America, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday postponed his travel plans to help the White House assemble a progress report on the situation in Iraq.

The move comes amid growing pressure on the Bush administration to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The political climate for the war in Washington has grown markedly worse in recent days, with a group of senior Republicans changing their stance on Iraq and now leaning toward a withdrawal of troops.

On Thursday, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) became the latest to announce his break with President Bush, joining Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), George V. Voinovich (Ohio), John W. Warner (Va.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) in voicing some level of pessimism about the current U.S. course.

Congress has given the Bush administration two deadlines to report on the situation in Iraq and assess whether it is improving. The first of those deadlines is Sunday, and the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday that Gates's participation is needed in policy meetings.

Senior administration officials have already concluded that the Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the benchmarks that Bush set for it earlier this year, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Also this week, Congress is set to begin consideration of the defense spending bill, a debate that is sure to be dominated by discussion of Iraq.

The statement said Gates's long-planned trip to El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and Chile will be rescheduled. It was to be his first trip to the region since becoming defense secretary.