U.S. Weapons, Given to Iraqis, Move to Turkey
From the New York Times
Excerpt: Weapons that were originally given to Iraqi security forces by the American military have been recovered over the past year by the authorities in Turkey after being used in violent crimes in that country, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The discovery that serial numbers on pistols and other weapons recovered in Turkey matched those distributed to Iraqi police units has prompted growing concern by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that controls on weapons being provided to Iraqis are inadequate. It was also a factor in the decision to dispatch the department’s inspector general to Iraq next week to investigate the problem, the officials said.
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Labels: iraq, pentagon

Largest Iraq contract rife with errors
From USA Today
Excerpt: Government auditors discovered something odd last year when they reviewed KBR Inc.'s annual cost estimate to provide support services for U.S. troops in Iraq. The contractor proposed charging $110 million for housing, food, water, laundry and other services on bases that had been shut down.

KBR got a contract extension for $3.7 billion, but it agreed to drop the proposed $110 million spending on closed bases and an additional $50 million of duplicate charges and math errors, according to Defense Department records obtained by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act.

Linda Theis of the Army Sustainment Command, the agency that oversees KBR's troop-support contract, downplayed the errors. They amount to just 4.3% of the contract amount, she said. "This percentage does not indicate a systemic weakness in business systems."
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Labels: contractors, iraq, pentagon, spending

Field rations are falling short in fueling troops
From the Philedelphia Enquirer
Excerpt: When Lt. Dave Moore visited infantry units in the remote, rugged mountains of Afghanistan late last year, the Navy medical officer was surprised to hear from many soldiers and Marines that they had lost significant weight.
After interviewing more than 150 medics, officers and troops on the ground, Moore concluded that the portable rations called "meals ready to eat" (MREs) - long derided by troops, but valued by the Pentagon for their indestructibility - were not doing the job, causing the soldiers to shed pounds that they very much needed.

"The standard meal ready to eat does not provide adequate nutrition for dismounted operations in this type of terrain," Moore wrote in his report. "Many Marines and soldiers lost 20 to 40 pounds of body weight during their deployment. At least one soldier was evacuated due to malnutrition and a 60-pound weight loss." More

Labels: afghanistan, pentagon, troops

With Iraq Speech, Bush to Pull Away From His Generals
From the Washington Post
Excerpt: Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said less than two months ago that adding U.S. troops was not the answer for Iraq.

Bush's decision appears to mark the first major disagreement between the White House and key elements of the Pentagon over the Iraq war since Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, split with the administration in the spring of 2003 over the planned size of the occupation force, which he regarded as too small.

It may also be a sign of increasing assertiveness from a commander in chief described by former aides as relatively passive about questioning the advice of his military advisers. In going for more troops, Bush is picking an option that seems to have little favor beyond the White House and a handful of hawks on Capitol Hill and in think tanks who have been promoting the idea almost since the time of the invasion. More

Labels: iraq, joint chiefs, pentagon, speech, troops

Guantánamo defense lawyer forced out of Navy
From the Seattle Post Intelligencer
Excerpt: The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court — and won — has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

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Labels: guantanamo, law, military, pentagon, prisoner, supreme court

Able Danger

Fear of Backlash Kept pre-9/11 data from FBI
From the Washington Times
Excerpt: Pentagon lawyers, fearing a public-relations "blow back," blocked a military intelligence unit from sharing information with the FBI that four suspected al Qaeda terrorists were in the country prior to the September 11 attacks, after determining they were here legally, a former Defense Department intelligence official says.
Members of an intelligence unit known as Able Danger were shut out of the September 11 commission investigation and final report, the official said, despite briefing commission staff members on two occasions about the Mohamed Atta-led terrorist cell and telling them of a lockdown of information between the Defense Department and the FBI...
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Former Flight School Owner says US Intelligence Failure Ruined His Life
From the Herald Tribune (SW Florida)
Excerpt: ...The revelation had particularly strong ties to Venice because Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who each piloted a hijacked jetliner into the World Trade Center, learned to fly at Huffman Aviation, a flight school that operated out of Venice Municipal Airport.

Huffman’s former owner, Rudi Dekkers, was angered that the government may have known about Atta but never shared it with the FBI or other agencies who could have stopped the terrorists.

“We are civilians here. We’re supposed to be protected, and we apparently were not,” Dekkers said.

Dekkers claims the fallout from unwittingly training the terrorists cost him his business, his reputation and his marriage. Huffman closed six months after the attacks.

“Everywhere I come, they say, ‘Are you not that guy that trained terrorists?’” said Dekkers, who now lives in Naples. “I am without a job right now. I have no income anymore. My life was destroyed.”
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Labels: al qaeda, FBI, pentagon, September 11

CIA Director Cuts Meeting on Terrorism
From the Washington Post
Excerpt: The daily 5 o'clock meeting at CIA headquarters that for the past three years has coordinated tactical counterterrorism operations involving senior CIA, FBI, Pentagon and Homeland Security Department officials has been cut back by new CIA Director Porter J. Goss to three a week, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials...
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Labels: CIA, FBI, national security, pentagon