GCOM Summary (only) 2010 Aug 19

[Felix The Assassin]

GCOM Summary 2010 Aug 19
U.S. Joint Forces Command
Global Current Operations Media Summary
Operations Iraqi Freedom/Enduring Freedom/Noble Eagle
Current as of August 19, 2010

New Developments
•Operation Iraqi Freedom Ends As Last Combat Soldiers Leave Baghdad. Lt. Col. Mark Bieger huddled his infantrymen in a darkened parking lot minutes before they were to depart Baghdad for the last time. "This is a historic mission!" he bellowed, struggling to be heard over the zoom of fighter jets and unmanned drones deployed to watch over the brigade's convoy to Kuwait. "A truly historic end to seven years of war." The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, which left Iraq this week, was the final U.S. combat brigade to be pulled out of the country, fulfilling the Obama administration's pledge to end the U.S. combat mission by the end of August. About 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, mainly as a training force. (Washington Post – see attached)

•Civilians To Take U.S. Lead After Military Leaves Iraq. As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning a remarkable civilian effort, buttressed by a small army of contractors, to fill the void. By October 2011, the State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police, a task that will largely be carried out by contractors. With no American soldiers to defuse sectarian tensions in northern Iraq, it will be up to American diplomats in two new $100 million outposts to head off potential confrontations between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish pesh merga forces. To protect the civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. (New York Times – see attached)

•In Afghanistan, More Attacks On Officials And A Protest Over A Deadly NATO Raid. Violence struck southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, with attacks on government and security officials. There were also allegations that NATO forces had killed two civilians in a night raid in the northeast, although the military sharply disputed that. In Kandahar Province, a district police commander and three officers were killed when a suicide bomber exploded near a police patrol in the early evening. In Zabul Province, gunmen assassinated Atta Khan Qadir Wal, 50, the director of the province’s office of tribal affairs, as he returned from evening prayers at a mosque in Qalat, the provincial capital. He was a highly respected elder, said Mohammad Jan Rasool Yar, a spokesman for the Zabul governor. (New York Times – see attached)

•Romania Shows Its Support For The U.S.-Led Mission In Afghanistan. As other countries reduce their troop levels in the American-led war in Afghanistan, the Romanian government has adopted the opposite strategy. When the U.S. issued a plea late last year for more international troops, Romanian officials didn't hesitate. They agreed to boost their Afghanistan contingent from 962 to more than 1,500 – even as Romania's economy is suffering and defense spending is being cut. To the Romanians, participation in the Afghan mission is a good way to demonstrate their bona fides as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and as an ally of the United States, two relationships they believe will deter any aggressive moves by their old East Bloc overlord, Russia. (Los Angeles Times – see attached)

•Security Firm Ban Could Affect Afghan Aid. A ban on private security companies in Afghanistan could affect development and aid work as many of the firms guard Western projects in the country, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree on Tuesday ordering private security companies to disband within four months – part of an ambitious plan for the government to take responsibility for all security in the country from 2014. The firms, who compete for billions of dollars in contracts, employ around 40,000 heavily armed guards – mostly Afghans but including many foreigners. They are also used to guard convoys, embassies and other mainly Western interests. "Private security companies are currently filling a gap to allow us to deliver reconstruction and development assistance that, at the end of the day, focuses on improving the lives of the Afghan people," U.S. embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement. (Reuters)

Military Coverage
•WikiLeaks And Pentagon Disagree About Talks. The Pentagon on Wednesday rebutted statements by the WikiLeaks organization that the Defense Department had expressed a willingness to discuss reviewing a trove of classified documents before public release. “The Department of Defense will not negotiate some ‘minimized’ or ‘sanitized’ version of a release by WikiLeaks of additional U.S. government classified documents,” Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, wrote in a letter to a lawyer representing WikiLeaks. The letter was dated Monday but was provided by DoD officials on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, was quoted by AP as having said the Pentagon had agreed to negotiations over how to redact the files to remove names and information that might harm individuals, in a process leading to the eventual release of more documents by his organization. (New York Times – see attached)

Homeland Security
•Moussaoui Misses U.S. High Court Appeal Deadline. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national sentenced to life in prison in 2006 for his involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks, missed the deadline to file an appeal of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, documents show. Barring a procedural surprise, his failure to file makes his conviction final. A U.S. appeals court authorized the seven attorneys of the lone person convicted in the September 11 attacks to withdraw from the case, according to a copy of the decision obtained Wednesday by Agence France Presse. In a letter to the court in early August, the attorneys said Moussaoui had until July 30 to appeal to the Supreme Court, and that the deadline had passed. Moussaoui's conviction was upheld on appeal January 4. Moussaoui was sentenced to life without possibility of parole, and is in solitary confinement at a top-security facility in Colorado. (Google/AFP)

•CIA Forms New Center To Combat Nukes, WMDs. The CIA is opening a counterproliferation center to combat the spread of dangerous weapons and technology, a move that comes as Iran is on the verge of fueling up a new nuclear power plant. CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that the new unit would place CIA operators side by side with the agency's analysts to brainstorm plans to "confront the threat of weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, chemical and biological." The center would formalize the collaboration between the agency's analysts and operators, a close working relationship that CIA spokesman George Little said already has yielded intelligence successes. Little cited their work in last year's revelation of the "discovery of the Syrian covert nuclear reactor and Iran's undeclared uranium enrichment facility near Qom." That Iranian city is the ideological center of Iran's Shiite rulers. (NPR/AP)

World Developments
•Mexico Under Siege. A surge of drug violence in Mexico's business capital and richest city has prompted an outcry from business leaders who on Wednesday took out full-page ads asking President Felipe Calderón to send in more soldiers to stem the violence. The growing violence in Monterrey, long one of Mexico's most modern and safe cities, is a sign that the country's war against drug gangs is spreading ever further from poorer battlegrounds along the border and into the country's wealthiest enclaves. Residents opened their newspapers Wednesday morning to find the ads taken out by Mexican business leaders, begging the government to send more military into the city. "Enough already," said the notice that ran in national and local papers, criticizing what it said was a slow response of police against "criminal bands that in every act look to establish a new boundary of terror." (Wall Street Journal – see attached)

•U.S. Activist Returns To Prison In Peru. An American activist convicted of aiding leftist rebels surrendered to police Wednesday after a court struck down a decision granting her parole and ordered her to return to prison, where she is to remain with her 15-month-old son for the time being. Police arrested Lori Berenson at the U.S. Embassy, where she had been attending a meeting on "consular issues" when she learned of the ruling, embassy spokesman James Fennell said. "She's calm. She is a very strong women," her husband and lawyer, Anibal Apari, told reporters outside the embassy. "She is going to return to jail with her baby." The ruling by the three-judge panel of the criminal appeals court was announced two days after the 40-year-old New Yorker appeared at a hearing, apologizing for her crime and asking the court to uphold her parole. Ms. Berenson told the court Monday that she regrets her actions and hoped to focus on raising her son, Salvador. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/AP)

•Khamenei: Iran Won't Talk With U.S. In Current Climate. Iran's supreme leader said on Wednesday the Islamic Republic would not conduct talks with the United States about its nuclear program unless sanctions and military threats were lifted. "What they say, our president and others are saying, that we will negotiate – yes we will, but not with America because America is not negotiating honestly and like a normal negotiator," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech to senior officials. "Put away the threats and put away the sanctions." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Iran is willing to resume negotiations with a group of six global powers in the coming weeks. It was not entirely clear if Khamenei was ruling out resuming talks with the six, which include the United States, or saying there would be no bilateral talks with Washington – an unlikely prospect given the lack of U.S.-Iranian diplomatic ties. (Reuters