Joint State-USAID Press Briefing Ends In Mutual Incomprehension

Or, better yet, it ended due to the very different interests of the senior officials doing the briefing and the members of the press getting briefed.

This week's 'Special Briefing' was convened to refute a report in Foreign Policy magazine that claimed USAID programs in Iraq have been drastically affected by a recent reduction of embassy personnel there. Read the FP article here: State Department Outlines Dramatic Scale-Down of U.S. Presence in Iraq.

So, State and USAID spun up a couple senior officials to refute that report with facts and figures. But when they met the members of the press in the press correspondents room on December 18, it turned out the members of the press had no idea what it was the senior official were refuting.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Well, good afternoon, everybody, and thank you, , for having us here to correct what [the moderator of the briefing] accurately called “wildly inaccurate” stories out there about Iraq staffing. The story is that there is no story here. We adjust our staffing levels all around the world all the time, depending on circumstances, and it’s no secret that we’ve been concerned about the security situation in Iraq for some time, especially threats from our friends the Iranians and their proxies in Iraq.

-- snip --

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: Yeah, let me just add to that. For USAID, we think the current staffing levels are sufficient for the administration of our programs. And if they prove not to be, then we can consider augmenting our staff in-country with TDY support or through requesting new permanent positions. There’s – no staffing level is in stone, and so we’ll be considering them as we move forward. None of our programs have suspended or ceased over the last few months; on the contrary, they continue at pace, and we’re doing a wide range of activities throughout the country. We’re working to strengthen Iraqi governance, civil society, the economy, supporting the recovery of religious and ethnic minorities in the north that were targeted for genocide by ISIS, and we’re well positioned to respond to the needs of a changing political environment in Iraq.

We focus on decentralization and accountability of the state to its citizens for service provision and the election administration. And we support the development of civil society that strengthen engagements between government authorities and Iraqi citizens.

To date, the U.S. Government has programmed over $400 million focused on assisting religious and ethnic minorities, of which USAID had programmed 354 million. And we have obligated over 217 million in FY2018 funds for that end. And I’ll just leave it at that for now.

At that point someone in the press woke up.

QUESTION: Okay. So I missed this – these – whatever it is that you guys are trying to clarify.

QUESTION: Foreign Policy.

MODERATOR: Foreign Policy, is that what you said?

QUESTION: (Inaudible).

QUESTION: I didn’t see it, so I don’t know exactly what it said.

Oh, Foreign Policy, okay, gotcha.

Once they'd woken up to the purpose of the briefing, the members of the press next reflexively denied the truth of what they'd just been told.

QUESTION: But it’s no secret, though, that as the administration contemplates troop drawdowns and things like that, that – both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the staffing levels of the embassies have gone down, right, or are you saying that that’s not true? Because it seems to me, just having been in both places and having seen what they were like when they were stood up in the Bush – both of them stood up in the Bush administration with the idea that Iraq was going to be the biggest embassy in the world. I mean, it’s nothing. It’s a shadow.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Of what?

QUESTION: The physical – the physical – the idea —

QUESTION: Of what it was and what it (inaudible).

QUESTION: The ambition to have it be the big – the biggest and the most staffed embassy in the world. I mean —

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: It is still the largest embassy in the Middle East, just in terms of U.S. direct hires alone, and that’s what the story was focused on. I’ll let you read the story itself, but as I said, the real story here is that we are making sure that we have got the right staff to do the work in front of them at the time. It’s not 2004, it’s not 2008. If it looked like 2008, this would be a very different staffing discussion right now. But Iraq in 2019 is very different. We had a different set of staff in 2008 compared to what we had in 2013. 2014, we cut right down to the bone as ISIS was 60 miles from the gates of Baghdad. Understandably, we had a different set of staff, again, in 2016 as ISIS was largely beaten back. And now we’ve got a different set of staff to face the challenges that we’ve got in front of us now. But it has nothing to do with military levels – and I’ll defer to DOD for the exact numbers there, but they’re not going down. Their partnership with the Iraqis is just as robust as ever. And so – and we are there, actually, largely in support of their activities as well as USAID’s activities and the things that the State Department is doing.

QUESTION: Well, so, can you give – recognizing, though, all these other circumstances, from its high point of staffing, how – what’s the decrease in the number of staff to now?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I actually don’t have that number for what it was historically at some point in the past, but what I can say now is that all the sections and agencies believe that this is what they need to get the mission done, no more, no less. And as said, if they do feel that they need more for particular changing circumstances, they go to the ambassador and they ask for TDY support, or if it looks like it’s going to be more long-term, more – filling more permanent positions, because no staffing level, as said, is set in stone anywhere in the world.

I think the difference here is that this is the first time a staffing change has been done that required a notification to Congress, because that’s a new requirement as of —

MODERATOR: Yeah.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: — last year?

MODERATOR: Yeah, very recent.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: So that’s what you’re reading in the Foreign Policy story.

If at first you don't succeed at denying what you were just told, word it a little differently and try again.

QUESTION: Well, I was just wondering, are you disputing the IG report that came out and said that the staffing levels was hurting the mission’s ability to create its mission – to execute its mission? And then it also made reference to having a shortage of USAID officials on the ground for $1.16 billion of aid – about six expatriates. It’s my understanding that there’s maybe been a couple more since then, but that – that was a critical assessment, and it now seems like there’s even fewer following that critical assessment.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I’m not disputing the report. I’m disputing everybody’s understanding of the report and the lack of context in it. That statement is correct for ordered departure. Ordered departure is not meant to be enough people. It’s not meant to be enough people because you’re only at totally non-essential staff. You’re only at emergency staffing levels. So I would have appreciated it if they had said, “During this temporary ordered departure, of course there are fewer staff than what we need,” but the people who really know how many people are needed to oversee USAID programs is USAID. And even we back here aren’t the experts; it’s the people in the field. So we look to them and we always did from the beginning: “You tell us exactly what you need, and we will do our best to try to make sure that that’s what you’ve got.”

MODERATOR: Do you have anything else to add to that?

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: Yeah, I mean, I’d just add that USAID works in hard places around the world and in the region, right, and that’s including places where you can’t have all the people you want on the ground. And look at Libya or look at Yemen, and those are places where USAID is capable of working very, very confidently in very challenging circumstances. Iraq is one of those places, and so we’re confident that we can do what we need to do there with the staffing that we’ve put forward.

And if that doesn't work, just make stuff up.

QUESTION: Yeah. I’d just say that you mentioned that was the case under ordered departure, but under this plan that’s beyond ordered departure, it’s still actually fewer numbers —

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Fewer than ordered departure?

QUESTION: — of personnel than ordered departure.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: That’s not true. That’s not true.

QUESTION: Doesn’t it go from 256 down?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: It’s just not true. I’m not going to talk about the numbers, but it’s not true. It is not below ordered departure at all.

Finally, one of the press got tired of the topic of the briefing and went fishing for something she could use against VP Pence.

MODERATOR: Carol, go ahead.

QUESTION: I just have a quick question on the $400 million in aid to religious minorities. Could you give us a breakdown, like how much for, say, Yezidis, how much for Christians, how much for any other groups? Could you slice and dice that a little bit for us, please?

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: Sure. I don’t have a full and accurate picture I can give you right here. I’d refer you to our website, and I can follow up with you as well directly with specific options. But it’s split between Yezidis, Christians, other religious and ethnic minorities (inaudible).

QUESTION: Can you just give us a general sense, though? Have you been doing more with Christians? Because that was a big push for this administration.

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: I’d have a hard time saying whether it’s more for one religious minority or another, and we’re not targeting specific people by religion. We’re targeting geographies.

QUESTION: So there isn’t a percentage allocated to each religion?

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, absolutely not.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: No, it’s geographical, if I may add, because I’ve seen a lot of these projects. And so if you’re looking in Bartella and Karemlesh and areas southwest of Erbil, you can’t say, “Well, sorry, this water can only be drunk by Christians or Yezidis and not Shabaks or anyone else.” I mean —

QUESTION: Well, why not? We used to do that here.

Annnnd, with that last remark the moderator finally banged the gong and ended the show.

MODERATOR: Oh, Jesus. All right. That’s the end. Thank you.

Iraq: We Went in Naive, and Now We Don't Want to Look Back

The Wall Street Journal ran a story this week - and in front of the paywall, so they want everyone to read it - about how retired Army General Raymond Odierno commissioned a thorough study of the Army's role in the Iraq War but failed to get it published before he retired. Now, his successors appear to have little interest in taking a deep dive into that history and they are frustrating the release of the study.

Here is the WSJ report: The Army Stymied Its Own Study of the Iraq War.

A towering officer who served 55 months in Iraq, Gen. Odierno told the team the Army hadn’t produced a proper study of its role in the Vietnam War and had to spend the first years in Iraq relearning lessons. This time, he said, the team would research before memories faded and publish a history while the lessons were most relevant.

It would be unclassified, he said, to stimulate discussion about the intervention—one that deepened the U.S.’s Mideast role and cost more than 4,400 American lives. He arranged for 30,000 pages of documents to be declassified. For nearly three years, the team studied those papers and conducted more than 100 interviews.

By June 2016, it had drafted a two-volume history of more than 1,300 pages. H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser to President Trump, reviewed the tomes while a three-star general. He said in an interview last month it was “by far the best and most comprehensive operational study of the U.S. experience in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.”

-- snip --

The study asserts that senior U.S. officials continually assumed the military campaign in Iraq would be over within 18 to 24 months and didn’t deploy enough troops. It concludes that in planning the invasion, U.S. officials assumed neighboring states wouldn’t interfere and didn’t develop an effective strategy to dissuade Iran and Syria from supporting militants.

-- snip --

Some Army officials foresaw trouble if the study wasn’t published before Gen. Odierno retired, which he did in August 2015. Conrad Crane, chief of the historical services division for the Army Heritage and Education Center, a branch of the Army War College, wrote to the team in July 2015 after viewing a draft, saying: “You need to get this published while you still have GEN Odierno as a champion. Otherwise I can see a lot of institutional resistance to having so much dirty laundry aired.” Mr. Crane says he stands by his email.

Good for General Odierno for wanting to document lessons learned in Iraq. He seems to have a reflective side. In fact, I did one of my favorite posts about his musing over mistakes the Army made in Iraq as he was stepping down from command back in 2010.

That post, We Came in Naive, is repeated below in its entirety.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 30, 2010

The New York Times has a brief item today in which General Raymond Odierno, the departing commander of American forces in Iraq, reflects on the U.S. military's fundamental lack of understanding of Iraq and its societal problems back when the invasion occurred in 2003. He says they had to learn by trial and error.

In his four years here, General Odierno was often at the center of shifting American military strategy in Iraq. He said the military learned lessons “the hard way.”

“We all came in very naïve about Iraq,” he said.

“We came in naïve about what the problems were in Iraq; I don’t think we understood what I call the societal devastation that occurred,” he said, citing the Iran-Iraq war, the Persian Gulf war and the international sanctions from 1990 to 2003 that wiped out the middle class. “And then we attacked to overthrow the government,” he said.

The same went for the country’s ethnic and sectarian divisions, he said: “We just didn’t understand it.”

To advocates of the counterinsurgency strategy that General Odierno has, in part, come to symbolize, the learning curve might highlight the military’s adaptiveness. Critics of a conflict that killed an estimated 100,000 Iraqis, perhaps far more, and more than 4,400 American soldiers might see the acknowledgment as evidence of the war’s folly.

Asked if the United States had made the country’s divisions worse, General Odierno said, “I don’t know.”

“There’s all these issues that we didn’t understand and that we had to work our way through,” he said. “And did maybe that cause it to get worse? Maybe.”

General Odierno shouldn't beat himself up so much. In all fairness to him, there was no center of expertise anywhere in the entire U.S. government that had a good understanding of Iraq's political, economic, and social problems way back then.

Oh, wait. I forgot. There was. There were people like Ambassador Ryan Crocker, whose entire professional life had prepared him for informing U.S. national policy toward Iraq at that moment.

Valuable expertise existed in the State Department, and yet Odierno says the military went into Iraq unprepared, learning the hard way through seven years of trial and error which might only have made matters worse. That's outrageous. Why didn't the Secretary of State warn the Pentagon about what it was getting into in 2003?

Oh, wait. I forgot. He did. From the Wikipedia entry on Ryan Crocker:

According to the book, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung, as the Bush administration was preparing for war with Iraq in late 2002, then Secretary of State, Colin Powell ordered Crocker and then Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, William Burns to prepare a secret memo examining the risks associated with a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The six-page memo, titled "The Perfect Storm", stated that toppling Saddam Hussein could unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions, that the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events. It also cautioned that the United States would have to start from scratch building a political and economic system because Iraq's infrastructure was in tatters.

But, General Odierno is saying today that the military was clueless about Iraq when it invaded the place. Something doesn't add up, because surely the Pentagon would have taken a memo like Crocker's seriously.

Oh, wait. I forgot. It didn't. As Crocker recounted last year, his memo "had no operational traction."

Washington turf battles had direct implications on the battlefield. In Baghdad in April 2003, after Saddam fell, few U.S. commanders had a clear picture of the political landscape and its importance to the overall mission. I remember meeting one in particular who had zero interest in anything except getting the kinetics right—deploy, defend, point and shoot. I tried to give him a sense of what the country would look like now for the Iraqis and, indeed, for his forces, if we didn't find a way to address all sorts of economic, social, and political issues. His response (and he was not alone): "This isn't our mission here. The things you are telling me are interesting, but they have nothing to do with me."

Well, if the State Department had really done its job it wouldn't have sent the Pentagon a measly six-page memo, it would have made a major planning effort. Like, assembling hundreds of experts and having them study all the many facets of the complicated Iraq problem. Really get down into the weeds and strategize about things like public health and humanitarian needs, transparency and anti-corruption, oil and energy, defense policy and institutions, transitional justice, democratic principles and procedures, local government, civil society capacity building, education, media, water, agriculture and environment and economy and infrastructure. It would have taken maybe a whole year to do it right. And then it would have produced extensive written reports to make sure that the Defense Department fully understood the problems it faced.

Oh, wait. I forgot. It did. That effort was called the "Future of Iraq" project, and you can read the reports for yourself:

The National Security Archive is today posting State Department documents from 2002 tracing the inception of the "Future of Iraq Project," alongside the final, mammoth 13-volume study, previously obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. "The Future of Iraq Project" was one of the most comprehensive U.S. government planning efforts for raising that country out of the ashes of combat and establishing a functioning democracy. The new materials complement previous postings on the Archive's site relating to the United States' complex relationship with Iraq during the years leading up to the 2003 invasion.

I guess General Odierno didn't get the memo about the Future of Iraq project. Too bad. That huge report would have filled him in on those issues he says he didn't understand. The Defense Department is a big place, after all, and he's only one man. It isn't like the Pentagon deliberately rejected those 13 volumes of exhaustive planning advise.

Oh, wait. I forgot. It did. In fact, the New York Times reported exactly that back on October 19, 2003.

A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials.

Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy.

Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society.

Several officials said that many of the findings in the $5 million study were ignored by Pentagon officials until recently, although the Pentagon said they took the findings into account. The work is now being relied on heavily as occupation forces struggle to impose stability in Iraq.

The working group studying transitional justice was eerily prescient in forecasting the widespread looting in the aftermath of the fall of Mr. Hussein's government, caused in part by thousands of criminals set free from prison, and it recommended force to prevent the chaos.

"The period immediately after regime change might offer these criminals the opportunity to engage in acts of killing, plunder and looting," the report warned, urging American officials to "organize military patrols by coalition forces in all major cities to prevent lawlessness, especially against vital utilities and key government facilities."

Despite the scope of the project, the military office initially charged with rebuilding Iraq did not learn of it until a major government drill for the postwar mission was held in Washington in late February, less than a month before the conflict began, said Ron Adams, the office's deputy director.

The man overseeing the planning, Tom Warrick, a State Department official, so impressed aides to Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general heading the military's reconstruction office, that they recruited Mr. Warrick to join their team.

George Ward, an aide to General Garner, said the reconstruction office wanted to use Mr. Warrick's knowledge because "we had few experts on Iraq on the staff."

But top Pentagon officials blocked Mr. Warrick's appointment, and much of the project's work was shelved, State Department officials said. Mr. Warrick declined to be interviewed for this article.

-- snip --

In the end, the American military and civilian officials who first entered Iraq prepared for several possible problems: numerous fires in the oil fields, a massive humanitarian crisis, widespread revenge attacks against former leaders of Mr. Hussein's government and threats from Iraq's neighbors. In fact, none of those problems occurred to any great degree.

Officials acknowledge that the United States was not well prepared for what did occur: chiefly widespread looting and related security threats, even though the State Department study predicted them.

So, I guess the bottom line is that General Odierno, while he may be highly forgetful, didn't really have to learn about Iraq's societal problems and sectarian divides the hard way, after all.

In Which the Rand Corporation Gives Two Cheers for a Reality-Based Strategy

The Rand Corporation's - justly - renowned deep thinker on counterterrorism, Brian Jenkins, posted an article today that reads like a bucket of cold water thrown in the face of our national security establishment. Read it here: Any Review of Syria and Iraq Strategy Needs Realistic Reappraisal.

Note that the title juxtaposes the words "Syria and Iraq strategy" and "realistic," which signals that the author is not going to deliver the usual happy-talk about 'degrade and defeat' or 'train and assist' or whatever other buzz words are in fashion. Instead, he starts by listing some obvious realities:

The continued fighting has seen the diminishing strength of Syria's secular rebels and the ascent of its most extreme jihadist component, represented by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The conflicts in Syria and Iraq seem to be at a stalemate.

National armies in both countries have failed.

Syria and Iraq are now effectively partitioned.

He closes with this:

Although these stark conclusions hardly sound controversial, they are antithetical to American policy. The very idea of a military stalemate lasting years — or decades — defies America's sense of progress. Secular, democratic governance and religious tolerance are deeply held American values. The United States operates on the presumption that the sectarian and ethnic divisions can be bridged; that Iraq's national army can be rebuilt into an effective fighting force; that the Bashar Assad regime in Syria can be replaced by a more inclusive government; that the Sunnis can be won over and the jihadists can be isolated, contained and defeated; that peace and national unity can be restored, enabling the refugees to return; and that this can be achieved without the commitment of large numbers of combat forces or even with the commitment of American combat forces.

Unquestionably, these are noble aims, and diplomats are required to be optimists. Nonetheless, national objectives must be based upon realistic assessments of the situation. Here, the distance between presumed aspiration and reality seems great.

So you say we ought to consider reality as we pursue our national objectives in the partitioned and stalemated Iraq and Syria? You are right, Mr, Jenkins, that does not sound at all controversial.

But bear in mind that the Rand Corporation is the government-funded policy think tank of the Pentagon, so even that mild scolding is coming from the inside. Could it indicate a new willingness to stop stumbling along with our Neo-Wilsonian approach to the Middle East?

From Brian Jenkin's mouth to God's ears (you should forgive the Yiddishism).

Baghdad Bob: He Stood Superior to Truth

We have them surrounded in their tanks!

"In an age of spin, al-Sahaf offers feeling and authenticity. His message is consistent — unshakeable, in fact, no matter the evidence — but he commands daily attention by his on-the-spot, invective-rich variations on the theme. His lunatic counterfactual art is more appealing than the banal awfulness of the Reliable Sources. He is a Method actor in a production that will close in a couple of days. He stands superior to truth." - WeLovetheIraqiInformationminister.com

Absolutely right. We all loved the Iraqi Information Minister. Baghdad Bob - actual name Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf - was the comic relief during Gulf War I. If you were anywhere much over the age of five back in 2003, you remember him, or at least Saturday Night Live parodies of him.

If you weren't around then, here's a selection of his trademark lunatic counterfactual art:



Bob wasn't a war criminal. He wasn't among our deck of 52 most wanted Iraqis. We didn't want him for anything, really. After he was captured we allowed him to leave Iraq and live the rest of his life in peace.

His life is coming to an end now, according to reports in Swedish news media. RIP Bob, and I really mean that.

And, in the fullness of time, was Bob really wrong about everything?

Check out The Eerie Prophecies of "Baghdad Bob" for a sobering re-think. Consider especially this one:

"How can you lay siege to a whole country? ... We are in our country, among our kith and kin ... Faltering forces of infidels cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to them! They are the ones who will find themselves under siege."

Today, twelve years later, as we send yet more U.S. troops back to Iraq, who looks more prescient, Baghdad Bob or Donald Rumsfeld?

Wartime Contracting Commission Records To Be Sealed

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) blog noted yesterday that the records of the Wartime Contracting Commisssion, that watchdog on government fraud, waste, and mismanagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, will soon be sealed and put beyond access by the public.

Wartime Contracting Commission's Move to Seal Records for 20 Years: Just Plain Wrong:

The recently dissolved Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC) did just about everything right. Created in the spirit of the Truman Commission, the CWC identified as much as $60 billion in contracting-related waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the process, the CWC held 25 hearings, released 8 reports, and published detailed recommendations intended to prevent waste and fraud from occurring in future overseas contingencies. Perhaps most important, the bipartisan commission was unanimous in its findings and recommendations, notable in a city known for its partisan gridlock.

But the Commission’s decision to seal its internal records for 20 years is just plain wrong. The decision, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, blocks the public and watchdog groups from using the CWC’s source material to build upon the important work of the Commission and to help prevent waste and fraud in overseas contingency contracting in the near term.

Clark Irwin, the CWC’s spokesman, told the Wall Street Journal the seal was justified because “there is sensitive information in there.” He cited proprietary company information, attorney work products, and classified documents as examples of such records. Another source told the Journal that the expectation that the CWC’s records would be sealed was necessary to encourage sources to speak candidly.

But Irwin’s argument ignores the fact that documents are only released by the National Archives after first going through an extensive vetting process. So whether the seal is 20 years, 20 days, or even if there were no seal at all, the truly sensitive material would be redacted or withheld.

Sources close to the CWC have told POGO that the commissioners agreed to the 20-year seal after being informed that it was standard practice. But 20 years doesn’t appear to be anywhere near standard. Congress has created six investigative commissions in the last 20 years, the most well known being the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission).

The 9/11 Commission, which investigated issues of the most sensitive nature, sealed its records for just five years. And even that length of time seemed too long for Thomas Kean, the 9/11 Commission Chairman, who “said publicly that he was eager for most of the records to be released as quickly as possible.” He later told Reuters that there was “no justification for withholding most of the unreleased material.”

As was the case with the 9/11 Commission, the CWC’s records aren’t available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because the CWC is a congressional entity and Congress isn’t subject to FOIA. But the public should be able to request from agencies records that those agencies provided to the CWC.

A source told the Wall Street Journal that the “vast majority of the commission's records would put you to sleep.” And that may be true. But until the public has the opportunity to view the documents for ourselves, we can’t be certain of their actual value or use them to make wartime contractors more accountable. We hope Congress takes action to right this wrong by legislating a far shorter seal—or better yet, no seal at all.

There is no good reason to seal the records, and plenty of reasons why the public interest would benefit from making them accessible, especially as the USG ramps up to do even more contracting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congress can reverse this decision. Please write to your representatives.

Scam Bomb Detector Finally Banned in Britain

As was noted tonight on National Public Radio, authorities in Britain have finally taken action against the perpetrator of a murderous fraud, the scam bomb detector that is currently marketed under the name "ADE 651." This device, which consists of an antenna, an empty box, a set of plastic cards and a massive load of snake oil, has been sold to gullible security agencies all over the world. Iraqi agencies have spent $85 million on them and continue to insist, against all evidence, that the ridiculous things work.

The video embedded above is from the BBC's Newsnight program, and my favorite moment comes at about the 7 minute and 30 second mark when the wizened old scientist solemnly notes that the plastic case which houses the operating components of the ADE 651 is, upon his scientific observation, totally empty.

I've posted about this outrageous fraud before and linked to decades-old U.S. government reports, such as this one and this one, that documented the utter impossibility of using the ADE 651 to detect bombs or anything else.

Let's hope the export ban will finally break the evil spell that has been cast on suckers the world over by the ADE 651 - or as I call it, the PLACEBO 60K (Predatory Lucrative Advanced Confusinator Explosive-Detecting Bankable Opportunity @ $60,000). On the other hand, new suckers are being born every minute.

Iraq Spent $85 Million on Magical Bomb Detectors

The New York Times had a story Thursday on the infuriating commercial success in Iraq - $85 million in sales and still climbing - of the oldest and most ludicrous scam explosives detector that ever cursed the security market.

Some quotes from the NYT:

BAGHDAD — Despite major bombings that have rattled the nation, and fears of rising violence as American troops withdraw, Iraq’s security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless.

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the "ADE 651", at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.

-- snip --

The American military does not use the devices. “I don’t believe there’s a magic wand that can detect explosives,” said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training for the American military. “If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work.”

The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.

-- snip --

Aqeel al-Turaihi, the inspector general for the Ministry of the Interior, reported that the ministry bought 800 of the devices from a company called ATSC (UK) Ltd. for $32 million in 2008, and an unspecified larger quantity for $53 million. Mr. Turaihi said Iraqi officials paid up to $60,000 apiece, when the wands could be purchased for as little as $18,500. He said he had begun an investigation into the no-bid contracts with ATSC.

And here's the bottom line:

Colonel Bidlack said, “When they say they are selling you something that will save your son or daughter on a patrol, they’ve crossed an insupportable line into moral depravity.”

It's not just Iraqis who are buying these devices. They are also being sold to credulous security authorities in Thailand, where there is an active insurgency in the south, under the name "GT-200." From a recent story in the Bangkok Post:

A bomb detection squad later arrived at the scene and searched the area with the help of GT-200 devices, which detected nothing suspicious. Shortly afterwards, the car exploded.

The Mexican police, military, and PEMEX (the national oil company) are also buying these useless playthings, which are marketed as being able to detect drugs as well as explosives. To take a story pulled at random about the Mexican drug wars:

Responding to another call, Espinosa's crew takes up positions behind an army platoon clustered around a warehouse. Federal detectives are breaking open the lock ... Inside, the soldiers discover magazines full of AK-47 bullets scattered across a patio. In the rooms beyond are hundreds of sacks and 55-gallon drums containing chemicals used for making methamphetamines ... It's a major find — but the Mexican military claims credit. Lt. Col. Oswaldo Bejar boasts that his unit has made five busts in eight days in Uruapan, many of them using a chemical-sniffing device known as a GT-200.

By whatever name, it is the same empty box with an antenna sticking out that was debunked by U.S. government testing way back as 1995 when it was called the "Quadro Tracker," and again in 2002 when it was called the "MOLE Programmable Detection System," and yet again in 2005 when it was called the "Sniffex." It's also been sold under the names GT-200 Molecular Detector, the Alpha 6, the Scandec, the PSD-22, and no doubt many others that I'm not aware of.

I'd like to think this is a case of European Enlightenment rationalism (“I don’t believe there’s a magic wand that can detect explosives ... If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work”) versus the traditional magical thinking of the non-western world ("Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs”).

I'd like to think that modern westerners, with all our concern for evidence, proofs, and falsification, would never buy an explosives detector that has absolutely no theoretical basis or credible principle of operation, or any favorable test results, or a successful track record, or even any components inside the box.

Surely rational men would laugh at gibberish like this:



Or at operator training sessions like this:



I'd like to think that. Except, the U.S. military once bought a few of them too.

If the consumers of security products can't be educated out of buying this dangerous fraud, I suggest we at least agree to rename it something more descriptive, like the PLACEBO 60K, the "Predatory Lucrative Advanced Confusinator Explosive-detecting Bankable Opportunity @ $60,000."