Author: Spencer Ackerman

Mark Mazzetti has a blockbuster piece in today’s New York Times about a secret order issued by Gen. David Petraeus last fall, with the aid of Adm. Eric Olson, that authorizes Special Operations Forces in the Middle East and South Asia to “fill intelligence gaps about terror organizations and other threats in the Middle East and beyond.” In practice — and a Petraeus spokesman declined comment here — that reportedly means engaging in covert action to fill those gaps. That means taking measures that the government would deny any knowledge of occurring (something the CIA is legally authorized to perform) rather than clandestine operations, in which the government merely denies involvement. Special operators can do clandestine stuff, but (typically) not covert stuff.

What might this mean in practice? Mazzetti:

General Petraeus’s September order is focused on intelligence gathering — by American troops, foreign businesspeople, academics or others — to identify militants and provide “persistent situational awareness,” while forging ties to local indigenous groups.

Petraeus’ spokesman declined comment. But if that’s faithfully reported, it sounds a lot like uniformed personnel could assume civilian cover for intelligence purposes. And that carries the non-trivial risk of unaffiliated businesspeople or academics or journalists or tourists in the Middle East or South Asia being presumed to be spies — and, hence, targets — by local security forces or extremists. Foreign allied governments in the region might also not like the U.S. sponsoring “local indigenous groups” that might destabilize their countries or threaten their rule.

I didn’t have it when I put my piece to bed last night, but here it is. It’s short and straightforward. Repeal only takes effect after the Pentagon working group on implementing a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal delivers its recommendations in December and the president, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff give their assent to how that internal Pentagon process will proceed.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will introduce this language into the Senate Armed Services Committee’s mark-up of the fiscal 2011 Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday. He has the support of chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.); Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Penn.) for a complementary measure in the House version of the bill during this week’s floor debate; and, finally, the White House.

But while the press today might be writing that the White House deal means the fight is effectively over, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal activists are just gearing up for a grueling week. As I wrote in my piece, the Human Rights Campaign is putting millions of dollars and tons of locally based effort around the country into urging wavering senators on the committee to vote for Lieberman’s text and for the House amendment. Michael Cole of the Human Rights Campaign noted to me yesterday that “even though we have some outstanding congressional leaders, our issues are continually ones that require education and making sure members understand these issues and why it’s important to protect the community.”

Here’s the text of the Lieberman amendment:

Committee Amendment Proposed by Mr. Lieberman
At the appropriate place in title V, insert the following:

SEC. [ARM10802]. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE POLICY CONCERNING HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE ARMED FORCES.

(a) COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A REPEAL OF 10 U.S.C. § 654.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—On March 2, 2010, the Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum directing the Comprehensive Review on the Implementation of a Repeal of 10 U.S.C. § 654 (section 654 of title 10, United States Code).
(2) OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF REVIEW.—The Terms of Reference accompanying the Secretary’s memorandum established the following objectives and scope of the ordered review:
(A) Determine any impacts to military readiness, military effectiveness and unit cohesion, recruiting/retention, and family readiness that may result from repeal of the law and recommend any actions that should be taken in light of such impacts.
(B) Determine leadership, guidance, and training on standards of conduct and new policies.
(C) Determine appropriate changes to existing policies and regulations, including but not limited to issues regarding personnel management, leadership and training, facilities, investigations, and benefits.
(D) Recommend appropriate changes (if any) to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
(E) Monitor and evaluate existing legislative proposals to repeal 10 U.S.C. § 654 and proposals that may be introduced in the Congress during the period of the review.
(F) Assure appropriate ways to monitor the workforce climate and military effectiveness that support successful follow-through on implementation.
(G) Evaluate the issues raised in ongoing litigation involving 10 U.S.C. § 654.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by subsection (f) shall take effect only on the date on which
the last of the following occurs:
(1) The Secretary of Defense has received the
report required by the memorandum of the Secretary referred to in subsection (a).
(2) The President transmits to the congressional defense committees a written certification, signed by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stating each of the following:
(A) That the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the recommendations contained in the report and the report’s proposed plan of action.
(B) That the Department of Defense has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to exercise the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f).
(C) That the implementation of necessary policies and regulations pursuant to the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f) is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces.

(c) NO IMMEDIATE EFFECT ON CURRENT POLICY.— Section 654 of title 10, United States Code, shall remain in effect until such time that all of the requirements and certifications required by subsection (b) are met. If these requirements and certifications are not met, section 654 of title 10, United States Code, shall remain in effect.

(d) BENEFITS.—Nothing in this section, or the amendments made by this section, shall be construed to
require the furnishing of benefits in violation of section 9 7 of title 1, United States Code (relating to the definitions of “marriage” and “spouse” and referred to as the “Defense of Marriage Act”).

(e) NO PRIVATE CAUSE OF ACTION.—Nothing in this section, or the amendments made by this section, shall be construed to create a private cause of action.

(f) TREATMENT OF 1993 POLICY.—
(1) TITLE10.—Upon the effective date established by subsection (b), chapter 37 of title 10, 18 United States Code, is amended—
(A) by striking section 654; and (B) in the table of sections at the beginning of such chapter, by striking the item relating to section 654.
(2) CONFORMINGAMENDMENT.—Upon the effective date established by subsection (b), section ARM10802 S.L.C. 571 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (10 U.S.C. 654 note) is amended by striking subsections (b), (c), and (d).

Sen. Joe Lieberman plans to introduce an amendment Wednesday to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." (Pete Marovich/ZUMA Press)

Less than a month after the Pentagon leadership warned it would unwise to abandon the military’s ban on open gay service this year, a fast-moving legislative effort this week has opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” feeling like the law might finally be on the scrapheap.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Activists opposed to the law met Monday morning with White House officials ahead of a dual-tracked strategy in Congress to insert a formal repeal of the 17-year old law in next year’s defense funding bill. On Wednesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee will mark up the 2011 Defense Authorization, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) plans to introduce an amendment repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He’ll be followed by Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), an Iraq war veteran, who said Monday he would introduce a complementary amendment into the House’s version of the bill when it receives a full floor debate later this week. If passed, it would allow the Pentagon a few months’ worth of a grace period so an internal review due in December can guide how the implement overturning the ban.

By Monday evening, activists were announcing what the Human Rights Campaign’s president, Joe Solomonese, said in an official statement was the “brink of historic” action to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” While legislative language was not available by press time, several prominent activists cheered the White House for clearing the way for what Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and one of the activists who took part in the White House meeting, called “a dramatic breakthrough in dismantling ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, wrote to Murphy late Monday to say the administration “supports the proposed amendment” on repeal, given that it recognizes the “critical need” for uniformed input to guide how repeal will work in practice. Orszag’s letter did not argue any need for repeal, and reiterated that the administration’s first choice would have delayed getting rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until at least 2011.

The contours of a potential deal paving the way for a legislative repeal this week were first floated by retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili in the Washington Post on Saturday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who expressed his opposition to the law in February, dismayed activists by urging congressional leaders in April to delay any legislative remedies for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until a Pentagon working group surveying military attitudes about how to implement any repeal delivers its final report in December.

Shalikashvili, himself a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the dawn of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” proposed cutting the legislative and bureaucratic Gordian Knot. “Congress could repeal the federal statute and return authority to the military to set rules about gay troops, just as the armed services had before ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ became law in 1993,” he wrote. “Indeed, acting now to remove the constraints imposed by that law is the most faithful response that Congress can offer to the working group’s efforts to engage service members and their families.”

That appeared to offer all sides a way out of the impasse. President Obama will get to keep the promise he made to the LGBT community in his State of the Union address for a 2010 repeal, and the Pentagon will ensure that the recommendations of the working group, led by Army Gen. Carter Ham and top Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson, form the basis of a post-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” future. Michael Cole, a spokesman for the anti-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Human Rights Campaign, portrayed a legislative repeal this week as a necessary prerequisite to implementing the working group’s findings. “If the law is not repealed this year, when the implementation study comes down, [the Pentagon will] not able to carry it out,” Cole said.

In their April letter to Congress, Gates and Mullen warned that a legislative fix ahead of Johnson and Ham’s working group report would “send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter.” But chief Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell sounded more open to congressional action on Monday, however reluctantly. “Given that Congress insists on addressing this issue this week, we are trying to gain a better understanding of the legislative proposals they will be considering,” Morrell said in an e-mail.

Activists are seeking to ensure they don’t waste their congressional opportunity. The Human Rights Campaign is spending millions this week to pressure six senators on the Armed Services Committee who haven’t taken a firm position on repeal but the group believes are persuadable: Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Field staff in the states of all six senators are calling the legislators’ district offices, mailing thousands of postcards and scheduling rallies with anti-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” servicemembers and veterans demanding an end to the law.

Cole said he anticipated close votes in both the Senate committee and the House floor. But he vowed Human Rights Campaign would “keep up the pressure and remind wavering members that 75 percent of the American people support repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and this is an issue to strengthen our military and respect LGBT troops at the same time.”

In the culmination of today’s big push from activists to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the White House budget director, Peter Orszag, has written a (rather reluctant) letter to Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Penn.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to say that the Obama administration “supports [their] proposed amendment” to next year’s defense bill scrapping the 17-year old ban on open gay military service.

That clears the way for Lieberman to insert his amendment into the bill during the Senate Armed Services Committee’s mark-up on Wednesday. Murphy will do the same when the bill’s House counterpart goes up for a floor vote later this week. Their basic legislative fix: repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the legal sense, but allow the Defense Department to formally implement repeal after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ working group on repeal issues its report in December. That working group, chaired by Army Gen. Carter Ham and Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson, is soliciting opinion from around the uniformed military about how the details of repeal ought to work.

LGBT-rights groups are pretty much over the moon. A representative press release:

“This announcement from the White House today is long awaited, much needed, and immensely helpful as we enter a critical phase of the battle to repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army interrogator who was discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” “We have been making the case to White House staff for more than a year now that delayed implementation is realistic, politically viable, and the only way to get the defense community on board with repeal, and we are glad to see the community and now the administration and defense leadership finally rally around this option.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, just issued a statement practically begging the Obama administration to work with her to restructure the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the five-year-old bureaucratic anomaly seated atop the country’s 16 intelligence agencies. “I have long been concerned that the Director of National Intelligence had more responsibility than authority, and DNI Dennis Blair’s resignation raises the issue to the fore,” Feinstein said in the statement. “After five years and three DNIs, it is clear that the law calls for a leader but the authority provided in law is essentially that of a coordinator. The President needs to decide what he wants the DNI to be, and then work with the Intelligence Committees to see that the necessary authority is, in fact, in law.” Will there be sufficient appetite in the administration for an intelligence overhaul?

Speaking of Blair’s replacement, Feinstein doesn’t come out and say it, but her statement gives a cold shoulder to James Clapper, the Pentagon’s intelligence chief and Blair’s deputy for Defense intelligence, who’s reportedly the leading candidate for the job. “It will be important that any nominee is not beholden to the Pentagon’s interests and can, as needed, provide balance to civilian and military interests in carrying out the nation’s intelligence missions,” Feinstein said in the statement.

No one agency, particularly the Department of Defense, should control the flow of intelligence to the President. The majority of the intelligence budget is already executed by the Department of Defense, and it will always have a strong influence over the Intelligence Community’s operation. That should be balanced, however, by the need for the community to provide strategic intelligence beyond what is necessary for the warfighter.

On the one hand, Feinstein also opposed Leon Panetta’s appointment as CIA director until she got an assurance — in the form of Steve Kappes staying on as deputy director (he recently announced his retirement) — that Panetta wouldn’t jeopardize her prerogatives. On the other, Feinstein didn’t announce any opposition before Panetta’s nomination was announced.

As reported here on Thursday, the House Armed Services Committee set the Obama administration’s plans for closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay back significantly last week. Marking up the next fiscal year’s defense bill, the panel voted unanimously to prevent the Defense Department from spending any money to buy the Thomson Corrections Center in Illinois — a necessary step for the administration to transfer Guantanamo’s remaining detainee population ahead of finally shuttering the place.

Last week, however, the committee only released a summary of its language. Now the full text is available, ahead of this week’s House floor vote on the bill. Here’s what the Fiscal Year 2011 Defense Authorization actually says about Obama’s Guantanamo plan:

SEC. 1034. PROHIBITION ON THE USE OF FUNDS TO MODIFY OR CONSTRUCT FACILITIES IN THE UNITED STATES TO HOUSE DETAINEES TRANSFERRED FROM UNITED STATES NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA.
(a) IN GENERAL.—None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act may be used to construct or modify any facility in the United States, its territories, or possessions to house any individual described in subsection (c) for the purposes of detention or imprisonment in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense.

But the committee doesn’t close a door without opening a window, so the mark-up text requires the Secretary of Defense to submit a report by next April ahead of any such Thomson-based or Thomson-like transfer of Guantanamo detainees, spelling out in more detail what the administration’s planning is on the controversial subject.

(d) REPORT ON USE OF FACILITIES IN THE UNITED STATES TO HOUSE DETAINEES TRANSFERRED FROM
GUANTANAMO.—
(1) REPORT REQUIRED.—Not later than April 1, 2011, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the con- gressional defense committees a report, in classified or unclassified form, on the merits, costs, and risks of using any proposed facility in the United States, its territories, or possessions to house any individual described in subsection (c) for the purposes of detention or imprisonment in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense.

(2) ELEMENTS OF THE REPORT.—The report required in paragraph (1) shall include each of the following:
(A) A discussion of the merits associated with any such proposed facility that would justify—
(i) using the facility instead of the facility at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and
(ii) the proposed facility’s contribution to effecting a comprehensive policy for continuing military detention operations. (B) The rationale for selecting the specific
site for any such proposed facility, including details for the processes and criteria used for identifying the merits described in subparagraph (A) and for selecting the proposed site over reasonable alternative sites.
(C) A discussion of any potential risks to any community in the vicinity of any such proposed facility, the measures that could be taken to mitigate such risks, and the likely cost to the Department of Defense of implementing such measures.

(D) A discussion of any necessary modifications to any such proposed facility to ensure that any detainee transferred from Guantanamo Bay to such facility could not come into contact with any other individual, including any other person detained at such facility, that is not approved for such contact by the Department of Defense, and an assessment of the likely costs of such modifications.
(E) A discussion of any support at the site of any such proposed facility that would likely be provided by the Department of Defense, including the types of support, the number of personnel required for each such type, and an estimate of the cost of such support.
(F) A discussion of any support, other than support provided at a proposed facility, that would likely be provided by the Department of Defense for the operation of any such proposed facility, including the types of possible support, the number of personnel required for each such type, and an estimate of the cost of such support.
(G) A discussion of the legal issues, in the judgment of the Secretary of Defense, that could be raised as a result of detaining or imprisoning any individual described in subsection (c) at any such proposed facility that could not be raised while such individual is detained or imprisoned at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On Friday, however, White House Press Secretary Robert Gates floated the prospect that the House committee’s setback could prompt the Justice Department to use its budgeted money to fund the Guantanamo transfer, thereby keeping the prospect of closing Guantanamo this year alive.

What was reported a few months ago is now official: Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. commander in Iraq, will head up the Joint Forces Command, pending (a certain) Senate confirmation. In the language of JFCOM’s press release, Odierno will “oversee UFJFCOM’s roles in joint concept development and experimentation, joint capability development, joint training, and force provision and management as outlined in the Department of Defense’s Unified Command Plan.”

Last week, President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates nominated Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin — like Odierno, a former corps commander in Iraq — to take over for Odierno as the Iraq war’s final commander. Odierno’s official move to Joint Forces Command now sets off a flurry of speculation over whether the current commander there, Marine Gen. James Mattis, will either retire or become the Marine Corps’ next commandant.

It’s not just in the Senate Armed Services committee’s mark-up of next fiscal year’s defense bill. While opponents of the military’s ban on open gay service target six senators — five Democrats and one Republican — to insert an amendment abolishing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this week, over in the House, they’ve got an ally ready to go. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Penn.), a former Army captain and Iraq veteran, plans to introduce his own amendment to the Defense bill when it gets a floor vote later this week.

If you go to Murphy’s website, you’ll see an open letter from 15 mostly-senior retired officers from across the services arguing for a repeal of the 15-year old law. He comments alongside it, “To remove honorable, talented and patriotic troops from serving contradicts the American values our military fights for and our nation holds dear.”

Murphy’s position is commensurate with comments from February from Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who came out forcefully for repeal. Mullen’s boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, wants Congress to wait until the end of the year to move on overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (when a Pentagon working group, one Gates empaneled to canvas the services on constructive ways to incorporate open military service, delivers its report).

But anti-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” activists argue that this week’s legislative push isn’t in conflict with the working group. “If the law is not repealed this year, when the implementation study comes down, [the Pentagon will] not able to carry it out,” said Michael Cole, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a group urging repeal. That’s similar to the position taken by retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the first to implement the ban on open gay military service.

“[A]cting now to remove the constraints imposed by that law is the most faithful response that Congress can offer to the working group’s efforts to engage service members and their families,” Shalikashvili wrote in The Washington Post over the weekend, “to fully assess the impact of ending the policy, and to develop comprehensive recommendations for how to make the change.”

Update: Geoff Morrell, spokesman for Gates, says in an email that the Pentagon is taking a look at whatever’s developing legislatively for next steps on the repeal. “Given that Congress insists on addressing this issue this week, we are trying to gain a better understanding of the legislative proposals they will be considering,” Morrell said. (And sure enough, I see that the Post’s Ed O’Keefe also has that comment, along with suspicion that a compromise may actually be adopted…)

Glenn Beck-like, I put my head in my hands over the sheer lunacy expressed by the much-disgraced former New York Democratic congressman:

• Earlier in the year, long before the allegations had been made public, Massa had called me with a potentially huge story: Four retired generals — three four-stars and one three-star — had informed him, he said, that General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, had met twice in secret with former vice president Dick Cheney. In those meetings, the generals said, Cheney had attempted to recruit Petraeus to run for president as a Republican in 2012.

• The generals had told him, and Massa had agreed, that if someone didn’t act immediately to reveal this plot, American constitutional democracy itself was at risk. Massa and I had had several conversation on the topic, each more urgent than the last. He had gone to the Pentagon, he told me, demanding answers. He knew the powerful forces that he was dealing with, he told me. They’d stop at nothing to prevent the truth from coming out, he said, including destroying him. “I told the official, ‘If I have to get up at a committee hearing and go public with this, it will cause the mother of all shitstorms and your life will be hell. So I need a meeting. Now.’”

• Massa eventually came to the Esquire offices in New York to tell us the Petraeus story. He spoke with the bluster and hyperbole I had seen in him at stump speeches, but he had credibility on this matter — twenty-four years of active service in the Navy, a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, and an increasing voice in the media as a Democrat who would speak with authority about military issues. Still, when he called the possibility that Petraeus could beat Obama in an election a “coup” and “treason,” the characterization seemed odd. “If what I’ve been told is true — and I believe it is,” he told myself and two colleagues, “General David Petraeus, a commander with soldiers deployed in two theaters of war, has had multiple meetings with Dick Cheney, the former vice-president of the United States, to discuss Petraeus’s candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency. And in fact, that’s more than a constitutional crisis. That’s treason.”

Do I need to write a punchline? This is bark-at-the-moon stuff. Feel free to speculate in comments about how I’m part of the cover-up for the impending tickle-driven coup d’etat.

Thanks to Noah Shachtman’s Twitter feed.

Now that I’ve praised Defense Secretary Robert Gates, let me highlight an issue on which he’s taking a lot of heat from progressives. Gates has relaxed enforcement of the military’s ban on open gay service. But he’s also committed to finishing a Defense Department survey on military opinion about implementing the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” before he backs a timetable for repeal. The survey is due in December, meaning Gates’ timetable effectively precludes repealing the ban this year, as President Obama urged in his State of the Union address.

Some members of Congress don’t want to wait for the survey. They see an opportunity to introduce an amendment to the Defense authorization ordering repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” later this month, when the Senate Armed Services Committee marks up the bill. Advocates for repeal are focusing on six committee members: Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), the Nelsons (D-Fla. and D-Neb.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.).

Webb is a particular focus for the repeal effort. He’s a Marine veteran of Vietnam and served as Navy Secretary during the Reagan administration. Persuading him on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year would be a major step forward. So a coalition of Virginia military servicemembers has written to Webb urging him to “to stand on the right side of history” and the “side of integrity” by backing the repeal. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network sent me this letter, which I reproduce below:

The Honorable James Webb

United States Senate

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Webb:

We are military women who believe in having the strongest military possible.  It is for that reason that we write to urge you to support the repeal of the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law this year.  For the sake of all of our men and women in uniform, the time for repeal is now.

Though we come from different backgrounds, we are all Virginians, we all served, and many of us studied at our nation’s service academies.  But our common thread as women reminds us of the challenges we faced during the debate to allow our service in combat roles.  Before that many of the same arguments were made against allowing African Americans to serve. Otherwise reasonable people believed that denying these groups of patriotic Americans the right to serve was in the best interest of the military. Now, we hear the very same arguments against allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.  Those arguments are as unfounded and misguided today as they were generations ago.

There is no evidence that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly will harm unit cohesion, just as there was no evidence that allowing women and minorities to serve would do so.  To the contrary, we have seen from our own experiences that it is dishonesty that hurts unit cohesion – not the sexual orientation of our brothers- and sisters-in-arms.  Poll after poll shows that the attitudes of today’s service members have changed and they care more about whether their fellow service members do their jobs, not if they happen to be gay or lesbian.  Further, the American public is with them – 75 percent support repealing DADT and allowing gays and lesbians to serve with integrity, openly and honestly.

We are counting on you, Senator Webb, to stand on the right side of history.  Stand on the side of integrity and support legislation to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year.

Sincerely,

Brenda Bailey, USN

Roanoke, VA

Cami Lewis, USA

Newport News, VA

CDR Claudia McKnight, USCG (Ret.)

Reston, VA

PFC Cynthia Mitchell, USA

Christiansburg, VA

CPT Deborah McKay, USN (Ret.)

Springfield, VA

SSG Genevieve Chase, USAR

Alexandria, VA

1LT Heather Lamb, USAF

Alexandria, VA

CW4 Janet Worsham, USAR (Ret.)

Richmond, VA

CPT Joan Darrah, USN (Ret.)

Alexandria, VA

SSG Kayla Williams, USA, 98G AD

Broadlands, VA

CMSgt. Kelly Egan, USAF

Alexandria, VA

LT Kelly Matteson, USN (Ret.)

Newport News, VA

PFC M. J. Flanagan, USMC

Portsmouth, VA

MAJ Marjorie Rudinsky, USA (Ret.)

Alexandria, VA

PVT Marty Porter, USMC

Virginia Beach, VA

CPT Megan Scanlon, USA

Williamsburg, VA

PVT Rebecca Smith, ANG

Roanoke, VA

SSG Robin Davis, USAF

Roanoke, VA

PFC Stephanie Marushia, USA (Ret.)

Virginia Beach, VA

CDR Susan Sharp, USN (Ret.)

Norfolk, VA

Politico takes a look at the coalescing roles of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Obama administration, a story of two similarly disposed wise (wo)men who have forged a partnership remarkably free of the Foggy Bottom-Pentagon infighting or upstaging that has plagued administrations past. (Well, mostly.) Gates, Politico says, is known at the White House as “Yoda.” Here’s an example of his Jedi mind tricks.

As reported here, the House Armed Services Committee finished marking up the fiscal 2011 Defense authorization last week, and intruded on a lot of administration priorities. Something I didn’t focus on, but Gates certainly did: The committee again authorized funding for a second engine on the Joint Strike Fighter, something the past two administrations have opposed as unnecessary and costly. And they did it right after Gates gave a major speech warning Congress about the “political will” necessary for a restrained, sustainable defense budget. Like not even two weeks afterward. It’s a slap in the face. Politico is right to observe that Gates is more solicitous of Capitol Hill than his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld — a pretty low bar to clear —  but the budget fight is the central characteristic of his relationship with legislators at the moment.

So the morning after the markup, Gates comes into a Pentagon press conference and starts to regulate. “We will strongly resist efforts to impose programs and changes on the department that the military does not want, cannot afford, and that takes dollars from programs and endeavors the military services do need,” he said, reminding everyone in the room and on the Hill of his longstanding recommendation that President Obama veto the bill if it funds the second JSF engine and an Air Force transport plane Gates is trying to kill.

But if you’re a legislator, maybe you have a different calculus in mind. You need to get re-elected. Your constituents need jobs. You need to be seen as providing them with jobs. Defense-sector manufacturing and support jobs are good jobs, with high wages and federal benefits. So what if some defense secretary is moaning about wasteful defense spending? Your district isn’t going to care. And besides — isn’t Gates on his way out the door this year, anyway?

Then comes this exchange with a reporter in last week’s press conference. Here’s the transcript:

Q Will you stay here through next year to see that ‘012 budget through? Because what you’re proposing can be rope-a-doped if there’s a perception you’re leaving at the end of the year. Rope-a-dope means they could, you know, resist –

SEC. GATES: I know what rope-a-dope means. (Laughter, laughs.) I’ve been in — I started in the government 44 years ago. I know exactly what that means. (Laughter.)

ADM. MULLEN: (Laughs.)

Q A serious question, though.

Do you now anticipate staying here through the end of ‘011 to see the ‘012 budget through?

SEC. GATES: We’ll see.

Maybe that legislator’s calculus changes now that Gates might stick around to see his priorities enforced. After all, she could be blamed for busting up the gargantuan defense budget, opposing the military and not delivering jobs. It’s an election year.

The Force is strong with this one.

Thanks to al-Jazeera, footage has emerged of what may be a nascent or exploratory peace negotiation between the Afghan government, the Taliban and a Taliban affiliate and longtime guerilla leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

For months, there have been occasional reports of representatives from the parties to the conflict — one stretching back nine, 15 or 30 years, depending on how continuous you wish to characterize the belligerents as fighting for similar causes — meeting in the Maldives, a placid Indian Ocean island nation neutral in the fight. But now, al-Jazeera cameras have captured images of a man described as an “Afghan governor” and several parliamentarians and foreign-ministry representatives meeting with men described as Taliban and Hekmatyar deputies:

The network reports that the talks are informal. And they come in advance of President Hamid Karzai’s “consultative peace jirga” intended to define the contours of an olive branch to the Taliban — a summit that apparently will be delayed by a week. So even if the Maldives talks are informal, they at least represent a mechanism through which the peace jirga’s terms might be delivered to the insurgents, and through which a response might emerge.

(Via Joshua Foust’s Twitter feed.)

The word from the White House and from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is “unequivocal,” by which the Obama administration fully supports the actions of the South Korean government in response to North Korea’s unprovoked rocket attack on its Naval ship the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announced that the South will close shipping lanes to the impoverished North and cease all economic activity with it. He plans to get the United Nations Security Council to address the Cheonan attack — a move that has the backing of the White House. “Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice are each consulting very closely with their Korean counterparts,” read a White House statement issued at 1 a.m. today, “as well as with Japan, China, and other UN Security Council member states in order to reach agreement on the steps in the Council.”

The operative part of the statement:

Specifically, we endorse President Lee’s demand that North Korea immediately apologize and punish those responsible for the attack, and, most importantly, stop its belligerent and threatening behavior.  U.S. support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal, and the President has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression.  We will build on an already strong foundation of excellent cooperation between our militaries and explore further enhancements to our joint posture on the Peninsula as part of our ongoing dialogue.

Flying back from a major economic summit in China, Clinton declined to say that the Chinese, North Korea’s last remaining benefactor, saw the Cheonan incident as the U.S. and the South Koreans do.  But “the Chinese recognize the gravity of the situation we face,” she said. “The Chinese understand the reaction by the South Koreans, and they also understand our unique responsibility for the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.” Clinton added that the North Koreans have caused “a highly precarious situation” on the Korean peninsula.

Speaking last week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointedly noted that whatever strain from two extended wars that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps feel doesn’t apply to the forces that would respond to a resumption of hostilities in Korea. “If there were a problem in Korea, our main arms would be the Navy and the Air Force,” Gates said. “And so we — those are not stretched in the same way that the — that the ground forces are. But again, the key to remember — the key thing to remember here is that this was an attack on a South Korean ship, and the South Koreans need to be in the lead in terms of proposing ways forward.”

Speaking to the graduating class of 2010 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, President Obama laid out the broad themes of the National Security Strategy he’ll unveil next week. It’s an assertive multilateralism with “American innovation” — that is, a vigorous, healthy and balanced American economy — at the core of the international order. And it’s a rejection of the proposition that American power is either restricted by international cooperation or generally on the decline.

U.S. success internationally is found “by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t,” Obama told the cadets, newly commissioned second lieutenants in the U.S. Army. The measure of success is found in that cooperation’s ability to “lessen conflicts around the world.” And in guiding the international order toward it, the approach the U.S. has to take on its own must involve a more equitable distribution of its military and civilian power.

Next week, Obama will release his National Security Strategy, fleshing out the themes here in greater detail and connecting them to the course his foreign policy is already on. Already, much of them have been on display in the Quadrennial Defense Review, Obama’s Oslo speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize and a recent speech by Jim Jones, his national security adviser.

Some relevant excerpts from the West Point commencement address:

American innovation must be the foundation of American power — because at no time in human history has a nation of diminished economic vitality maintained its military and political primacy. And so that means that the civilians among us, as parents and community leaders, elected officials, business leaders, we have a role to play. We cannot leave it to those in uniform to defend this country — we have to make sure that America is building on its strengths.

As we build these economic sources of our strength, the second thing we must do is build and integrate the capabilities that can advance our interests, and the common interests of human beings around the world. America’s armed forces are adapting to changing times, but your efforts have to be complemented. We will need the renewed engagement of our diplomats, from grand capitals to dangerous outposts. We need development experts who can support Afghan agriculture and help Africans build the capacity to feed themselves. We need intelligence agencies that work seamlessly with their counterparts to unravel plots that run from the mountains of Pakistan to the streets of our cities. We need law enforcement that can strengthen judicial systems abroad, and protect us here at home. And we need first responders who can act swiftly in the event of earthquakes and storms and disease.

The burdens of this century cannot fall on our soldiers alone. It also cannot fall on American shoulders alone. Our adversaries would like to see America sap its strength by overextending our power. And in the past, we’ve always had the foresight to avoid acting alone. We were part of the most powerful wartime coalition in human history through World War II. We stitched together a community of free nations and institutions to endure and ultimately prevail during a Cold War.

Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t.

There’s also this assertive declaration that American power and American leadership are hardly in decline. Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post has spent Obama’s presidency hysterically and unconvincingly trying to argue that Obama is a “declinist” in practice, so expect a forthcoming Krauthammer column to explain this away:

We believe, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And that truth has bound us together, a nation populated by people from around the globe, enduring hardship and achieving greatness as one people. And that belief is as true today as it was 200 years ago. It is a belief that has been claimed by people of every race and religion in every region of the world. Can anybody doubt that this belief will be any less true — any less powerful — two years, two decades, or even two centuries from now?

That’s what Robert Gibbs suggested in his press conference today when asked about the House Armed Services Committee’s move to block the Defense Department from purchasing the Illinois prison, a necessary step in President Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay.

I will say that we have always maintained that we need increased prison facility, and I think the law prevents the Department of Defense from — but not the Department of Justice — from purchasing such a facility.

The annual Justice Department funding bill has only barely arrived in the House Judiciary Committee, so perhaps that will become the vehicle for the purchase.

Gibbs also said that the administration will send a report to Congress explaining why the Thomson-based Guantanamo closure makes sense. But it’s not clear from the summary language of the markup of the defense authorization bill that receipt of such a report will unlock the Thomson money. Either way, the administration needs to get on that: A full House vote on the bill is expected next week.

Today is Dennis Blair’s last day in the office as Director of National Intelligence. His farewell message to the intelligence community workforce is admirably chipper, calling them “true heroes, just like the members of the Armed Forces, firefighters, and police whose job it is to keep our nation safe.” For excellent backstories on some of the active policy issues implicated in Blair’s departure, Marc Ambinder has an impressively comprehensive post. Mark Hosenball too. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence James Clapper, who’s dual-hatted as Blair’s deputy for the massive Defense Department-hosted intelligence apparatus, appears to be a leading candidate to replace Blair, but I’ve been warned against reading too much into any one candidate.

Many of the murmurings I’ve heard from intelligence veterans have concerned the untenability of the DNI position, an intended fix to the old CIA-centric intelligence leadership that’s created an odd hybrid of management over 16 agencies without correlative budgetary authority and a perhaps naive distance from active intelligence operations. If people on TV are upset that a series of failed-but-attempted domestic terrorist attacks have happened on “Blair’s watch,” as I’ve heard more than one cable pundit say over the past 18 hours, they’re misunderstanding the DNI. S/he’s not supposed to prevent those attempts from happening. S/he’s supposed to organize, structure and resource the intelligence community so relevant agencies can prevent those attempts from happening. That’s why the Senate intelligence committee report that found a disorganized National Counterterrorism Center — something the DNI is responsible for — was damaging. What the DNI should also be doing is focusing the intelligence community around answering why these domestic terror attempts are happening, particularly using American citizens as operatives.

If that operational distance sounds untenable, that might be because five years of unhappy experience since the 9/11 Commission sought greater intelligence consolidation is prompting a re-think in intelligence circles. When I asked a veteran career intelligence officer with experience in various intel agencies what he made of Blair’s departure, the response I got back started with “Good!” Like several intelligence officers who serve out in the dangerous parts of the world, the prospect of an increasingly top-heavy bureaucracy distanced from field concerns is an unpleasant one.

“Blair’s biggest move was to try to grab turf from CIA over station chiefs, instead of doing serious work like developing a plan to better integrate [intelligence community] bureaucracies, where joint-minded personnel and promotion policies could create positive change. But that’s hard work and not sexy,” the intelligence officer emailed. “The current system creates bureaucrats whose focus is building their empire — more bodies, more money — all in the name of national security. His position was created to fix the intelligence bureaucratic failures, but growing bureaucracies to fix bureaucracies is a losing bet.”

In fairness to Blair, you can find an effort at “joint-minded personnel and promotion policies” — or, at the least, a commitment to the idea of them — in his August 2009 National Intelligence Strategy (PDF).

But don’t expect either the Obama administration or Congress to have any appetite for root-and-branch restructuring of the DNI position. That would be a major structural reform five years after the last major structural reform, and the national agenda is already too clogged to tolerate such a thing. Instead, expect the confirmation hearings of whoever ultimately replaces Blair to be a colloquy on what statutory changes are necessary to make the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a more coherent structure.

Whether that’s ultimately a laudable goal is up for debate. In 2007, a former senior intelligence analyst, Robert Hutchings, testified to Congress that the creation of the DNI itself reflected what he called a “Coordination Myth” about intelligence. That myth, he said, was

that it is somehow possible to “coordinate” the work of hundreds of thousands of people across dozens of agencies operating in nearly every country of the world. Anyone who has worked in complex organizations knows, or should know, that it is possible to coordinate only a few select activities and that there are always tradeoffs, because every time you coordinate some activities you are simultaneously weakening coordination among others. To cite just one example, the creation of the National Counterterrorism Center may have enhanced interagency coordination among terrorist operators, which is a good thing, but it has surely weakened coordination between them and the country and regional experts. The net result is that the Intelligence Community is probably stronger in tactical counter- terrorist coordination but is surely weaker in strategic counterterrorism. While we are looking for the next car bomb, we may be missing the next generation of terrorist threats.

Anyone observing the current debates over drone strikes, increased radicalization and their relationship surely recognizes the current relevance of Hutchings’ fear. When I asked him what he thought about the next DNI, he quipped, “Please quash those burgeoning rumors that I will be tapped.”

The sun rises over Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. (MICHELLE SHEPHARD/TORONTO STAR)

The Obama administration’s longstanding pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay just hit a major obstacle in the House, creating doubts over whether the detention facility can be closed this year — if at all.

Last night the House Armed Services Committee finished this year’s bill authorizing $567 billion worth of defense spending and another $159 billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for the fiscal year beginning in October. Following an administration budget plan announced in February by Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale, the Afghanistan war request contained a vague provision — indeed, not even carrying the words “Guantanamo Bay” — called a “transfer fund” to authorize the purchase of the Thomson Correction Center in Illinois. The administration wants to buy Thomson in order to have a secure facility on U.S. soil to house those Guantanamo detainees it designates for military commissions or indefinite detention without charge. Once the federal government buys Thomson, it can shut down Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Or that was the plan. The actual bill hasn’t been released yet. But buried at the bottom of an extensive summary the committee released last night is an express prohibition on the use of any Defense Department money to buy a new detention facility. According to the bill summary, the bill now requires Defense Secretary Robert Gates to give Congress a report that “adequately justifies any proposal to build or modify such a facility” if it wants to move forward with any post-Guantanamo detention plan.

“The Committee firmly believes that the construction or modification of any facility in the U.S. to detain or imprison individuals currently being held at Guantanamo must be accompanied by a thorough and comprehensive plan that outlines the merits, costs, and risks associated with utilizing such a facility,” the summary text read. “No such plan has been presented to date. The bill prohibits the use of any funds for this purpose.”

That might place insurmountable obstacles to the the so-called “Gitmo North” plan to transfer Guantanamo detainees to Thomson. “They can’t just create Guantanamo North and move everyone up there. That’s clearly barred,” said Chris Anders, a senior lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union who monitored yesterday’s mark-up. “It doesn’t mean that the proposal is dead, but it’s hard to see how it makes a comeback after the House Armed Services Committee says there can’t be money spent on Thomson.”

That’s not all. While the bill doesn’t renew the current Congressional ban on transferring detainees from Guantanamo into the U.S. — set to expire in October — it requires President Obama to submit a “a comprehensive disposition plan and risk assessment” for any future detainee transfer. Congress would then get “120 days to review the disposition plan before it could be carried out.” Additionally, Congress would get a 30-day review period for the proposed transfer of any detainee from Guantanamo to a foreign country in order to check against a detainee inflicting violence against the U.S. or its interests. The summary instructs Gates to tell Congress that any such foreign transfer meets “strict security criteria to thoroughly vet any foreign country to which a detainee may be transferred.”

The bill, which passed the committee on a vote of 59 to 0, will go to the House floor and receive a vote most likely next week. A Senate Armed Services Committee mark-up of the companion bill in the Senate is scheduled for the end of May.

This is a major setback for Obama’s campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. While it’s theoretically possible for an amendment authorizing the Thomson purchase to come back into the bill during floor debate, “this makes it much, much harder for the administration to move forward with the closure of Guantanamo, there’s no doubt about that,” said Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It’s hard to see what reasonable options the president has without jumping through congressional hoops that are unreasonable and unnecessary, and it’s harder to move forward both with prosecuting those who are terrorist suspects and releasing to freedom those who are not.”

But beyond the closure of the detention facility itself, the prohibitions now contained in the bill have policy implications for the dispensation of justice for detainees remaining at Guantanamo, a burning political issue all through this year. Those “abhorrent” prohibitions, Warren said, “essentially prohibit the executive from moving forward with its constitutional and human-rights obligations to try people [and] creates a paradigm where the operative default mechanism will be to detain people without trial.” In April, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to work with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on a new legal architecture for indefinite detention without charge.

Anders took a more optimistic view. If the bill passes, as is likely, the administration “will have to work harder and work faster at what they’ve been doing effectively for the past 16 or 17 months, which is repatriating and resettling detainees one by one who have been cleared and then bring people here for prosecution,” Anders said, even with the new congressional repatriation restrictions. This week, one of those detainees the administration designated for civilian prosecution, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who has been transfered to a Manhattan prison, unsuccessfully urged a federal judge to dismiss his case.

But such an incremental approach would not allow Obama to close the facility until the last detainee either leaves or faces criminal charges, a process likely to take years even without all of the political obstacles that have emerged around terrorism trials and holding terrorism defendants in federal corrections facilities. Additionally, it would require Holder and the Obama administration to abandon a decision that has been much reviled in the civil libertarian community: designating 48 detainees currently held at Guantanamo for continued indefinite detention without charge.

Closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was a bipartisan goal before President Obama took office, with both President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, rhetorically committed to shutting down an international symbol of American lawlessness. But an effective campaign waged by conservatives to portray the closure as negligent with national security — and Obama and the Democrats as weak for seeking it — has raised the political stakes for Democratic members of Congress. Last year, the Senate voted with 90 votes to prohibit the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to the U.S., and this year, the still-unresolved question of whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the 9/11 conspirators ought to be tried in civilian courts or military commissions has become Holder’s defining challenge. With Republicans hostile to the Guantanamo closure plan likely to gain seats in Congress after the November midterm elections, future attempts at closing the facility are likely to face even greater political opposition.

Requests for comment to the White House and the Office of the Secretary of Defense were not immediately returned.

An international investigation into the sinking of a South Korean Naval vessel has determined that a North Korean torpedo most likely caused the the ‘Cheonan’ to go down. Forty-six South Korean sailors died. A White House statement last night condemned the sinking of the Cheonan as an “act of aggression.” Deep breath:

This act of aggression is one more instance of North Korea’s unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law. This attack constitutes a challenge to international peace and security and is a violation of the Armistice Agreement.

South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, warned of “resolute countermeasures” against the North. This is the North Korean response, according to The Washington Post:

North Korea immediately denounced the investigation as a “sheer fabrication” and accused the South of “pointing a dirty finger at us like a thief.” It added that if there is any retaliation or punishment of the North, it will respond with “various forms of tough measures including all-out war.”

Which probably counts as a restrained response from Pyongyang. A battery of senior administration officials will be in Beijing this weekend for wide-ranging talks, which will now include the prospect of referring the dispute to the United Nations Security Council.

Afghan relatives wait outside a hospital in Kandahar. (EPA/ZumaPress.com)

A very disturbing — and disturbingly vague — announcement came early this morning from the U.S. military command in Afghanistan. According to Army Lt. Col. Joseph “Todd” Breasseale, a command spokesman, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is investigating whether an unknown number of American soldiers are responsible for the “unlawful deaths” of “as many as three” Afghan civilians.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Breasseale’s statement leaves many key details vague, including how many soldiers are involved in whatever incident CID is investigating; specifically where it took place; and when it occurred. But whatever occurred was serious enough to get additional soldiers from the same unit to come forward to their chain of command with knowledge of the incident earlier this month. The statement makes it sound as if the potential criminal act was planned in advance of its commission, as allegations of “illegal drug use, assault and conspiracy” are involved, although it isn’t clear if those allegations have to do with the incident or with the cohort of soldiers under investigation more generally.

One of the soldiers in question is being held in pre-trial detention. No charges have been filed yet.

Breasseale said in an email that he couldn’t discuss further detail about the case right now. “The bottom line is that we are executing this investigation by the numbers and will not compromise our ability to gather and maintain evidence,” he said. He added that more specificity about the case will probably be available “once the charges are preferred,” an indication that CID’s investigation has progressed to the point where it is more likely than not that the soldiers involved will face charges.

It is unfortunately difficult to infer what incident this case involves. Over the past few months, despite the restrictions on rules of engagement that Gen. Stanley McChrystal issued last year to minimize civilian casualties, there have been several high-profile cases of civilian deaths at the hands of NATO forces. A so-called “night raid” earlier this month in Nangahar Province left locals saying 11 civilians were killed by U.S. troops, even though NATO considers all to be insurgents, and their anger led to a violent protest in which Afghan police killed someone. On February 12 in Gardez, also in Afghanistan’s east, U.S. Special Forces killed two men and three women — two of whom were pregnant — during a house raid, and had to correct an initial mistaken announcement that attributed the women’s deaths to insurgents. And although this incident doesn’t sound like the one under investigation, a misunderstanding at a Kandahar checkpoint led soldiers to open fire on a passenger bus, leaving four civilians dead.

Before McChrystal took command in Afghanistan, he said that the perceptions of the Afghan people that the NATO coalition is interested in protecting them from harm and the Afghan government is interested in enriching their lives would be “strategically decisive” in the nearly nine-year war. His counterinsurgency guidance instructs his troops to assume additional risk to their own lives in the interest of preventing civilians from being accidentally killed. After the Paktia incident, McChrystal consolidated his hold over Special Operations Forces operating in Afghanistan.

It’s official. Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the director of the Joint Staff and a former corps commander in Iraq under Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno, has been nominated to command the final phase of the Iraq war. The respected Austin’s confirmation is pretty much certain.

If and when Austin returns to Iraq, he’ll be tasked with executing the total withdrawal of 50,000 U.S. forces by December 2011, in line with the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement. By September, the war will be officially renamed Operation New Dawn to reflect the massive change in focus. There’s a chance there still won’t be a new Iraqi government for Austin to partner with, but his primary mission aside from the withdrawal will be advising and assisting the Iraqi army and police, even as insurgent violence against U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians persists. His confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee — not yet scheduled — will probably be the most fulsome discussion so far of how national leadership views the end of the U.S.’s long and unhappy presence in Iraq.