Published: May 23, 2008

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.

In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered.

Mary L. Ugone, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for auditing, told members of the committee that the absence of anything beyond a voucher meant that “we were giving or providing a payment without any basis for the payment.”

“We don’t know what we got,” Ms. Ugone said in response to questions by the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California.

The new report is especially significant because while other federal auditors have severely criticized the way the United States has handled payments to contractors in Iraq, this is the first time that the Pentagon itself has acknowledged the mismanagement on anything resembling this scale.

The disclosure that $1.8 billion in Iraqi assets was mishandled comes on top of an earlier finding by an independent federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, that United States occupation authorities early in the conflict could not account for the disbursement of $8.8 billion in Iraqi oil money and seized assets.

“This report is further documentation of the fact that the United States had absolutely no preparation to use contracting on the scale that it needed either at the military or aid level in going to war in Iraq,” said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“We had really allowed ourselves to become more and more dependent on contractors in peacetime,” said Mr. Cordesman, who spoke in a telephone interview on Thursday. “We were unprepared to use contractors in wartime, and all of this had an immense impact.”

The Pentagon report, titled “Internal Controls Over Payments Made in Iraq, Kuwait and Egypt,” also notes that auditors were unable to find a comprehensible set of records to explain $134.8 million in payments by the American military to its allies in the Iraq war.

The mysterious payments, whose amounts had not been publicly disclosed, included $68.2 million to the United Kingdom, $45.3 million to Poland and $21.3 million to South Korea. Despite repeated requests, Pentagon auditors said they were unable to determine why the payments were made.

“It sounds like the coalition of the willing is the coalition of the paid — they’re willing to be paid,” said Mr. Waxman, who later in the day introduced what he called a “clean contracting” amendment to a defense authorization bill being debated on the House floor. The amendment, which was accepted by voice vote, would institute a number of reforms, including new whistleblower protections and requirements on competitive bidding.

The audit was carried out by the Defense Department Office of the Inspector General, which is led by Claude M. Kicklighter, a retired lieutenant general. Mr. Kicklighter was not at the Thursday hearing because of a scheduling conflict.

Many of the previous investigations of payments to contractors in Iraq have focused on the flawed effort to rebuild the country’s decrepit electricity grid, oil infrastructure, transportation network and public institutions. The feeble accountability and spotty paperwork of the contracts examined by Mr. Kicklighter’s office make it difficult to say what many of them were for, but the report indicates that many appeared to be for things as mundane as bottles of water, truck rentals and food deliveries.

According to the report, the Army made 183,486 “commercial and miscellaneous payments” from April 2001 to June 2006 from field offices in Iraq, Kuwait and Egypt, for a total of $10.7 billion in taxpayer money. The auditors focused on $8.2 billion in so-called commercial payments to contractors — American, Iraqi and probably other foreign nationals — although the report does not give details on the roster of companies.

Because the contracts were too numerous to be examined one by one, the auditors said they took a standard approach and examined 702 statistically representative contracts, then extrapolated the results to the full set.

When the results were compiled, they revealed a lack of accountability notable even by the shaky standards detailed in earlier examinations of contracting in Iraq. The report said that about $1.4 billion in payments lacked even minimal documentation “such as certified vouchers, proper receiving reports and invoices,” to explain what had been purchased and why.

Another $6.3 billion in payments did contain information explaining the expenditures but lacked other information required by federal regulations governing the use of taxpayer money — things like payment terms, proper identification numbers and contact information for the agents involved in the transaction. Taken together, those results meant that almost 95 percent of the payments had not been properly documented.

In a separate examination, auditors found that the $1.8 billion in seized Iraqi assets paid out by American military officers had not been properly accounted for.

Examples of the paperwork for some of those payments, displayed at the hearing, depict a system that became accustomed to making huge payments on the fly, with little oversight or attention to detail. In one instance, a United States Treasury check for $5,674,075.00 was written to pay a company called Al Kasid Specialized Vehicles Trading Company in Baghdad for items that a voucher does not even describe.

In another case, $6,268,320.07 went to the contractor Combat Support Associates with even less explanation. And a scrawl on another piece of paper says only that $8 million had been paid out as “Funds for the Benefit of the Iraqi People.”

But perhaps the masterpiece of elliptic paperwork is the document identified at the top as a “Public Voucher for Purchases and Services Other Than Personal.” It indicates that $320.8 million went for “Iraqi Salary Payment,” with no explanation of what the Iraqis were paid to do.

Whatever it was, the document suggests, each of those Iraqis was handsomely compensated. Under the “quantity” column is the number 1,000, presumably indicating the number of people who were to be paid — to the tune of $320,800 apiece — if the paperwork is to be trusted.

From the first para of USAID’s web page at http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/
I wonder how they define and measure victory. What are the indicators? When do they know they have won? 43 declared victory already on 2nd May 2003 on that aircraft carrier, or did he not?

By Charles Tripp
http://mondediplo.com/2008/01/02iraq

Technorati Tags: middle east, Petraeus Iraq

Now that the first phase of the Iraqi civil war seems to have ended, it is time to consider the political processes it may have left in its bloody wake. It is crucial for Iraqis and others to get a sense of the stability and durability of present arrangements. Are they a mechanism for reconciling the ferocious enmities of the past five years in Iraq, or likely to lead to a more violent second phase of the civil war?

There have been two main patterns during these years of violence and massive population displacement.

One is the localisation of politics, grounded in the insecurities, fears and ambitions of ruthless local leaders across Iraq. This thrives on community feeling, which is sometimes tribal, sometimes ethnic and sectarian; it also springs from rivalry and jostling for power within a provincial arena.

The other pattern is the emergence of a politics at national level under US auspices, which has much in common with the politics of a protectorate. Both are dangerous for the future, but both may contribute to the emergence of a distinctive, likely troubled, Iraqi politics.

As an Iraqi put it, “the United States got rid of one Saddam only to replace him with 50”. For many people, negotiating their way around and through the little Saddams with their militias, detention centres, local courts and taxes has become a fact of life. Some accept this as the price of increased security for their community, neighbourhood or even street. Others who refused to conform, but knew the price in blood for dissent, have fled – abroad if they could or to a part of Iraq where they may be less visible

“National institutions” have little or no authority to temper the effects of this on the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Some, such as the police, are often enmeshed in local power and the extortion and repression with which they are associated. Even when officers are not implicated (as with the police chief of Basra, Major-General Khallaf) they can do nothing but lament the fact that in the past three months some 40 women have been killed in Basra for wearing make-up, not veiling or otherwise failing to observe the narrow rulings of the repressive local militias (1).

When national politicians do try to take on this entrenched and violent local power, the chances are that they will lose. This was shown in a recent account of Abu Abed’s “Knights of Ameriya”. He felt that the followers of the vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, were trying to muscle in on the area of West Baghdad that was his fiefdom (2). His local militia was able to flex its muscles so effectively because it had been drawn into the US plan for the pacification of Baghdad. His “knights”, and other militias, incongruously called “concerned citizens” by the US authorities, had received US money, weapons and protection in the name of the fight against “al-Qaida in Iraq”.
No Iraqi flag

The politics of the local, however fractious, uncertain and grim for many Iraqis, have been much encouraged by the US authorities. This may be due in part to the example of Kurdistan, where the US has been intimately involved since 1991. It is now held up as the only stable and prosperous region of Iraq, but peace there was preceded by years of violence as the two major parties battled each other for supremacy. Cajoled by the US into settling their differences in 2000, political leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani soon realised there was a greater game and did what they could to speed the downfall of the Baghdad regime in 2003. However, as their subsequent stance has shown, despite Talabani’s assumption of the presidency of Iraq, their politics have remained resolutely and defiantly local, symbolised by the refusal even to fly the Iraqi flag over official buildings.

This turning to local figures of authority and power is also the outcome of a belief that political order, like the insurgency, must be rooted in local communities if it is to spread. Using the language deployed over a hundred years before by the French colonial general, Joseph Galliéni, in his campaigns in Tonkin and Madagascar, the US high command enthusiastically adopted his strategy of les taches d’huile (oil spots – create many of them and they will seep outwards and eventually join together) as a way to combat both the insurgency and the efforts by “al-Qaida in Iraq” to create no-go areas.

But the use of local strongmen, however repellent their methods, is also due to the illiteracy of US and allied forces in “reading” Iraqi society. This left them relying on an assortment of exiles who inserted themselves into new US-sponsored forms of power and who have been consistently unable make a truly national government happen. In its absence, the US and its partners, having dismantled the last public vestiges of the old centralised Iraqi state, had no choice but to work with those who could command force on the ground, provide intelligence in specific localities and willingly accept the sponsorship and patronage of the real power in Baghdad, as they had always accepted it from the predecessors of the US in the republican or royal palace.

The politicians of the national government, desperate to replace the US as chief patrons of Iraq’s politics, but divided among themselves and uncertain of their power beyond the Green Zone, have embodied sectarian and communal politics. They believe these can be a way of connecting with many Iraqis and can provide an escape from a domineering US presence. To resist US demands in the name of an Iraqi sovereignty to which the US pays only lip service has proved fruitless and humiliating. However, communal politics, with all its complexities, networks and layers, has proved impenetrable to the US and to the secular Iraqis whom the US has favoured.

Communalism and sectarianism became a bulwark against an overbearing patron, but as the events of 2006-7 showed they can carry terrible risks. They do not lessen the dependency of these recently promoted elites upon the power of the US in Iraq. This applies to the Kurdish leaders, who need it to protect them from Turkish intervention, as well as to the insecure leaders who came to office as a result of the victory of the United Iraqi Alliance in the elections of 2005.

These elections produced the formal institutions of representative life – parliament, elected offices of state, constitution – but, as most Iraqis are well aware, real power lies elsewhere. Unresponsive to the concerns of many, used to passing laws that confirm the privileges of those who have succeeded in manipulating the system, the Iraqi parliament is losing whatever authority it had. For many, cynicism has replaced the enthusiasm generated by the elections. In its place is a recognition that it is helping to entrench an order of privilege, a new class-based dispensation which is a driving force behind the politics of communities across the country (3).
To join up the spots

This too is part of a strategy designed to reinforce the hold of favoured leaders over the economy, providing them with the means to service their client followings, and to encourage the spots to join up, driven by the common economic interests of the powerful. Competition for these resources is more troublesome than this picture of progressive pacification might suggest. But it could be argued that the oil law currently before the parliament is, at least in its distributive clauses, an attempt to address this, since it seeks a formula for the distribution of Iraq’s oil revenues to make it acceptable to all those in a position to profit, whatever their regional or communal base.

The intention in the long run is not to let “a thousand flowers bloom” but to bring the many forms of local power into the orbit of those with major resources at the centre. This could recreate a national politics in Iraq. It might not reproduce the old centralised state, but it would establish a clear hierarchy, from the provinces to the “club of patrons” who will determine the future from Baghdad. Much about this model resembles the imperial protectorates that shaped the politics of the Middle East for much of the first half of the 20th century.

Al-Maliki heads an insecure, dependent government, resentful of foreign protection but unable to survive without it; this government protests feebly at repeated infringements of Iraqi sovereignty and is subjected to the patronising imposition of benchmarks by the US Congress as part of a domestic political game within the US. Meanwhile the protecting power, as well as sponsoring local militias and asking few questions if they seem to be keeping the supposed threat from al-Qaida in Iraq at bay, is also forging a close relationship with the Iraqi armed forces.

This is reminiscent of the close and often sinister relationship between Latin American military institutions and the US military, and is set against a backdrop of insecure and corrupt political elites, sham representative institutions, restive provinces and the potentially violent politics of a class-divided society. Some may use anti-Americanism to overcome these differences, particularly if this can be focused on the continued presence of US military bases. This has the potential to set up a dangerous schizophrenia within the Iraqi armed forces – a recent report on the rebuilding of the ministry of the interior described it as “a heavily-muscled and well-armed individual with extremely poor physical coordination who suffers from multiple personality disorder” (4).

Any officer wanting to get ahead must play by US rules, at the same time negotiating with local political elites eager to exploit the force which the army will represent in domestic politics. Yet he is almost certain to come to resent all of these external demands, laying the groundwork for a politics of the military and of military assertion which may be nationalist, contemptuous of civilian politics and ruthless in its methods. Iraq, like many other states, has been here before.

These potentially troubling trends may be a basis for the emergence of Iraqi politics, rather than the collapse and disintegration of the state. However, given the passions, the interests at stake and the vulnerability of Iraqi politics to regional influence and intervention, there is fragility. It comes from the realisation that all parties have no intention of renouncing violence as a means of realising their aims. And the local leaderships may not have as strong a hold over their constituencies as they would want others to believe. A second phase of the civil war is easily imaginable therefore, especially if critical regional events, such as a US-Iran confrontation, are replicated through clients and protégés in Iraq.

Original text in English

Charles Tripp is professor of Middle East politics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and author, among other works, of A History of Iraq, Cambridge, new edition 2007, and Islam and the Moral Economy: the challenge of capitalism, Cambridge, 2006

(1) Interview with Major-General Abd al-Jalil Khallaf, BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 15 November 2007.

(2) Ghaith Abd al-Ahad, “Meet Abu Abed: the US’s new ally against al-Qaida”, The Guardian, 10 November 2007.

(3) See “Shi’ite Politics in Iraq – the role of the Supreme Council”, Middle East Report n° 70, International Crisis Group, 15 November 2007.

(4) Andrew Rathmell, “Fixing Iraq’s Internal Security Forces” (PDF), Special Report of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, CSIS, Washington, 2007.

By Philip S Golub
Le Monde Diplomatique

The disastrous outcome of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused a crisis in the power elite of the United States deeper than that resulting from defeat in Vietnam 30 years ago. Ironically, it is the very coalition of ultra-nationalists and neo-conservatives that coalesced in the 1970s, seeking to reverse the Vietnam syndrome, restore US power and revive “the will to victory”, that has caused the present crisis.

There has been no sustained popular mass protest as there was during the Vietnam war, probably because of the underclass sociology of the US’s volunteer army and the fact that the war is being funded by foreign financial flows (although no one knows how long that can continue). However, at the elite level the war has fractured the national security establishment that has run the US for six decades. The unprecedented public critique in 2006 by several retired senior officers over the conduct of the war (1), plus recurrent signs of dissent in the intelligence agencies and the State Department, reflects a much wider trend in elite opinion and key state institutions.

Not all critics are as forthright as retired General William Odom, who tirelessly repeats that the invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history” (2), or Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, who denounced a “blunder of historic proportions” and has recently suggested impeaching the president (3), or former National Security Council head Zbigniew Brzezinski who called the war and occupation a “historic, strategic and moral calamity” (4).

Most public critiques from within the institutions of state focus on the way the war and occupation have been mismanaged rather than the more fundamental issue of the invasion itself. Yet discord is wide and deep: government departments are trading blame, accusing each other of the “loss of Iraq” (5). In private, former senior officials express incandescent anger, denounce shadowy cabals and have deep contempt for the White House. A former official of the National Security Council compared the president and his staff to the Corleone mafia family in The Godfather. A senior foreign policy expert said: “Due to an incompetent, arrogant and corrupt clique we are about to lose our hegemonic position in the Middle East and Gulf.” “The White House has broken the army and trampled its honour,” added a Republican senator and former Vietnam veteran.
No doves

None of these, nor any of the other institutional critics, could be considered doves: whatever their political affiliations (mostly Republican) or personal beliefs, they were – and some are still – guardians of US power, managers of the national security state, and sometimes central actors in covert and overt imperial interventions in the third world during the cold war and post-cold war. They were – and some are still – system managers of a self-perpetuating bureaucratic national security machine – first analysed by the sociologist C Wright Mills – whose function is the production and reproduction of power.

As a social group, these realists cannot be distinguished from the object of their criticism in terms of their willingness to use force or their historically demonstrated ruthlessness in achieving state aims. Nor can the cause of their dissent be attributed to conflicting convictions over ethics, norms and values (though this may be a motivating factor for some). It lies rather in the rational realisation that the war in Iraq has nearly “broken the US army” (6), weakened the national security state, and severely if not irreparably undermined “America’s global legitimacy” (7) – its ability to shape world preferences and set the global agenda. The most sophisticated expressions of dissent, such as Brzezinski’s, reflect the understanding that power is not reducible to the ability to coerce, and that, once lost, hegemonic legitimacy is hard to restore.

The signs of slippage are everywhere apparent: in Latin America, where US influence is at its lowest in decades; in East Asia, where the US has been obliged, reluctantly, to negotiate with North Korea and recognise China as an indispensable actor in regional security; in Europe, where US plans to install missile defence capabilities in Poland are being contested by Germany and other European Union states; in the Gulf, where longstanding allies such as Saudi Arabia are pursuing autonomous agendas that coincide only in part with US aims; and in the international institutions, the UN and the World Bank, where the US is no longer in a position to drive the agenda unaided.

Transnational opinion surveys show a consistent and nearly global pattern of defiance of US foreign policy as well as a more fundamental erosion in the attractiveness of the US: the narrative of the American dream has been submerged by images of a military leviathan disregarding world opinion and breaking the rules. World public opinion may not stop wars but it does count in subtler ways. Some of this slippage may be repairable under new leaders and with new and less aggressive policies. Yet it is hard to see how internal unity of purpose will be restored: it took decades to rebuild the shaken US armed forces after Vietnam and to define an elite and popular consensus on the uses of power. The mobilisation of nationalist sentiment to support foreign adventures will not be so easy after Iraq. Nor can one imagine a return to the status quo in world politics.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq is not the sole cause of the trends sketched. Rather, the war significantly accentuated all of them at a moment when larger centrifugal forces were already at work: the erosion and collapse of the Washington Consensus and the gradual rise of new gravitational centres, notably in Asia, were established trends when President George Bush went to war. Now, as the shift in the world economy towards Asia matures, the US is stuck in a conflict that is absorbing its total energies. History is moving on and the world is slipping, slowly but inexorably, out of US hands.
Destined to act as hegemon

For the US power elite this is deeply unsettling. Since the mid-20th century US leaders have thought of themselves as having a unique historic responsibility to lead and govern the globe. Sitting on top of the world since the 1940s, they have assumed that, like Great Britain in the 19th century, they were destined to act as hegemon – a dominant state having the will and the means to establish and maintain international order: peace and an open and expanding liberal world economy. In their reading of history it was Britain’s inability to sustain such a role and the US’s simultaneous unwillingness to take responsibility (isolationism) that created the conditions for the cycle of world wars and depression during the first half of the 20th century.

The corollary of this assumption is the circular argument that since order requires a dominant centre, the maintenance of order (or avoidance of chaos) requires the perpetuation of hegemony. This belief system, theorised in US academia in the 1970s as “hegemonic stability”, has underpinned US foreign policy since the second world war, when the US emerged as the core state of the world capitalist system. As early as 1940 US economic and political elites forecast a vast revolution in the balance of power: the US would “become the heir and residuary legatee and receiver for the economic and political assets of the British Empire – the sceptre passes to the United States” (8).

A year later Henry R Luce announced the coming American Century: “America’s first century as a dominant power in the world” meant that its people would have “to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation and exert upon the world the full impact of our influence as we see fit and by such means as we see fit”. He added that “in any sort of partnership with the British Empire, America should assume the role of senior partner” (9). By the mid 1940s the contours of the American Century had already emerged: US economic predominance and strategic supremacy upheld by a planetary network of military bases from the Arctic to the Cape and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The post-war US leaders who presided over the construction of the national security state were filled, in William Appleman Williams’s words, with “visions of omnipotence” (10): the US enjoyed enormous economic advantages, a significant technological edge and briefly held an atomic monopoly. Though the Korean stalemate (1953) and the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons and missile programmes dented US self-confidence, it took defeat in Vietnam and the domestic social upheavals that accompanied the war to reveal the limits of power. Henry Kissinger’s and Richard Nixon’s “realism in an era of decline” was a reluctant acknowledgement that the overarching hegemony of the previous 20 years could not and would not last forever.

But Vietnam and the Nixon era were a turning point in another more paradoxical way: domestically they ushered in the conservative revolution and the concerted effort of the mid-1980s to restore and renew the national security state and US world power. When the Soviet Union collapsed a few years later, misguided visions of omnipotence resurfaced. Conservative triumphalists dreamed of primacy and sought to lock in long-term unipolarity (11). Iraq was a strategic experiment designed to begin the Second American Century. That experiment and US foreign policy now lie in ruins.
Britain’s long exit

Historical analogies are never perfect but Great Britain’s long exit from empire may shed some light on the present moment. At the end of the 19th century few British leaders could begin to imagine an end to empire. When Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in 1897, Britain possessed a formal transoceanic empire that encompassed a quarter of the world’s territory and 300 million subalterns and subjects – twice that if China, a near colony of 430 million people, was included. The City of London was the centre of an even more far-flung informal trading and financial empire that bound the world. It is unsurprising that, despite apprehensions over US and German industrial competitiveness, significant parts of the British elite believed that they had been given “a gift from the Almighty of a lease of the universe for ever”.

The Jubilee turned out to be “final sunburst of an unalloyed belief in British fitness to rule” (12). The second Boer war (1899-1902) fought to preserve the routes to India and secure the weakest link in the imperial chain, wasted British wealth and blood and revealed the atrocities of scorched-earth policies to a restive British public. “The South African War was the greatest test of British imperial power since the Indian Mutiny and turned into the most extensive and costly war fought by Britain between the defeat of Napoleon and the First World War” (13). The war that broke out in 1914 bankrupted and exhausted its European protagonists. The long end of the British era had started. However, the empire not only survived the immediate crisis but hobbled on for decades, through the second world war, until its inglorious end at Suez in 1956. Still, a nostalgia for lost grandeur persists. As Tony Blair’s Mesopotamian adventures show, the imperial afterglow has faded but is not entirely extinguished.

For the US power elite, being on top of the world has been a habit for 60 years. Hegemony has been a way of life; empire, a state of being and of mind. The institutional realist critics of the Bush administration have no alternative conceptual framework for international relations, based on something other than force, the balance of power or strategic predominance. The present crisis and the deepening impact of global concerns will perhaps generate new impulses for cooperation and interdependence in future. Yet it is just as likely that US policy will be unpredictable: as all post-colonial experiences show, de-imperialisation is likely to be a long and possibly traumatic process.

Original text in English

(1) See “Retired generals speak out to oppose Rumsfeld”, The Wall Street Journal, New York, 14 April 2006.

(2) Statement to Associated Press, 5 October 2005. Gen Odom was head of the National Security Agency (NSA) under Ronald Reagan.

(3) Cited in “Breaking Ranks”, The Washington Post, 19 January 2006.

(4) Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1 February 2007.

(5) Former CIA Director George Tenet, in his just released book At the Center of the Storm, blames the White House for the strategic failures in Iraq and claims that there never was a “serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat” or whether to tighten sanctions rather than go to war. This is only the latest skirmish in a conflict between the CIA and the White House since at least 2003.

(6) Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Face the Nation, CBC, 17 December 2006.

(7) Zbigniew Brzezinski, see note 4.

(8) Speech of the head of the National Industrial Conference board before the annual convention of the Investment Banker Association, 10 December 1940. Cited in James J Martin, Revisionist Viewpoints (Ralph Myles, Colorado Springs, 1971).

(9) Henry R Luce, “The American Century”, Life, 1941, republished in Diplomatic History, vol 23, issue 2, spring 1999.

(10) William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Delta Books, New York, 1962).

(11) See Philip S Golub, “America’s imperial longings”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, July 2001.

(12) Cited in Elisabeth Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East, 1914-1956 (Chatto & Windus, London, 1963).

(13) C Saunders & IR Smith, “Southern Africa, 1795-1901”, The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol III, New York, 2001.

Published: 25 September 2007

US soldiers are luring Iraqis to their deaths by scattering military equipment on the ground as “bait”, and then shooting those who pick them up, it has been alleged at a court martial. The highly controversial tactic, which has hitherto been kept secret, is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of a number of Iraqis who were subsequently classified as enemy combatants and used in statistics to show the “success” of the “surge” in US forces.

Technorati Tags: america, middle east, Petraeus Iraq

The revelation came in court documents, obtained by The Washington Post , related to murder charges against three US soldiers who are alleged to have planted incriminating evidence on civilians they had killed. In a sworn statement, Captain Matthew Didier, the officer in charge of a sniper platoon, said: “Basically we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against the US forces.”

Capt Didier, of the 1st Battalion 501st Infantry Regiment, said members of the US military’s Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later supplied ammunition boxes filled with “drop items” to be used ” to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming coalition forces and give us the upper hand in a fight.”

Within months of the introduction of the strategy, three snipers in Capt Didier’s platoon were charged with murder for allegedly using the “baits ” to try to cover up unprovoked shootings. Specialist Jorge Sandoval and Staff Sgt Michael Hensley are accused of placing a spool of wire, sometimes used to detonate roadside bombs, in the pocket of a man who had been cutting grass with a rusty sickle after he was killed on 27 April this year.

Sgt Evan Vela is accused of shooting an Iraqi prisoner twice in the head with a 9mm pistol on the orders of Staff Sgt Hensley. The two soldiers told investigators that the man was carrying an AK-47 rifle. Other soldiers have testified that the rifle was planted next to the Iraqi after he was shot.

In earlier testimony Pte David Petta said he believed that “classified” items were to be placed on people killed by the sniper unit “if we killed somebody that we knew was a bad guy but didn’t have the evidence to show for it”.

The court martial of Spc Sandoval is due to start in Baghdad this week. His father, Curtis Carnahan, accused the US military of holding the proceedings in a war zone to try to minimise publicity.

“I feel you can’t prosecute our soldiers for acts of war and threaten them with years and years of confinement when this ["bait"] programme, if it comes to the light of day, was clearly coming from higher levels.”

A US military spokes-man said: “We don’t discuss specific methods of targeting enemy combatants. The accused are charged with murder and wrongfully placing weapons on the remains of Iraqi nationals. There are no classified programmes that authorise the murder of local nationals and the use of ‘drop weapons’ to make killings appear legally justified.”

A US military source said “baits” had been left by a number of units. “The guys picking them up are sometimes bad guys. But how do you know each time?”

Robert Emerson, a British security analyst, said: “This seems a highly arbitrary and suspect way of carrying out counter-insurgency operations.”

Published: September 7,
2007

Here’s
what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before
Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced
violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis
killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car
bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s
what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen.
Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe.
They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might
accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll
desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that
politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some
troops, if he feels like it.

Technorati Tags: Petraeus Iraq

There are five
things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no
independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down.
On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police
records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost
twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the
nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the
average number of daily attacks.

So how can the
military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double
super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings
(bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports,
all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst
told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the
back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front,
it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as
you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the
way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias
driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni
enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls
because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by
the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen.
Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of
progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political
masters.

I’ve
written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six
weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress”
in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security
elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are
stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in
the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their
own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has
been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more
years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military
officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has
recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with
corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi
military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential
security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan
that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle
fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush
told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re
kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the
lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse
Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do.
Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward
was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in
Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the
public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are
exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional
leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress
doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all
this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New
York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal”
for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a
compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to
sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush
administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven
months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush
will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for
the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The
administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will
come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for
sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which
Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against
the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again,
claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up
their minds.

Technorati Tags: Petraeus Iraq

It is the latest twist in a migration pattern that is creating extreme circumstances for vulnerable people who go abroad in quest of work.

In two months, the International Organization of Migration, an intergovernmental agency based in Geneva, said it has repatriated a total of 30 Sri Lankan carpenters brought from the Dubai airport to Iraq. Another 20 have come forward since then to ask for help.

“The Sri Lankans are the first concrete caseload we have been dealing with,” said Vincent Houver, responsible for the agency’s evacuation of third world nationals from Iraq. They are “the first visible and concrete sign that there is cause for concern.”

Another group – five to six Ethiopian maids who had expected to work in Jordan – had been taken into Iraq against their will, Houver said. Some are being kept in Erbil, in the Kurdish north of Iraq, and the others in Baghdad, he said, and they are being prevented from leaving.

“We are witnessing the emergence of new patterns of exploitation,” said Houver, who is based in Jordan. The agency gets its information from migrants or intermediary aid agencies, then investigates the situation and tries to negotiate the refugees’ freedom and to repatriate them.

Growing wealth in Kurdish Iraq, with a steady stream of foreign investment in construction projects and openings for domestic workers, has stoked a demand that is being filled by Filipinos, Sri Lankans, Indians, Pakistanis and Ethiopians.

India, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines expressly outlaw travel to Iraq for their nationals, and in Sri Lanka it is illegal for employment agencies to offer jobs in Iraq. The reasons became obvious in 2004 when 12 Nepalese men, in Iraq to work as cleaners and cooks, were taken hostage and killed.

But the prospect of a job with a foreign contractor at a salary enhanced by a security premium has fueled worker interest. Houver estimates that “a couple of thousand” foreign workers now live in the Kurdish north of Iraq, having entered by legal means, while another 4,000 could be considered irregular.

The Sri Lankans’ story speaks of the dangers the workers are exposed to. All 30 of them, in their 20s and 30s, were seeking work as carpenters on construction sites in the United Arab Emirates.

But, having paid about $2,000 to a legal employment agency in Colombo, the men fell victim to traffickers on route, the International Organization of Migration says. Their agency, Arabian Express, denies any wrongdoing and says the men never showed up when its representative went to meet them in Dubai, according to press reports.

Houver said, “It is unclear who is at fault, but the whole phenomenon started while they were transiting in the Gulf.”

A first group of 17 men, all Tamils from Sri Lanka’s strife-torn rural north, arrived in Erbil in the Kurdish north in winter with no idea what country they were in, according to the International Organization of Migration. Their supervisors later threatened to send them south to Baghdad or to make them repay the $1,200 in fees that their employers had paid the traffickers, according to the migration organization.

According to the migrants’ reports, their Iraqi employer took their passports and put them to work seven days a week, 16 to 18 hours a day. Kept under armed guard, they slept at the site, which lacked hygiene facilities, were paid $150 a month and were prevented from telephoning their families.

After several weeks the 17 made a bid for freedom. Breaking through a partition wall when the guards were away, they wandered the streets of Erbil until they stumbled across a UN compound and turned themselves in.

Two of them described their plight in letters written in Tamil that UN officials had to have translated before they could refer them to the migration organization. The agency then negotiated the men’s departure from their employer and from Iraq. “It was less a condition of physical vulnerability than of severe distress,” Houver said. “They were in a country they had no intention of going to and couldn’t speak the language and were completely at a loss.”

The day the 17 landed back home in Colombo, 13 more Sri Lankan men turned themselves in to the International Organization of Migration in Erbil. They, too, were repatriated.

By Peter Harling and Joost Hiltermann

Iraqi officials said Tuesday that gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped an Iranian Embassy official in central Baghdad on Sunday. Jalal Sharafi, a second secretary at the Iranian Embassy, was abducted from the Karrada district while on his way to a ribbon cutting at a new branch of an Iranian state-owned bank.

According to witnesses and unnamed Iraqi officials, gunmen wearing uniforms of the Iraqi army’s elite 36th Commando Battalion — part of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade, an aggressive unit that specializes in counterinsurgent operations — were involved in the snatch. They reportedly used two of their vehicles to block Sharafi’s car and then seized him. During the ambush, nearby Iraqi police — apparently suspecting a kidnapping was taking place — opened fire on one of the vehicles and brought it to a halt. The four gunmen inside — all with official Iraqi military identification — were arrested.

The story did not end there, however. On Monday, individuals showing official Iraqi government badges arrived at the police station where the gunmen were being detained and claimed to have authority to transfer them to the serious crimes police unit. It was later discovered that the suspects never arrived.

Technorati Tags: middle east

Iran has accused the United States of engineering the abduction through the Sunni-controlled Defense Ministry; the U.S. military has denied any involvement in the matter.

Given the tactical details of the operation and the geopolitical backdrop, there are two possible explanations for the incident. One is that Sunni insurgents are responsible: They have the means and motivation to pull off such an operation, and any number of Sunni factions would be interested in carrying out an abduction like this. But the United States has a motive as well.

It is important to note that Sharafi’s position at the embassy is the kind of diplomatic posting that frequently would be a cover for intelligence operatives. So if he were an Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security operative of some importance, kidnapping him would disrupt Iranian operations as the U.S. security offensive in Baghdad gets under way. Second, the United States has been very public in saying it intends to become more aggressive toward Iranian covert operations as part of its effort to bring pressure against Tehran. U.S. intelligence has substantially ramped up the collection of information on Iran — a move that would serve whether the goal was to actually attack Iran, plan negotiations or just try to figure out the mind of Tehran. The snatch of a second secretary would fit into this effort.

This is not the first incident of this kind. In January, U.S. forces arrested five officials from an Iranian diplomatic office in Arbil, a northern city, and have been holding them ever since — a maneuver that fits with the Bush administration’s strategy of demonstrating that Washington has the ability to weaken the Iranian position in Iraq. In an act of apparent retaliation, Shiite militants attacked the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in the southern city of Karbala on Jan. 20, and after a 20-minute gunbattle, abducted five U.S. soldiers, who later were killed. The operatives spoke English, had U.S. military uniforms and identification cards and arrived in armored white GMC suburbans. Using their English-language skills, the gunmen were able to arm themselves at a local police station and then penetrate multiple layers of security before opening fire on a U.S. civil affairs team.

At this point, this much is clear: No matter who is actually responsible for the Sharafi abduction, it will further heighten U.S.-Iranian tensions and could force Tehran to retaliate against the pressure being generated by the United States. The Iranians will blame the Americans under any circumstances. In the logic of the region, the Iranians will reason that even if the perpetrators were Sunnis, the United States somehow manipulated them into carrying out the operation. The Iranians are now as fixated on U.S. covert operations against Iran as the United States has become on Iranian covert operations in Iraq and elsewhere against U.S. interests.

Whatever the facts of this particular case might be, the United States has been transmitting numerous signals — official and otherwise — that Iran is vulnerable and is placing itself at risk by opposing U.S. interests in Iraq. The Sharafi abduction seems designed to enhance Tehran’s sense of vulnerability, and hence to fuel disagreements among those in Iran who feel the United States is at a weak point and those who warn that the United States is most dangerous at its weakest. The debate between these camps is about how to deal with the United States: whether to retaliate against provocations, pursue negotiations or a mix of both. This is precisely the kind of re-evaluation of its stance and options that the United States wants to see from Iran. The Americans want the Iranians to view the United States as a dangerous foe, and to moderate their appetite for power in the region. Therefore, even if the United States didn’t order the Sharafi operation, it still fits into a pattern of warnings that the Americans have been issuing.

There are some factors that allow us to speculate — and this remains speculation — that U.S. forces working with partners within the Iraqi Defense Ministry engineered the kidnapping. More specifically, the 36th Commando Battalion, whose uniforms were worn by the gunmen in the course of the kidnapping, is known to work closely with U.S. forces. Amid efforts to quell the Sunni insurgency and contain the growth of Iranian influence in Iraq, the United States in 2005 began moving to bring the Baathists back into Iraq’s political system, especially the security forces. This policy has been central to the tensions between the Americans and Iraqi Shia, but it is a tool the Bush administration is using to counter Iranian moves.

Another point to consider is that Sharafi — as an official with diplomatic immunity — could not be held in detention for long under normal measures. The standard procedure for dealing with foreign diplomats who are deemed undesirable is to declare them persona non grata and order them out of the country within a matter of days. This is the course of action generally pursued if the goal is to rid a country of potential intelligence operatives — and it is a sign of escalating tension between the diplomat’s home state and the host country. In Sharafi’s case, expulsion would have been the prerogative of the Iraqi government. But since the Shiite-dominated government has close ties to Iran, it is hardly likely that he would have been expelled.

In this case, the objective of the United States would not be simply to secure the Iranian’s expulsion, but given his position, to extract intelligence about Tehran’s plans and operational networks in Iraq. Arresting him and holding him for questioning would not be possible under international law, let alone in the face of the scandal that would ensue if U.S. forces had done this. Nevertheless, an opportunity to question him would be of real value to the United States. Maintaining plausible deniability would be the key. But arranging for Sharafi’s abduction by a third party would be a feasible way of obtaining the intelligence sought by the United States. It is therefore quite possible that this was a U.S.-authorized operation executed by Washington’s Sunni allies.

The Sunnis in Iraq — both the nationalists and the jihadists — have reasons of their own to abduct an Iranian official, and hence could have seized Sharafi as part of a completely independent operation. Sunni nationalists and jihadists feel that they are more threatened by Iranian influence in Iraq than by the U.S. military presence, which most believe eventually will come to an end. The Iranian-Shiite threat, however, is a permanent feature of the region and poses long-term danger.

The Sunnis also recognize that they do not have the means to deal with Iran or its Iraqi Shiite allies by themselves — but the United States has the power to weaken the position of Iran, and by extension, its Iraqi patrons. With tensions between Washington and Tehran at their current heights, there is an opportunity to be exploited.

The Sunnis could exacerbate those tensions further by abducting an Iranian diplomat at a time when the United States already has five Iranian officials in custody. No claims of responsibility for the operation were issued, which means Tehran’s suspicions of the Americans easily could be fueled.

The timing is interesting in another way as well. In efforts to maximize its position in Iraq, Tehran has been angling for negotiations with Saudi Arabia — and this leaves Iraqi Sunnis feeling nervous. As a minority group that occupies a region without oil, the Sunnis would be at an inherent disadvantage: No matter what kind of support Riyadh might offer them, they would find it difficult or impossible to escape the pull of Iranian and Shiite power. Neither the nationalist insurgents nor the jihadists could accept such an outcome.

On the day of Sharafi’s abduction, the al Qaeda-led alliance called the “Islamic State of Iraq” issued a statement saying U.S. military action against Iran would benefit Islamist militants. Therefore, it is entirely possible that the abduction was an attempt to provoke Iran — which already is demanding the release of the officials captured in Arbil — into retaliation against the Americans. The jihadists’ hope would be that this could provoke a wider U.S.-Iranian conflict and hence torpedo any U.S.-Iranian dealings.

The Iranians seem sincere in their conviction that the abduction was the work of the United States. Their likely reaction would be to encourage their allies within the Iraqi Shiite militias to strike at both U.S. and Sunni targets — reminding Washington that Tehran is not without options — while at the same time pressing ahead on the diplomatic front. In other words, the likely short-term outcome of this incident will be increased violence.

At the same time, the United States is engaged in a long-term process designed to convince the Iranians that the risks incurred in destabilizing Iraq and blocking a political settlement in Baghdad are greater than they might have imagined, and that the U.S. resolve to resist Iran is sufficient to block Tehran’s ambitions. From Washington’s point of view, the primary hope for any satisfactory end to the Iraq war rests in a change of policy in Tehran. Regardless of whether this abduction triggers retaliation, if Iran comes to believe that Washington is dangerous, it might come to the bargaining table or — to be more precise — allow its Iraqi allies to come to the table.

An action like the Sharafi abduction allows the signal to be sent, while still falling short of mounting overt military strikes against Iran — something for which the United States currently has little appetite or resources. A covert war is within the means of the United States, and the Americans might hope that their prosecution of that war will convince Iran they are serious and to back off. Therefore, even if the kidnapping had nothing to do with the United States and Iran misreads the incident, it still could serve American interests in signaling American resolve. Given the state of the U.S. position in Iraq, the strategy well might fail — but once again, it is one of the few cards the United States has left to play.

PRIESTS, PROSTITUTES, psychologists, cops, jazz musicians, poker players. Every trade has its jargon and “insider lingo.”

Soldier slang, however, has a peculiar appeal. That’s understandable. Waging war is a risky, all-encompassing endeavor — physically, emotionally and psychologically. War reveals humankind at its best and its worst, and war-fighter slang, reflects the bitter, terrifying, sometimes inspiring hell of it.

Every war adds something new — and often obscene — to the soldiers’ vocabulary. World War II-era Hollywood dialogue glamorized (and often scrubbed) combat slang, but the warrior’s rhetorical swagger, irony and biting humor predate film by several millenniums.

Often, new idioms and phrases describe old, difficult truths. Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz said that war is the realm of “friction.” World War II veterans invoked Murphy’s Law: “If something can go wrong, it will.” As you’ll see in the brief lexicon I’ve pulled together below, the New Greatest Generation (the generation fighting the war on terror) dubs it “the suck.”

“Embrace the suck” isn’t merely a wisecrack; it’s an encyclopedic experience rendered as an epigram, gritty shorthand for “Face it, soldier. I’ve been there. War ain’t easy. Now deal with the difficulty and let’s get on with the mission.”

That’s sound advice for a nation at war.

Technorati Tags: america, middle east

Air jockey: Fighter pilot or a fixed-wing pilot. On rare occasions, might refer to a helicopter pilot.

Ali Baba: Slang for enemy forces. Originated in the Persian Gulf War.

Battle rattle: Slang for combat gear. “Full battle rattle” means wearing and carrying everything (helmet, body armor, weapons).

Beltway clerk: A derisive term for a Washington political operative or civilian politician.

Bilat: A bilateral conference between coalition military units and local people. (“We’re going on a bilat to discuss the security situation with Haji.”)

Blackwater: Specifically, a private security firm operating in Iraq. Used as slang, can mean any private security firm. “Gone to Blackwater” indicates that a soldier quit the armed services and went to work for a private security firm.

Blue canoe: Slang for a portable toilet.

Bohica: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. Pronounced “bo-HEE-ka.” Means “we’re about to get screwed, as usual.” This term was in use in the Army in the 1960s.

Bombaconda: Slang for Logistics Support Area Anaconda, a major supply base near Balad, Iraq. Balad is also called “Mortaritaville.”

Camp Ass: Refers to Camp As Sayliyah in Coha, Qatar.

Casper: Slang for someone who always disappears when there’s work to be done.

Christians in Action: Slang for Central Intelligence Agency.

DFAC: Dining facility. Pronounced “Dee-FAC.”

Dome of obedience: Slang for a military helmet. Also called a “brain bucket” or “skid lid.”

Dynamic truth: Basically means “this is the plan when my supervisor gave it to me, but change is already in the works.”

Echelons above reality: Higher headquarters where no one has an idea about what is really happening.

Embrace the suck: Phrase heard in OIF1 (the original Operation Iraqi Freedom force). Translation: The situation is bad, but deal with it.

Flash-blasted: Being screamed at or chewed out by the unit’s senior noncommissioned officer.

Fobbits: Derogatory term for soldiers who never leave an FOB (Forward Operations Base).

Geardo: Derogatory term for the guy who has to have all the latest and greatest gear on his uniform, even though he does not know how to use it.

General order No. 1: General order that does not permit drinking or fraternizing in Iraq and Kuwait.

Ghetto grip: A detachable, pistol-type grip that can make a carbine easier to use.

Groundhog Day: Every day of your tour in Iraq.

Grunt-proof: Idiot-proof.

Haji: Slang for an Iraqi, but may mean any Middle Easterner who hails from a predominantly Muslim country.

Idiot stick: Slang for an M16 (or any weapon).

Jersey barrier: Slang for a small concrete barrier.

Johnny Jihad: Slang for a Muslim or Muslim combatant.

Lifer juice: Coffee.

Marsalama: GI Arabic. Corruption of Arabic for “Go in peace.” In conversation, it means “See you later.”

Mookie: Nickname for Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada Sadr.

O dark 30: Pronounced “oh dark thirty.” A word play on military time. Means a very early hour during the night. (“We had to get up at oh-dark-thirty.”)

OPSEC: Operational security. “Loose lips sink ships” of World War II fame is an OPSEC warning.

Oscar Mike: On the move (Marine lingo).

Oz: Australia. Hence “Ozzies” — Australians.

POG: People Other than Grunts. Pronounced like “rogue.” Used by grunts as a derogatory word for everyone else.

Pubic plate: Also pube armor or pubic pad. Kevlar pad that flops over the crotch. Other terms: Nad Pad or Nut Guard.

PUC: Person Under Custody. (“We got two PUCs on that last raid.”)

Red Zone: The area outside the Green Zone. “Haifa Street” is a main drag in the Red Zone.

RUMINT: Rumor level intelligence. A variant is BOGINT — bogus intelligence.

Rummy’s Dummies: A derogatory name for the U.S. military under the leadership of former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Semper I: Pejorative Marine lingo for being overly concerned with one’s own personal interests.

Single-digit midget: A member of the armed services who has nine days or less remaining on his tour of duty.

Speed bumps: A tanker’s derogatory term for infantry soldiers. Operation Desert Storm-era slang still occasionally used.

Terps: Slang for interpreters

Tread head: A soldier serving in an armor (tank) or armored cavalry (armored recon) unit.

Turkey peek: To glance around or over an object or surface, such as a corner or wall.

Waxed: To get hit hard or get killed.

Weekend warrior: U.S. reservist or National Guard soldier.

Yalla: GI adaptation of Arabic word for hurry up or run.