To follow is an excerpt from the CQ Researcher report on "Drone Warfare" by Thomas J. Billitteri, August 6, 2010.
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OVERVIEW
Mustafa Abu al-Yazid ranked high on the roster of global terrorists. He was jailed in connection with the 1981 assassination of 
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, thought to have managed finances for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and, as the No. 3 official in Al Qaeda, was widely viewed as a prime conduit to Osama bin Laden. [Footnote 1]
Yazid's life apparently came to an end in May when a missile from a CIA drone aircraft hit him in the lawless tribal region of western Pakistan. Al Qaeda claimed Yazid's wife, three of his daughters, a granddaughter and other children and adults also died.
The attack on Yazid, also known as Sheikh Sa'id al-Masri, was part of a massive and controversial expansion in the use of “unmanned aerial vehicles,” often called UAVs or drones, for battlefield reconnaissance and targeted killing of suspected militants.[*]
The boom in drones has stirred a variety of concerns among critics, but the greatest has been over strikes carried out covertly by the CIA under a classified, but widely reported, program of strikes against suspected militants inside Pakistan. Critics say the intelligence agency's drone attacks violate the laws of war because they are executed by civilian agents and occur inside another nation's sovereign territory. Others, however, defend the strikes as lawful acts of war and national self-defense in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.[Footnote 2]
So far, the Obama administration has carried out at least 101 drone strikes in Pakistan, more than twice the 45 executed by the Bush administration from 2004 through 2008, according to the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. [Footnote 3] Allegations of high civilian casualty rates have heightened the drone controversy. About a third of those killed by CIA strikes since 2004 were non-militants, foundation researchers concluded.
Meanwhile, some question the attacks' effectiveness at stemming Al Qaeda and the Taliban insurgency. The Reuters news agency found that the CIA had killed roughly a dozen times more low-level fighters than mid- to high-level leaders since the summer of 2008, when drone strikes in Pakistan intensified. [Footnote 4]
Critics also argue that drone strikes are fueling anti-American sentiment and spurring more terrorism. They point to Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan immigrant living in Connecticut who tried to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square in May. Shahzad, who pleaded guilty, suggested U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere helped motivate him. [Footnote 5]
But drone supporters argue that strikes are precise, limited in collateral damage compared to conventional bombing or artillery attacks and save the lives of U.S. soldiers.
On Aug. 3, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit with potentially broad implications in the debate over targeted killing. The suit contests a Treasury Department rule requiring lawyers to get a special license before they can provide legal services benefiting a U.S.-born radical Muslim cleric thought to be hiding in Yemen whom the Obama administration has reportedly placed on a kill list.
The New York Times said the suit could test “some of the most deeply contested disputes to arise in the conflict against Al Qaeda — including whether the entire world is a battlefield for legal purposes, or whether terrorism suspects who are found away from combat zones must, in the absence of an imminent threat, instead be treated as criminals and given trials.” [Footnote 6]
The growing use of unmanned warplanes is part of a much broader embrace of drone technology for both military and civilian uses — everything from environmental monitoring and U.S. border patrol to drug interdiction and post-disaster searches. But it is the expanding robotic technology for war that is stirring the greatest debate.
In recent years the U.S. military has spent billions of dollars to expand its fleet of unmanned planes, which has gone from 167 aircraft in 2002 to more than 7,000 now. Last year, the Air Force trained more pilots to fly unmanned planes than traditional fighter pilots. [Footnote 7]
Drone technology itself is astonishing in its capacity to reconnoiter and kill. In the case of the Predator and its even more powerful brother, the Reaper, controllers sit at computer consoles at U.S. bases thousands of miles from harm's way and control the aircraft via satellite communication. With the ability to remain aloft for long hours undetected on the ground — Predators can fly at altitudes of about 50,000 feet — the planes can do everything from snap high-resolution reconnaissance photos of insurgents' vehicles to shoot Hellfire missiles at them.
A secret archive of classified military documents controversially released in July by the group WikiLeaks revealed the lethal power of the Predator. As reported by The New York Times, in early winter 2008 a Predator spotted a group of insurgents suspected of planting roadside bombs near an American military outpost in Afghanistan. “Within minutes after identifying the militants, the Predator unleashed a Hellfire missile, all but evaporating one of the figures digging in the dark,” The Times said. “When ground troops reached the crater caused by the missile, costing $60,000, all that was left was a shovel and a crowbar.” [Footnote 8]
The Times noted that the U.S. Air Force flies some 20 Predator and Reaper aircraft a day in Afghanistan, almost twice as many as it did a year ago, and that allies such as Britain and Germany have their own fleets. The leaked incident reports, the newspaper said, show that missions include snapping reconnaissance photos, gathering electronic transmissions, sending images of ongoing battles to field commanders and attacking militants with bombs and missiles, plus supporting U.S. Special Operations missions.
“Killer drones are the future of warfare,” Afsheen John Radsan, a former CIA lawyer who teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., told a House panel in April. [Footnote 9]
But overshadowing that future is a fierce debate over how, where and by whom drones are being used. Of particular concern is the CIA's drone program, which reportedly has targeted suspected militants in western Pakistan and other remote trouble spots where the United States is not engaged in open hostilities, including Yemen, where a 2002 drone strike killed a group of Al Qaeda suspects that included a U.S. citizen. [Footnote 10]
The CIA attacks have raised important legal questions about the role of targeted killing in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Administration officials contend that such killings are legal under established principles of self-defense, international laws of armed conflict and the Authorization for Use of Military Force — the so-called “law of 9/11” passed by Congress following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
In March, Harold Koh, the State Department's legal adviser, defended the administration's use of unmanned aircraft for targeted attacks, asserting that the United States “may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defense under international law.” [Footnote 11]And CIA Director Leon E. Panetta called drone strikes “the only game in town in terms of confronting and trying to disrupt the Al Qaeda leadership.” [Footnote 12]
But critics say CIA attacks inside Pakistan violate international laws of armed conflict because the United States is not at war with Pakistan, is not using its drones as part of Pakistan's own military operations and its drone strikes are carried out by civilians in secret far from active battlefields. “You can never, at the end of the day, find a legal basis for the CIA to be doing this,” argues Mary Ellen O'Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, who says militants like Yazid should be pursued through law enforcement means, not covert attacks.
In a report this spring, Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, sharply criticized targeted killings of terrorism suspects and the use of drones to carry them out, citing “the displacement of clear legal standards with a vaguely defined licen[s]e to kill, and the creation of a major accountability vacuum.” [Footnote 13] He also warned against “a ‘Playstation’ mentality to killing” with drone technology. [Footnote 14] A CIA spokeswoman told U.S. News & World Report that “without discussing or confirming any specific action, this agency's operations are … designed from the very start to be lawful and are subject to close oversight.” [Footnote 15]
In a groundbreaking exposition of the CIA's drone program, New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer wrote last fall that “embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. And, because of the CIA program's secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.” [Footnote 16]
On Capitol Hill, where hearings on drone policy were held this spring, U.S. Rep. John F. Tierney D-Mass., chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, noted that “the use of unmanned weapons to target individuals — and, for that matter, the targeting of individuals in general — raises many complex legal questions. We must examine who can be a legitimate target, where that person can be legally targeted and when the risk of collateral damage is too high.” [Footnote 17]
At least 40 other nations, including China, Russia and Iran, have “begun to build, buy and deploy” unmanned planes, according to Brookings Institution senior fellow P. W. Singer. [Footnote 18] Last year, U.S. fighter jets shot down an unarmed Iranian spy drone over Iraq. [Footnote 19] And drones are in the arsenals of non-state actors, including Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group. National-security experts worry that if drones fall into the hands of terrorists, the United States itself could be at risk of attack. “Simple logic tells us that every day drones become a greater threat,” says Gary Solis, a former law professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who now teaches at the Georgetown University Law Center.
“What you have moving forward is a debate not just about what can these systems do, but who can use them,” says Singer, author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. “That question of who can use them covers the gamut from the military to the federal government to local police forces to civilian actors.”
The Issues:
* Do drone strikes comply with international law?
* Are drones an effective counter-terrorism tool?
* Is drone technology ethical for use in war?
For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Drone Warfare" [subscription required] or purchase the PDF
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Footnotes:
[1] “Senior Afghan al-Qaeda leader ‘killed in Pakistan,’” BBC News, June 1, 2010, . See also Eric Schmitt, “American Strike Is Said to Kill a Top Qaeda Leader,” The New York Times, May 31, 2010; and Zeeshan Haider, “U.S. believes it killed al Qaeda No. 3,” Reuters, June 1, 2010.
[2] For background, see the following CQ Researcher reports: Peter Katel, “America at War,” July 23, 2010, pp. 605–628; Thomas J. Billitteri, “Afghanistan Dilemma,” Aug. 7, 2009, pp. 669–692; Peter Katel, “Rise in Counterinsurgency,” Sept. 5, 2008, pp. 697–720; Peter Katel, “Cost of the Iraq War,” April 25, 2008, pp. 361–384; and Robert Kiener, “Crisis in Pakistan,” CQ Global Researcher, December 2008, pp. 321–348.
[3] Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, “The Year of the Drone,” New America Foundation, 2010. Bergen is the CNN national security analyst and is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
[4] Adam Entous, “Special Report: How the White House Learned to Love the Drone,” Reuters.
[5] Andrea Elliott, “Militant's Path From Pakistan to Times Square,” The New York Times, June 22, 2010.
[6] Charlie Savage, “Rule Limiting Legal Services in Terror Cases Is Challenged,” The New York Times, Aug. 3, 2010, .
[7] Drone inventory figures and pilot-training facts are from statement of Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass., chairman, House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, hearing on “Rise of the Drones: Unmanned Systems and the Future of War,” March 23, 2010.
[8] C. J. Chivers, et al., “View Is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal of War in Afghanistan,” The New York Times, July 25, 2010.
[9] Statement of Afsheen John Radsan before the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, “Loftier Standards for the CIA's Remote-Control Killing,” April 28, 2010.
[10] “U.S. defends Yemen strike,” BBC News, Nov. 10, 2002.
[11] Harold Hongju Koh, “The Obama Administration and International Law,” U.S. Department of State, March 25, 2010.
[12] Mary Louise Kelly, “Officials: Bin Laden Running Out of Space to Hide,” National Public Radio, June 5, 2009.
[13] Philip Alston, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions,” United Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Council, May 28, 2010, p. 3. See also Charlie Savage, “U.N. Report Highly Critical of U.S. Drone Attacks,” The New York Times, June 2, 2010.
[14] Ibid., p. 25.
[15] Quoted in Alex Kingsbury, “CIA Drone Strikes Draw United Nations Fire,” U.S. News & World Report, June 10, 2010.
[16] Jane Mayer, “The Predator War,” The New Yorker, Oct. 26, 2009, p. 38.
[17] Statement of Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass., Chairman, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, April 28, 2010.
[18] P. W. Singer, “Defending Against Drones,” Newsweek, Feb. 25, 2010.
[19] “U.S.: We shot down Iranian drone over Iraq,” CNN, March 16, 2009.
Are strikes by unmanned aircraft ethical?
Are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan making U.S. enemies weaker?
To follow is an excerpt from the CQ Researcher report "America at War" by Peter Katel, July 23, 2010
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From the very beginning of the post-Sept. 11 wartime period, U.S. officials were warning that the conflicts wouldn't end with the equivalent of the definitive enemy surrenders that halted World War II.
Instead, the key sign would be the elimination of terrorist sanctuaries, where Al Qaeda and like-minded organizations can plan, train and coordinate. Today, the key sanctuary is the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. That zone is the “locus of the heartland of Al Qaeda,” Defense Undersecretary for Policy Flournoy told the House Armed Services Committee in May. [Footnote 30]
And Al Qaeda in some ways is more dangerous today, said Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a government agency established in 2004 that reports to the president. He said the organization showed its capabilities in the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan immigrant to the United States, who pleaded guilty in February to terrorism charges centered on a plan to explode a bomb in the New York subway system.[Footnote 31] “There has been a diversification of the threat and a move towards simpler, smaller efforts to attack the United States,” Leiter said, “which don't have quite the same level of threat in terms of the damage it might cause, but in the multiplicity of the threats I think it is more challenging today.”[Footnote 32]
But with half its leaders killed, “Al Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan is weaker today than it has been since 2001,” Leiter told a conference at the Aspen Institute think tank in Colorado. “Now, weaker doesn't mean harmless … It is still a meaningful and dangerous force.”[Footnote 33]
Opponents of the Afghan war say conditions in the jihadist heartland show the failure of the effort to destroy Al Qaeda in war, as opposed to more precisely targeted law-enforcement and military operations. “We ourselves, for domestic political reasons, make things worse and not better by turning these mass murderers into warriors,” says Andrews of Win Without War. “Framing this as a war and elevating them to warriors fighting for a cause, we strengthen them. We need to revisit whether this approach makes sense — the facts show very clearly that it doesn't.”
A smarter, more effective response to the Sept. 11 attacks would have been to “use tools that actually work — surgical operations where you go after these guys,” Andrews says. “That does not mean invading and having a massive military footprint in a country.”
But a senior U.S. security official with long experience both in Iraq and Afghanistan argues that the long military campaign has weakened the United States' enemies. “The risk of a 9/11-type event has clearly gone down,” the official says, speaking on condition he not be named. “They've not been able to pull off something like that. The pressure we've put on their networks, and the leadership targeting, is important.” To be sure, he acknowledges, much of that pressure and targeting is taking place in Pakistan, where U.S. troops are not waging war.
Nevertheless, he says, “What takes Afghanistan from an important national interest to a vital national interest is that, if we did not surge in Afghanistan, you would see the Pakistanis cutting a lot more deals” with jihadists. “The resources we are investing in Afghanistan have helped us make the case to them that we are doing our part.”
But other experts argue that the war — along with drone strikes on Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan — is hurting more than it's helping. “The presence and operations of the U.S. in the theater … because they are misperceived in terms of their nature and purpose, has continued to be a stimulus to radicalism including radicalism that takes the form of terrorism,” Paul Pillar, a former career CIA specialist in the region, said in June at a Washington conference held by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).[Footnote 34]
The U.S. military deployment has also prompted non-radicals to join the fight against the Americans and their allies, said Pillar, now the graduate studies director of Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies in Washington “This has been reflected … in the continued taking up of arms by many Afghans who have no sympathy whatsoever for the extreme political and social views of the Taliban but see themselves as waging an anti-occupation struggle.”[Footnote 35]
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The Issues:
* Can the United States meet the troop drawdown start date in Afghanistan?
* Should immediate negotiations with the Taliban be the top U.S. priority?
* Are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan making U.S. enemies weaker?
For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "America at War" [subscription required] or purchase the PDF
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Footnotes
[30] ”House Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing on Developments in Afghanistan,” CQ Congressional Transcripts, May 5, 2010.
[31] A.G. Sulzberger and William K. Rashbaum, “Guilty Plea Made in Plot to Bomb New York Subway,” The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2010.
[32] “Terror Threat From Abroad,” Aspen Institute, C-SPAN, June 30, 2010 (Web video).
[33] Ibid.
[34] “Beyond Afghanistan: America's Enduring Interests in Central and South Asia,” Center for a New American Security, June 10, 2010, transcript.
[35] Ibid.
Is the VA benefits system broken beyond repair?
To follow is the "Overview" section of this week's CQ Researcher report on "Caring for Veterans" by Peter Katel, April 23, 2010.
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The car bomb exploded at dusk. Its target – a seven-ton U.S. Army personnel carrier – was blown about six feet by the force of the blast. Infantryman John Lamie came out alive, thanks to armor plating around his machine-gunner’s cupola, but three of his buddies died in the Aug. 3, 2005, attack in Baghdad. Lamie went to Iraq a second time in 2007-2008, before the cumulative effects of combat eventually pushed him out of the Army.
Now he’s fighting another kind of battle – with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). “I did two tours in Iraq and half my squad died,” he says from his home in Cecil, Ga., only to “come home and get treated like a piece of crap in my own state.”
Because of a series of complications over the validity of disability exams Lamie took for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other conditions, Lamie’s most recent disability check amounted to $83.19. He and his wife have three children, and he’s paying child support for a fourth child with his ex-wife.
Lamie says that when he tried to straighten out his case with staff of the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), he ran into a wall of indifference. “The vet has no power, you are left to the wind,” Lamie says. “You have to call and beg – I don’t mean ask nicely, I mean beg – and I don’t feel any vet should have to beg somebody to do their damn job.”
However, by late April, Lamie had found a VA staffer who was trying to straighten out bureaucratic confusion involving multiple files shipped among multiple offices. “Fingers crossed,” Lamie says. “Within another two months something might work itself out.” He emphasizes “might.”
Veterans’ advocates, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the VA’s own inspector general have all reported similar communications breakdowns and wildly varying standards for evaluating disability claims among VBA regional offices, even as a steady stream of new claims pours into the VA.
Soldiers wounded while serving their country “are waiting – and waiting – for the help they have been promised,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, after meeting with agency officials and veterans’ organizations in March. “Frankly, it’s an insult to our veterans and their service.” [Footnote 1]
About 1 million claims of all kinds are backlogged at the VA, according to veterans’ organizations, some of which help veterans on behalf of the VA, which says the backlog of initial claims alone totals 500,000, using a different calculation method.
While VA medical care, delivered through the Veterans Health Administration, tends to earn high marks from vets, the VBA presents a different picture. In 2007-2008, staff at VBA regional offices compiled an overall accuracy record on initial claims decisions of only 77 percent, Belinda J. Finn, VA deputy inspector general, told the House Veterans’ Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee in early March. “This equates to approximately . . . 203,000 total claims where veterans’ monthly benefits may be incorrect,” Finn told the subcommittee. [Footnote 2]
The VA’s scramble to meet mounting demand for its services is occurring amid continuing warfare on two fronts: Since U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in 2001, at least 5,190 service members have been wounded, 425 of them this year. Since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, 31,176 service members have been wounded there. [Footnote 3]
Yet the VA’s difficulties providing adequate care for veterans got only sporadic attention until 2007, when a prize-winning Washington Post series pushed them to the top of the national agenda. With the issue in the spotlight, Congress in 2008 authorized free medical care for all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for five years after leaving the military. And GI Bill educational benefits were expanded for veterans who entered the service after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Vets welcomed the new benefits, but questioned the VBA’s ability to process all the new claims. The VA’s new boss, retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, is vowing to shake up the agency. “2010 is my year to focus on finding and breaking the obstacles that deny us faster and better processing and higher quality outcomes,” he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in early March. To break the backlog while dealing with a rush of expected new claims, he proposes adding 4,000 claims examiners in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. [Footnote 4]
His appointees aren’t mincing words about what they found when they took over. “In my judgment, it cannot be fixed,” Peter Levin, the VA’s chief technology officer, said of the benefits claims system during a March meeting on Capitol Hill with veterans’ organizations. “We need to build a new system, and that is exactly what we are going to do.” [Footnote 5]
Veterans’ advocates cheered Levin’s comments and praise Shinseki’s vision, but some wonder if he can put his stamp on the VA. A West Point graduate who lost most of a foot in Vietnam combat, Shinseki has earned a reputation for speaking out regardless of consequences. As Army chief of staff, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2003 that securing Iraq after invading it would require “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers.” Shinseki’s civilian boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, contemptuously brushed that assessment aside and marginalized its author. But time proved Shinseki more accurate than Rumsfeld, who endorsed a forecast of 30,000-50,000 troops in Iraq after the invasion. By fiscal year 2008, U.S. troop strength had reached nearly 160,000. [Footnote 6]
Now, Shinseki’s leading an agency trying to adjust to the special demands created by 21st-century warfare. Vast advances in battlefield care are enabling thousands of vets to survive injuries that would have been fatal in the past. But those injuries, often caused by homemade bombs, or so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs), can be crippling.
“IED blasts alone often cause multiple wounds, usually with severe injuries to extremities, and traumatic brain and other blast injuries, and they leave many . . . with serious physical, psychological and cognitive injuries,” the government-funded Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported to Congress in a lengthy study published in March. [Footnote 7]
Today’s all-volunteer military is far smaller than past draftee-fed forces, requiring troops to be repeatedly recycled through combat zones. About a third of those who have been deployed to combat more than once have suffered from PTSD, TBI or major depression, and about 5 percent suffered from all three, according to the RAND Corp, a California think tank. Multiple deployments can double the risk of PTSD and other psychological problems, the Army surgeon general concluded in a 2008 report, which found mental health problems in 12 percent with one deployment and 27 percent with three or more deployments. [Footnote 8]
Retired Army Capt. Anthony Kennedy, who attempted suicide after two tours in Iraq, described the nature of the fighting there and the psychological effects of the constant threat of being blown up by an IED. “One of my friends . . . had a friend whose arms and legs were blown off,” Kennedy says. “All of us combat guys are thinking, ‘Why do I want to go through life with no arms and no legs?’ Our consensus: ‘Can my battle buddy just put a bullet in me?’ We talk about that.”
Kennedy has had problems with the VA benefits system as well, but obtained a volunteer lawyer’s help in pushing his PTSD rating from 30 percent to 70 percent disability. He says his 17 years in the service taught him how to deal with military-style bureaucracy. “I have the maturity and the knowledge to know that there’s 100,000 applications out there, and I’m just one cog in the wheel,” he says. “But I can imagine that if someone is completely disabled, and their father or mother comes in, the system can be a shock.”
Even military reservists, accustomed to part-time service, can be taken aback by the VA system they encounter after active duty. Naval reservist Richard Sanchez of New York, a former paralegal for a Wall Street law firm, was discharged after his second deployment, which took him to Kuwait, where he was injured when an ammunition and weapons container fell on him in 2005.
After discharge, Sanchez began to suffer intense back pain, failing memory and depression. In his confused state, the VA system overcame him, he says. Eventually, he encountered a VA counselor who helped him straighten out a long series of bureaucratic complications, and in March received a letter from the VA apologizing for erroneous ratings and promising to reevaluate claims for PTSD, TBI and depression.
“I don’t hate the VA,” says Sanchez, who is attending college thanks to VA education benefits. “There are some faults there, but you can’t blame the whole system.”
That system is about to be tested even more forcefully. The VA is predicting that its claims workload will rise 30 percent next fiscal year, to about 1.3 million, in part because the department added three new ailments to the list of illnesses presumed to result from exposure to the Vietnam-era defoliant known as Agent Orange. And more “presumptive” illnesses associated with exposure to other battleground chemicals in more recent wars may be added later this year. [Footnote 9]
Still, it won’t be easy to convince veterans that the VA has turned a new page. In Georgia, Iraq vet Lamie is trying to keep his family fed, his lights on and his car running on the small checks he receives now. “I’ve still got no faith in VA” – for now, he says.
The Issues:
*Is the VA benefits system broken beyond repair?
*Is the VA adjusting to the needs of 21st-century combat and technology?
*Is the VA improving rapidly enough?
For more information see the CQ Researcher report "Caring for Veterans" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF.
Footnotes:
[1] “Radical Change Needed for Veterans Disability Claims Process,” House Committee on Veterans Affairs, press statement, March 18, 2010.
[2] “Statement of Belinda J. Finn, Assistant Inspector General for Audits and Evaluations, Office of Inspector General, Department of Veterans Affairs,” VA Office of Inspector General, March 24, 2010.
[3] Icasualties.org, updated regularly.
[4] “Remarks by Secretary Eric K. Shinseki,” Veterans of Foreign Wars National Legislative Conference, March 8, 2010; “Fiscal 2011 Budget: VA,” Committee Testimony, Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, Feb. 26, 2010; “FY 2011 Budget Submission,” Department of Veterans Affairs, pp. 2B-4, 2C-2.
[5] Quoted in Rick Maze, “VA official: Disability claims system ‘cannot be fixed,’” Federal Times, March 18, 2010 .
[6] Quoted in Philip Rucker, “Obama Picks Shinseki to Lead Veterans Affairs,” The Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2008; Bernard Weinraub and Thom Shanker, “Rumsfeld's Design for War Criticized on the Battlefield,” The New York Times, April 1, 2003, p. A1; Amy Belaso, “Troop Levels in the Afghan and Iraq Wars,” Congressional Research Service, July 2, 2009, Summary page; “US Forces Order of Battle,” GlobalSecurity.org, undated.
[7] “Returning Home from Iraq and Afghanistan: Preliminary Assessment of Readjustment Needs of Veterans, Service Members, and Their Families,” Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (2010), p. 52.
[8] Terri Tanielian and Lisa H. Jaycox, eds., “Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery,” RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research, 2008, p. xxi; U.S. Army Surgeon General study cited in Kline, Anna, et al., “Effects of Repeated Deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan on the Health of New Jersey Army National Guard Troops: Implications for Military Readiness,” American Journal of Public Health, February 2010.
[9] The three are Parkinson's Disease, ischemic heart disease and B-cell leukemias. “FY 2011 Budget Submission,” op. cit., p. 1A-3; Gregg Zoroya, “VA to automate its Agent Orange claims process,” USA Today, March 9, 2010, p. 4A.
Prosecuting Terrorists
Should suspected terrorists be given military or civil trials?
By Kenneth Jost, March 12, 2010
President Obama is under fierce political attack for the administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called Christmas Day
bomber, in civilian courts instead of military tribunals. Republican lawmakers argue the defendants in both cases should be treated as “enemy combatants” and tried in the military commissions established during the Bush administration. Administration officials and Democratic lawmakers say criminal prosecutions are more effective, having produced hundreds of convictions since 9/11 compared to only three in the military system. And they insist that Abdulmutallab is providing useful information under interrogation by FBI agents. But the administration is reconsidering Attorney General Eric Holder's original decision to hold Mohammed's trial in New York City and considering making greater use of military commissions with other terrorism cases.
The Issues
* Should suspected terrorists be tried in civilian courts?
* Should suspected terrorists be tried in military tribunals?
* Should some Guantánamo detainees be held indefinitely without trial?
For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Prosecuting Terrorists" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF.
Should combat roles be fully opened to women?
Below is an excerpt from this week's CQ Researcher on "Women in the Military" by Marcia Clemmitt, November 13, 2009
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More than 90 percent of armed-services jobs are open to women. The largest remaining all-male job category is ground-combat units — infantry troops that 
directly seek out and engage the enemy in fire.
In interviews with military officers and analysts, “we were told repeatedly that, if relevant and realistic tests existed so that only qualified women (and men) were assigned to these positions, gender integration would not be an issue,” said analysts from the RAND Corporation think tank in an influential 1997 analysis. [Footnote 15]
“Women are already engaged in combat” because under today's conditions, “combat is everywhere,” says Martin of Bryn Mawr. So the old distinctions between front-line positions that are barred to women versus more secure rear areas — where women are allowed — are no longer relevant and should be scrapped, he says.
“Units comprised of women and men have bonded … and maintained good order for centuries — or did they have separate-sex wagon trains pioneering the West?” wrote blogger and retired Air Force Capt. Barbara A. Wilson. “I have known some pretty weak men who wouldn't protect the back of their own mother in a crisis or combat situation and some strong women who would go to the wall for a total stranger in the trenches — and vice versa.” [Footnote 16]
Arguments against women in combat sometimes rest on “the military's mission to make professional killers” of its combat soldiers and women's supposed unsuitability for that role, says Iskra of the University of Maryland. But, in fact, “everybody recognizes that women can kill,” she says. “It's just not the cultural norm,” so it's easy to ignore.
Furthermore, there's now proof that “women in the combat area tend to defuse explosive situations just by their presence,” says Iskra. The evidence comes from the Lioness groups of women soldiers who accompany male Army and Marine Corps units on counterinsurgency missions, she says. With the women there, gaining control of explosive situations in hostile territory becomes mainly a matter of separating women and children out and “talking rather than shooting,” she says. “Imagine if somebody broke into your home. Of course the Iraqi men are shouting, panicking.” But “with the women there they know that their wives won't be raped,” and that confidence helps defuse the danger, she says.
Nevertheless, “the type of ground combat that involves directly attacking the enemy, actively rooting out enemy forces — not simply being in harm's way,” still exists, and there's no guarantee such aggressive missions won't be needed in the future, says Donnelly.
That being the case, “the strongest argument and the one that research backs up is that female soldiers do not have an equal opportunity to survive or help others survive” in situations requiring them to “go out and seek out the enemy,” Donnelly says. “Nobody questions the bravery of our women soldiers,” she continues, but “it's not fair to the women and not fair to the men” to put women in jobs serving directly with ground-combat troops because most women can't carry out required duties, such as carrying a wounded soldier from the front.
In combat areas toilet and washing facilities are rudimentary at best and, often, nonexistent, and some studies have found that, for women soldiers, “unmet basic hygiene needs affect morale” and their ability to cope in combat circumstances, says Browne of Wayne State. In such situations, some women “retained urine and stool and limited their water intake to reduce the number of times they would have to go to the bathroom,” which both increased their risk of urinary-tract infections and dehydration and decreased their ability to work at top efficiency. [Footnote 17]
Though the military is not willing to discuss the topic, sexual attraction would be inevitable in a mixed-gender combat unit and would quickly damage the required atmosphere of life-or-death trust, says a former infantry officer and West Point graduate who did three tours of duty in Iraq, including as a ground-combat officer in the August 2004 battle to control the city of Najaf in southern Iraq.
Women served in one supply company for his unit, and “when you'd go back there, you'd start looking at those girls and thinking, ‘My goodness,’” says the officer. If the women had served alongside the men in combat, “you would be distracted. A woman there would just get prettier and prettier every day,” he says. “I wouldn't do anything inappropriate, but I would worry because I know there'd be guys in my platoon who would act on their feelings, whether the woman wanted them to or not” — an extra concern for an officer already bearing the burden of leading troops in battle.
Footnotes:
[15] Margaret C. Harrell and Laura L. Miller, “New Opportunities for Military Women; Effects Upon Readiness, Cohesion, Morale,” RAND, 1997, p. xvii.
[16] Barbara W. Wilson, “Women in Combat: Why Not,” Military Women Veterans blog.
[17] Kingsley Browne, Co-Ed Combat: The New Evidence that Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars (2007), p.259
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Excerpt from the "Gays in the Military" report
Below is an excerpt from the "Current Situation" section of this week's CQ Researcher report on "Gays in the Military" by Peter Katel, September 18, 2009
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Current Situation
Advocates of allowing gays to serve in the military may agree on the ultimate goal — but not on how to reach it. President Obama, for instance, wants Congress to repeal the 1993 law banning homosexuality in the armed forces. Congress passed the law, so Congress must undo it, he reasons.
But gay-ban opponents at the University of California's Palm Center say the congressional route is a dead end, at least for now.
“We don't think there is any chance of getting legislation through Congress any time soon,” says Aaron Belkin, the center's director. “The issue in Congress is completely stalled.”
Instead, he and five colleagues argued in a paper last May, the president should use authority granted him by the so-called “stop loss” law to halt sexuality-based discharges of military personnel. As the Palm Center team analyzes the law and related statutes, the president is authorized to prevent discharges during periods of national emergency if it is found that keeping personnel from leaving is essential to national security. [Footnote 59] The liberal Center for American Progress advocates the same strategy.
Such a move, Belkin says, would show opponents that allowing gays and lesbians to remain in the ranks does no harm. With that result established, he says, “Politically and operationally, it would be extremely difficult to get this toothpaste back in the tube.”
Remaking military policy by executive fiat would eventually make congressional action easier, not harder, he argues, although repealing the law would be necessary eventually. “It doesn't take any political capital to sign an order because the issue is polling at 75 percent in favor,” he says, citing recent surveys. [Footnote 60]
Ban supporter Donnelly at the Center on Military Readiness says bypassing the political process would be “outrageous,” and an admission of desperation. “I don't think the president is politically unwise enough to do something like that.”
The Palm Center also sees the proposed move as a way of short-circuiting Pentagon opposition, she notes. Indeed, a follow-up paper by the center said: “The legislative process would open a can of worms by allowing military leaders to testify at hearings and forge alliances with opponents on the Hill. A swift executive order would eliminate opportunities for them to resist.”[Footnote 61]
The Washington-based Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, however, views congressional action as the only practical approach — and one with excellent prospects. “We're looking at the next 12 months for repeal,” says Kevin Nix, the network's communications director. That time frame would put the matter before the Democratic-controlled 111th Congress, which runs through 2010.
Congressional-strategy advocates say hearings expected later this year will create new legislative momentum by providing a national forum for evidence of the practical and moral benefits of opening the armed forces to gays.
By early September, however, no dates had been set for the hearings. On the House side, an aide to Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said the panel is unlikely to take up the issue until a new under secretary for personnel and readiness has been allowed to settle into the position. The Senate Armed Services Committee hasn't set a date either. Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., has said he would hold a hearing in the fall.
“We firmly believe that repeal can get done in this Congress,” Nix says.
Footnotes
[59] Aaron Belkin, et al., “How to End ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’: A Roadmap of Political, Legal, Regulatory, and Organizational Steps to Equal Treatment,” Palm Center, May, 2009, www.palmcenter.org/files/active/0/Executive-Order-on-Gay-Troops-final.pdf. For background on stop-loss, see Pamela M. Prah, “Draft Debates,” CQ Researcher, Aug. 19, 2005, pp. 661–684. Lawrence J. Korb, et al., “Ending ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’: Practical Steps to Repeal the Ban on Openly Gay Men and Women in the U.S. Military,” Center for American Progress, June 2009, .
[60] Morales, op. cit.
[61] Aaron Belkin, “Self-Inflicted Wound: How and Why Gays Give the White House a Free Pass on ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell,’” Palm Center, July 27, 2009.
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Gays in the Military
Should the ban on homosexuals be lifted?
By Peter Katel, September 18, 2009
Political passions over the ban on open homosexuality in the U.S. military are stirring again. A new legislative fight on the issue may be headed for House and Senate hearings as early as this fall. 
Iraq War veteran Rep. Patrick J. Murphy, D-Pa., is proposing legislation to end sexuality-based discrimination in the armed forces. Under the “don't ask, don't tell” policy, gays and lesbians are barred from military service unless their orientation stays hidden. The policy was designed as a compromise to a 1993 call to lift the ban. Supporters of the policy say dropping it would degrade the “unit cohesion” that is critical to battlefield effectiveness. But Murphy and some other recent vets argue that most of today's warriors don't care about their comrades' sexuality. In another element of political drama, some gay political activists are questioning President Barack Obama's level of commitment to pushing for repeal, as he has promised to do.
The Issues
- Can military units function effectively with openly homosexual members?
- Is the “don't ask, don't tell” approach to differentiating sexual “orientation” from conduct a viable compromise?
- Should the United States follow other countries' examples and allow gays to serve openly in the military?
New Report: Rise in Counterinsurgency
By Peter Katel, September 5, 2008
Will new tactics weaken the military? 
U.S. troops are using new tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of trying to defeat the enemy by brute force, they are focusing on counterinsurgency – protecting civilians and relying on them to provide information on enemy activity. But some military experts argue that too much emphasis on “winning hearts and minds” is weakening the skills needed in conventional combat – from rapid infantry advances to accurate artillery marksmanship to tank tactics. Counterinsurgency advocates concede that some of these capabilities may decline, partly because U.S. foes on today’s Third World battlefields don’t have air power or armor. Still, they say no sane enemy would challenge the powerful U.S. military in a traditional, World War II-style conflict. But even battle-hardened veterans of today’s conflicts acknowledge that military forecasting is an inexact science and that the biggest danger can be planning ahead – for last year’s war.
• Is counterinsurgency the next wave of warfare?
• Should the Army form an advisers corps?
• Is the emphasis on counterinsurgency weakening the military?
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Overview of the New Report on the Rise in Counterinsurgency
Early this summer, after savage fighting, elements of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit forced Taliban fighters out of
The commander of Alpha Company, from the 6th Marine Regiment’s First Battalion, Capt. Sean Dynan, a soft-spoken
“I know that all of you want to just live your lives and that you don’t want us to interfere with what you’re doing on a daily basis,” Dynan told two dozen men gathered in the marketplace. “It is our intention to help and to protect you.”
But making friends was proving difficult in a country at war since the failed Soviet occupation of the 1980s. “America came here telling us they’re going to help us, but these are all tricks, the same tricks that Russia played – then they started killing us,” Sayid Gul, an opium-poppy grower and merchant, told Bill Gentile, a PBS journalist embedded with the Marines. “We don’t trust them any more, the foreigners.” Gul was trying to get the Marines to pay him for damaging his house during a battle with the Taliban.
Despite the villagers’ wariness, Dynan’s efforts at on-the-ground diplomacy reflect the Pentagon view that similar counterinsurgency tactics have led to a notable lessening of violence in
Support for counterinsurgency is a key tenet of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’ new National Defense Strategy, which lays out a hearts-and-minds approach for the last phase of what the Bush administration once labeled the “global war on terror” and now dubs “the long war.”
“Military efforts to capture or kill terrorists are likely to be subordinate to measures to promote local participation in government and economic programs to spur development,” the document says, “as well as efforts to understand and address the grievances that often lie at the heart of insurgencies.”
That strategy may sound more Peace Corps than Army and Marines. But counterinsurgency advocates argue they’re guided by practicality, not bleeding-heart humanitarianism. Even after major fighting ends in
“Our conventional superiority is going to drive our enemies to fight us asymmetrically,” says Nagl, who served as operations officer of an armored battalion early in the Iraq War and later helped write the U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. But that doesn’t mean
Beware of such certainties, some military experts warn. One of the most vocal skeptics,
As an example, Gentile points to
“I use that as a way to think about conflicts the
After Gentile spoke, the Aug. 8 Russian invasion of the
In fact, the counterinsurgency-versus-conventional-warfare debate first began during the Cold War years, long before Gentile and Nagl – who both hold doctoral degrees – won their combat decorations in
President John F. Kennedy came into office in 1961 determined to challenge Soviet-sponsored guerrilla insurgencies in societies scarred by colonialism or social injustice. Kennedy expanded the limited
Military experts and historians still argue over whether attrition would have succeeded if the
Conventional warfare also dominated the early phase of the Iraq War, though Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld modified it by demanding use of a relatively small, highly mobile ground force, reinforced by massive airpower.
The planning focused solely on toppling Saddam Hussein and defeating his forces, not on what would follow the invasion. “We are not in
But nation-building found favor in the Bush administration after
Nation-building and counterinsurgency are closely related. “Counterinsurgency is nation-building in the face of armed opposition,” in Nagl’s definition. The Bush administration signaled its new strategy with the 2007 appointment of a new top commander for
Petraeus made his first priority the protection of Iraqi civilians, a shift in emphasis from pouring all resources into hunting and killing enemies.
For American military personnel, deaths have fallen to 221 in the first seven months of 2008 – from 740 during the same period last year. Meanwhile, deaths among Iraqi security forces and civilians have fallen from more than 14,000 during the first seven months of 2007 to about 4,300 during the same period in 2008.
One of Petraeus’ key tactics was forging ties with Sunni tribes who were rebelling against the group Al Qaeda in
Skeptics argue, however, that counterinsurgency strategy had little to do with the increasing stability – because the
Still, says Carter Malkasian, a military expert who has advised Marines in
Moreover, argues Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., treating counterinsurgency largely as a low-tech exercise of winning the trust of poor villagers downplays what modern air power can accomplish.
“In the early part of the
Nevertheless, air power without solid intelligence on the ground can be catastrophic. In late August, U.N. investigators and an Afghan government commission said a
Gen. David D. McKiernan,
Taliban adaptability to
That’s one reason why Alpha Company’s Marines made sure that farmer-merchant Gul finally got reimbursed for his damaged house.
Even so, Gul and his fellow villagers could be forgiven for still keeping the Americans at arms’ length. Soon after the Marines entered the
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