Green Berets are busy in China’s backyard

The United States wants to be the preferred military partner for the countries surrounding China, and the Army’s 1st Special Forces Group has been working that angle for decades. But this year has seen new lines of effort. From deploying a response team to Sri Lanka after the Easter Sunday bombings, to kickstarting a new Mongolian trainer force, to training with Philippine troops to retake islands from a peer adversary in the South China Sea, 1st Group has been busy. “The fundamentals remain the same,” Col. Owen Ray, commander of 1st Group, said at the Pentagon Wednesday. “Long-standing relations are what endure. Those are what give us a comparative advantage against near-peer competitors.”

Failing to establish good military-to-military relations with partner nations has downstream effects as the Pentagon begins competing with China in the region, according to Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Curran, 1st Group’s senior enlisted leader. “After the coup in Thailand we severed a significant amount of mil-to-mil engagement, which is to be expected,” Curran said. “But in that space, in that vacuum of time, we lost a lot of traction.”

Curran said he’s been rotating in and out of Asia for 20 years. One Thai military officer he grew close to in that time and who now leads an elite counter-terrorism force has often come to the United States for training, including attending Special Forces Qualification Course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “[He’s] very pro-American,” Curran said. “His subordinate captains, who he’s bringing up and who he’s going to carry with him through the hierarchy of the Thai military, had no desire to come to the United States.” “They want to go train in Russia and China,” Curran added. “That’s one of the impacts we notice at the ground level.”

Authoritarian upswings and regional politics can make it difficult to justify to Congress and the American public why the Pentagon is working with certain countries’ security forces. But keeping those programs running through turbulent times, or at least doubling down when it’s feasible to restart them, can yield benefits in the long run.

Return on investment

Many of the gains from partner force training missions take years to surface in a tangible way that lawmakers can point to as evidence of money well-spent. Around 2001, 1st Group soldiers began training Philippine Rangers who would eventually form the Light Reaction Regiment, the Philippine Army’s premier counter-terrorism and special mission unit.

That force saw early action in the mid-2000s against the Abu Sayyaf terror group on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Later on, they proved pivotal in the campaign to uproot the Islamic State during the 2017 Battle of Marawi. “We work with these guys — very small footprint, very low political cost, very low financial cost — over a period of time, and then we get a result like Marawi," Curran said. “They were able to take the lead, no U.S. forces got involved and they countered ISIS in a strategic location we care a lot about in great power competition.”

Green Berets are no longer teaching Philippine special operators how to shoot, Curran noted. The training has turned to command and control, running a battlefield and complex operations, such as the island seizure training that one 1st Group company conducted with Philippine forces in their northwestern region of Luzon this April. “You have incursions by China into Philippine economic zones, getting after their fishing, pressing on the Spratly [islands],” Ray said. “It was in that larger geostrategic context ... that the Philippine armed forces wanted to train a forced entry, take back sovereign terrain scenario."

Exercises like that help alleviate the need for immediate U.S. support in the event of a crisis. After all, American forces suffer under the “tyranny of distance” when looking to operate far from home in the Indo-Pacom theater, Ray said.

Today, though, the information space also presents new challenges for the U.S. military as it works to send the right messages to would-be allies. “The things we are more cognizant of are in the information environment,” Ray said. “It’s a spot where in special operations we have not engaged at the level that we can to demonstrate that we’re the preferred partners in some of the areas we get into.”

Sri Lanka response team

One example of sending the right message came after the Easter Sunday bombings that took more than 250 lives in Sri Lanka on April 21. An Army special operations team was on the ground less than 24 hours after being requested by the U.S. ambassador to the country. The team’s goal was to reach into the “information environment" and find “civil vulnerabilities” to assist U.S. diplomats and Sri Lankan officials in ensuring the situation wouldn’t "cascade into more violence,” Ray said.

Sri Lanka has a very small Islamic population, but also a turbulent history of violence between the Buddhist majority and some fringe Hindu groups. There was serious concern in the aftermath of the bombings, which were claimed by ISIS and targeted Christian worshipers, that there would be retaliation against the Muslim community, creating another cycle of violence.

The U.S. team that was brought in consisted of psychological operations, civil affairs and Special Forces soldiers, according to Maj. Rich Hutton, a civil affairs officer, who responded with the team. “As the reporting came out and we learned more about where the bombers came from and the communities that existed, we looked at our projects and ways we could better target some of the humanitarian assistance work we do with our partners at USAID," Hutton said. Much of their time was spent highlighting grievances among communities that were at risk of potentially flaring up. Those recommendations were then taken by the U.S. embassy staff for long-term outreach projects with Sri Lankan officials.

Mongolia gets cashflow

One initiative that took off this year involved the Mongolian armed forces. Mongolian officials approached the U.S. military for help starting a mobile training team to prepare its forces for United Nations peacekeeping missions. “Mongolia is a very remote country, so they bring all their forces in to train them up,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey Lake, a 1st Group senior weapons sergeant who spent the past six months training Mongolian troops. “So what they want to do is have a mobile training team that can go around to countryside areas, far-flung areas and train their forces to be prepared for these missions," Lake added.

The effort has been ongoing for the last two years, but it received a major boon with the allocation of $23.8 million this year. The money was divied out under Section 333, a budgetary authority that funds the training of partner forces that will eventually participate in activities like international coalitions and counter-terrorism. “Obviously they’re in a really geostrategic location,” Ray said. “They’ve asked for our help and it’s a place where we absolutely are adamant to strengthen.” “We’re creating that partnership because we’ve had limited engagement with them in the past,” Lake added. “So these relationships we’re building in this unit they want to create will continue on in the future.”

ISIS’ foreign fighters head home

Amid the backdrop of a rising China, the lingering threat of Islamic terrorism continues to dot the Asia Pacific region. The defeat of ISIS’ physical caliphate in the Middle East has analysts worried that the group’s many foreign fighters will return to their home countries and begin wreaking havoc. “There’s always a threat that you have to monitor and watch," Ray said. “Whether its returning foreign fighters or any increase in terrorism in Southeast Asia.”

ISIS’ defeat at Marawi by Philippine security forces showed what maintaining long-term relationships with allied militaries can accomplish in the face of such threats. Continued training opportunities through exercises like Balikatan, Cobra Gold and Rim of the Pacific helps teach partner forces to do the heavy lifting when terror groups and other threats flare up in the region. But as it stands, the Islamic terror threat in the Indo-Pacom theater appears contained, according to the 1st Group commander. “I think we’re well-postured with the right partners for them to have the capacity to deal with some of these and keep it at a regional, internal issue and not a transnational issue,” Ray said.

Article from the Army Times

General Dunford on Russia, ISIS and China

Gen. Joe Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff, spoke last week with a small group of traveling reporters after attending a conference of NATO Military Chiefs in Warsaw, including Breaking Defense contributor James Kitfield. Dunford described Russia’s strategy for pulling NATO apart and reiterated that Moscow poses the single greatest global threat to the UnIted States. Edited excerpts of that interview follow.

Q: How would you describe Moscow’s strategy?

Dunford: Russia has studied the United States since 1991 [at the end of the Cold War], and they know that the source of our strategic strength is the network of allies and partners that we have built over 70 years, and that operationally our strength is the ability to project military power. So I think Russia’s strategy is pretty simple: They want to undermine the credibility of the United States in terms of meeting its alliance commitments, and thus erode the cohesion of the NATO alliance. They also want to field capabilities to challenge our ability to project power into Europe. That’s why they’ve taken this small slice of land in Kaliningrad [on the Baltic Sea] and deployed anti-ship cruise missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles, and air defense systems there. It’s an anti-access, aerial denial strategy aimed at challenging the Euro-Atlantic link.

Q: Since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and military intervention in eastern Ukraine, NATO launched the European Deterrence Initiative; deployed four “Battle Groups” to frontline states in the Baltics and Poland; announced two new commands for reinforcing NATO forces in the event of an actual conflict; and adopted in principle Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ readiness goal of having 30 battalions, 30 warships, and 30 squadrons of aircraft ready to deploy in 30 days. Is it fair to say that NATO has awakened from its post-Cold War slumber?

Dunford: I will tell you that [last week’s Military Chiefs] meeting was one of the most productive ever for this reason: three years ago there was not the appreciation we see today of the challenge posed by Russia and the threat of violent extremism. As a military leader it’s very easy now because we don’t have to debate those threats any more. We now have a very clear mandate to adapt NATO’s to confront those challenges. NATO is first and foremost about deterrence, and collective defense in the event that deterrence fails. All of our activities – our exercises, our training, and changes in our force posture – are designed to send a message, especially to Russia, that NATO has effective deterrence and collective defense capabilities.

Q: Do you see similarities between Russia’s actions in the Baltic Sea and China’s aggressive posture in the South China Sea, where Beijing is building artificial islands, militarizing them, and then claiming zones of exclusive sovereignty?

Dunford: There are clear similarities, because what Russia is trying to do vis-à-vis our allies and ability to project power, China is also trying to do. China is a rising power in the Pacific, and they have a fundamentally different form of government and some protectionist economic policies that have created friction in our relationship. I would broaden it even beyond the South China Sea, and tell you we’re seeing an erosion in the rules-based international order in the region. Along with our Pacific partners we share a commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific based on international rules, norms and standards.

Q: How do you enforce those rules and norms in light of China’s actions?

Dunford: The military dimension is Freedom of Navigation operations that we conduct, along with 22 other nations. These are normal activities designed to demonstrate that the United States [military] will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. We’re not going to allow illicit claims to become de facto reality. That’s what (FON operations) are all about. Having said that, if you look at the stakes involved for both the United States and China, that argues for these issues being dealt with peacefully. There is absolutely no upside for either country in a major conflict.

Q: You mentioned the terrorism threat earlier. Do you believe the ISIS’ [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] caliphate is all but defeated?

Dunford: If you look at the terrain they hold, the resources they command and the media capabilities they have today versus two years ago, it’s fair to say that ISIS is on their heels a bit. It’s also fair to say that we have had other extremist groups at this same stage, only to see them adapt and find other ways to try and advance their agendas. So we know the job is not completed yet.

Q: What is the next stage in the fight?

Dunford: I think ISIS will start to organize itself into a guerilla insurgency, rather than a more conventional force that tried to hold ground. They’ll look for opportunities to launch high-profile attacks, but probably focused more locally, because the pressure ISIS has been under over the last two years has disrupted its ability to conduct external operations. It’s just hard for its fighters to move around right now. In the meantime, the greatest challenge we face today is probably from individuals and homegrown violent extremists who are inspired by ISIS’ ideology.

Q: How important was it that Congress passed a bipartisan, $674 billion defense spending bill on time, without a continuing resolution or sequester caps kicking in?

Dunford: That was the first time that has happened in my 41-year career! (laughs) I think that reflects a commitment from the executive and legislative branches to give us the wherewithal to do our job. Now that we have a sufficient level of funding, my message to our legislative leadership is that the most important thing going forward is a sustained level of funding. Because it took us years to get into this fix where we couldn’t spend money efficiently, or be good stewards of our budget, because we lurched from year to year with fluctuating levels of spending. That didn’t allow us to be effective partners with the defense industry, for instance, because they need predictability in order to deliver [equipment and materiel] on time and at projected cost. No matter how big the defense budget is, every year we have to make choices. And we can make much better choices and prioritize better if we’re looking ahead three-to-five years informed by predictable funding levels.”

Article from Breaking Defense

Former Brigadier General: Obama's Briefer Told CENTCOM Official to Skew Intel on ISIS

A former brigadier general revealed on Fox News Monday some new information about the White House's role in U.S. Central Command's skewing of intelligence to downplay the threats of ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Last week, a House Republican task force concluded in a 15-page report that U.S. military leaders altered intelligence reports "to paint a rosier picture" of the U.S.-led fight against ISIS than intelligence analysts believed was warranted.

The report blamed “structural and management changes” at the intelligence directorate for the distortions, but stopped short of explaining WHY the changes were made. According to Defense News, "the problems followed the change in Central Command’s leadership from Marine Gen. James Mattis, as CENTCOM commander, to Army Gen. Lloyd Austin."

U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Anthony Tata (Ret.) filled in some blanks on Fox News Monday afternoon, and if his allegations are true, the scandal reaches all the way to the president's inner circle.

Tata explained that since Obama withdrew troops from Iraq, "there's been chaos all over the Middle East." But because the president campaigned on getting out of Iraq, he didn't want to hear anything that countered his narrative that it was the right thing to do.

When the official narrative contradicted the facts on the ground, members of the intelligence community cried foul and there was a meeting to deal with the issue.

Via Fox News Insider:

Tata revealed that a source verified to him that he was directed by an individual from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who conducts the president’s daily briefing, to stop producing "products of record" that did not fit the administration's narrative of a defeated Al Qaeda and a non-threatening enemy in ISIS.

Tata said that the president’s briefer told this individual to call him on secure line if he had any intelligence that portrayed ISIS in a stronger light than what the president had characterized to the public, which would not leave a paper trail.

He said that this distortion of intelligence on ISIS essentially led to the U.S. ignoring the growing threat and giving the terror group two years to take root.

Tata said that it was "highly irresponsible" for a senior official to downplay the intelligence because "now we have a real, valid national security threat that was borne out of this directive to Central Command." He added that "now there are actually people being reprised against."

"You have good American soldiers, sailors, Marines and civilians that are being isolated and targeted by people that are in the J-2 [CENTCOM’s intelligence directorate]," Tata said.

Report from PJ Media, 15 August 2016

U.S. proposes sending more Special Forces to Syria

The Obama administration is considering sending 250 additional U.S. special forces to Syria to advise rebel groups as part of a broader Pentagon recommendation on how to increase the pace of operations against ISIS, a U.S. defense official said Friday.

The goal is to lay the groundwork for local forces to retake both Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, and eliminate ISIS' ability to use them as areas from which to plan external attacks.

President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of that goal after a meeting with top commanders at the White House earlier this week. "We should no longer tolerate the kinds of positioning that is enabled by them having headquarters in Raqqa and Mosul. We've got to keep on putting the pressure on them," Obama said Tuesday.

An increased level of Special Forces is just one of a number of possibilities. If approved, these troops would grow the current U.S. Special Operations effort of up to 50 troops authorized to be in Syria. They are there to provide advice and assistance to moderate Syrian forces fighting ISIS.

That effort has proven successful in several recent battles, including efforts to cut ISIS travel between Raqqa and Syria and to retake the key town of Shaddadi in Syria. "We are considering a number of different proposals to accelerate the defeat of ISIL by better enabling local forces, but no decisions have been made," said Navy spokesman Capt. Jeff A. Davis, using a different acronym for the terror group.

U.S. officials had originally told CNN the proposed increase would be just a few dozen because of the need to provide additional support forces such as aviation and intelligence. But another emerging line of thinking is to agree to an overall significant increase, publicly announce it and then send in the forces gradually over time.

As the Pentagon looks at trying to accelerate its campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the idea of increasing reliance on Special Operations forces is gaining traction, but officials caution a final decision still must be made. A number of options have been presented to the White House.

There will be an increased risk if the number of Special Operations forces rises. Their work is highly dangerous, as they operate in small teams potentially far from their base in northern Syria near the Turkish border. The number of Special Operations forces inside Syria ebbs and flows, with perhaps less than half the authorized amount inside Syria at any one time, one official said.

The idea being discussed is to add more teams to the effort so perhaps the moderate forces can accelerate their own fighting. But some officials advocate keeping the numbers relatively small so they can maintain a low profile and not require additional transportation and supply support that might become visible.

One of the major tasks ahead is trying to get opposition forces geared up in the coming months to fight to retake Raqqa, ISIS' self-declared capital in Syria. The U.S. hopes Syrian Arab forces, as well as some members of the Syrian Democratic Front, which includes non-Arab fighters, will be in a position to do that with U.S. advice and assistance, the officials said. The U.S. military has also restarted a small training effort for Syrian anti-ISIS fighters months after an initial effort failed. The current training program has small numbers of U.S.-selected fighters from various groups, transporting them across the border to Turkey for several days of basic training. The fighters are given radios and taught how to communicate with U.S. forces. When they see potential targets, they inform the U.S., which then sends its own reconnaissance aircraft to determine if the target should be struck.

Options to increase efforts in Iraq may be less dramatic. U.S. officials are trying to see if the Iraqi government would accept additional fire support from either ground-based artillery or Apache helicopters. Additional U.S. trainers are expected to be sent to Iraq, with all of the increases aimed at helping the Iraqi forces prepare to retake Mosul.

Article from CNN Politics 8 April 2016

MSG Joshua Wheeler - Secretary Carter say's 'Combat' death does not mean 'combat role'

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said it was hard to describe in detail what happened in the moments leading up to the Thursday death of Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, the first American killed in action in Iraq since 2011.

"This is combat, things are complicated," Carter told reporters Friday, while declining to offer a full account of the fatal commando raid involving dozens of U.S. special operations soldiers targeting an Islamic State detention center in Iraq. "Combat" is a term that Carter and many military officials have studiously avoided using over the past few months in an effort to comport with President Obama's vow to keep U.S. troops out of combat in Iraq.

But Wheeler's death this week from a gunshot wound in a firefight against hostile enemy forces is fueling new questions about whether U.S. military operations in Iraq have quietly expanded into a combat mission.

Carter on Friday took pains to explain how Wheeler's death does not mean that the entire force of 3,500 U.S. troops in Iraq is involved in a combat mission. "It doesn't represent us assuming a combat role," Carter said at the press briefing at the Pentagon. "It represents a continuation of our advise-and-assist mission." "We do not have combat formations there, the way we did once upon a time in Iraq," he said.

SFA Commo Sergeant Comment: Throughout Special Forces social media sites, the vast majority of participating former, retired and active duty Special Forces soldiers see the US Government response and comments on MSG Wheeler's death being "not combat, but combat support" as diminishing Wheeler's sacrifice and a belitlement of the risks of the larger Special Forces contribution as advisors.

In the case of Wheeler, Carter said initial plans for the raid did not call for putting U.S. troops into a direct combat situation, even though dozens of U.S. troops had joined with Kurdish fighters in several helicopters to head to the Islamic State prison compound. "As the compound was being stormed, the plan was not for the U.S. advise-and-assist and accompanying forces to enter the compound or be involved in the firefight," Carter said.

"However, when a firefight ensued, this American did what I'm very proud that Americans do in that situation — he ran to the sound of the guns and he stood up," Carter said. "All indications are it was his actions and that of one of his teammates that protected those who were involved in breaching the compound and made the mission successful." "Again, it wasn't part of the plan, but it was something that he did," he said. "And I'm immensely proud that he did that."

On Friday, the commander of U.S. military operations in Iraq issued a rare statement directly rejecting any suggestion of mission creep. "U.S. forces are not in Iraq on a combat mission and do not have 'boots on the ground,'" said Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, head of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. "It is important to realize that U.S. military support to this Iraqi rescue operation is part of our overarching counterterrorism efforts throughout the region and does not represent a change in our policy," MacFarland said.

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said parsing the terminology used to describe the U.S. role in Iraq is not helpful. "We have thousands of forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan," McCaffrey said. "We're conducting active air combat operations throughout Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. We have huge CIA involvement to include with paramilitary forces in Jordan and elsewhere. And we have Congress and the White House both playing political, arcane games with each other over the description of what these forces are doing." "It makes no sense," he said.

McCaffrey applauded the troops who successfully executed the raid, saying the U.S. should view the prison raid as a "one-off operation of great complexity and success."

Wheeler was among dozens of special operations soldiers who joined Kurdish peshmerga fighters in the raid Thursday morning, which freed about 70 Iraqis who were imprisoned by Islamic State group militants and faced imminent execution, defense officials said.

Wheeler, who joined the Army in 1995, was assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He is the first American service member killed in action by enemy fire while fighting Islamic State militants.

An Oklahoma native, Wheeler served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, deploying three times to support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, before being assigned to Army Special Operations Command headquarters. He deployed 11 times after that to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to information released by the Army.

Even as the debate swirls over the role of U.S. troops in Iraq, top officials still believe the advise-and-assist concept remains viable, and that putting U.S. troops alongside Iraqis and other foreign forces improves their capability.

"My experience, plus my reading of history through other operations is that the indigenous force or the force you are advising typically performs better when advisers accompany them out into various operations," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said in a interview with Army Times in early October. "On the other hand, you've got to weigh the complexity of the situation and the risk associated to the force, and there are judgment calls," Milley said.

"The question leaders must ask is whether the risk of advisers going forward is worth the benefits of improved performance in Iraqi troops," he said. "Those are tough questions, and those are judgment calls, and they involve people's lives."

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales dismissed arguments that the U.S. is stepping up its combat role in Iraq, saying this week's raid was a "dramatic exercise" of the military's ongoing counterterrorism operations ongoing in Iraq. "There's nothing strategically 'out of the paint' with this," Scales said. "It's unrelated to the advise-and-assist mission. To suggest that somehow this is an escalation of American involvement is simply not true."

Article from Military Times

Intelligence Analysts Complain that ISIS Intelligence Was Cooked

It’s being called a ‘revolt’ by intelligence pros who are paid to give their honest assessment of the ISIS war—but are instead seeing their reports turned into happy talk.

More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military's Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.

The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said.

Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration’s public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the analysts claim.

That complaint was supported by 50 other analysts, some of whom have complained about politicizing of intelligence reports for months. That’s according to 11 individuals who are knowledgeable about the details of the report and who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity.

The accusations suggest that a large number of people tracking the inner workings of the terror groups think that their reports are being manipulated to fit a public narrative. The allegations echoed charges that political appointees and senior officials cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s supposed weapons program in 2002 and 2003.

The two signatories to the complaint were described as the ones formally lodging it, and the additional analysts are willing and able to back up the substance of the allegations with concrete examples.

Some of those CENTCOM analysts described the sizeable cadre of protesting analysts as a “revolt” by intelligence professionals who are paid to give their honest assessment, based on facts, and not to be influenced by national-level policy. The analysts have accused senior-level leaders, including the director of intelligence and his deputy in CENTCOM, of changing their analyses to be more in line with the Obama administration’s public contention that the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda is making progress. The analysts take a more pessimistic view about how military efforts to destroy the groups are going.

The large number of analysts who complained to the Pentagon inspector general hasn’t been previously reported. Some of them are assigned to work at CENTCOM, the U.S. military’s command for the Middle East and Central Asia, but are officially employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The complaints allege that in some cases key elements of intelligence reports were removed, resulting in a document that didn’t accurately capture the analysts’ conclusions, sources familiar with the protest said. But the complaint also goes beyond alleged altering of reports and accuses some senior leaders at CENTCOM of creating an unprofessional work environment. One person who knows the contents of the written complaint sent to the inspector general said it used the word “Stalinist” to describe the tone set by officials overseeing CENTCOM’s analysis.

Many described a climate in which analysts felt they could not give a candid assessment of the situation in Iraq and Syria. Some felt it was a product of commanders protecting their career advancement by putting the best spin on the war.

Some reports crafted by the analysts that were too negative in their assessment of the war were sent back the chain of the command or not shared up the chain, several analysts said. Still others, feeling the climate around them, self-censored so their reports affirmed already-held beliefs.

“While we cannot comment on the specific investigation cited in the article, we can speak to the process. The Intelligence Community routinely provides a wide range of subjective assessments related to the current security environment. These products and the analysis that they present are absolutely vital to our efforts, particularly given the incredibly complex nature of the multi-front fights that are ongoing now in Iraq and Syria,” said Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, U.S. CENTCOM spokesman. “Senior civilian and military leadership consider these assessments during planning and decision-making, along with information gained from various other sources, to include the insights provided by commanders on the ground and other key advisors, intelligence collection assets, and previous experience.”

Two of the officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said that analysts began airing their complaints in October in an effort to address the issue internally and only went to the inspector general when that effort failed. Some of those who complained were urged to retire, one official familiar with the report told The Daily Beast. Some agreed to leave.

In recent months, members of the Obama administration have sought to paint the fight against ISIS in rosy hues—despite the terror army’s seizure of major cities like Mosul and Fallujah.

“ISIS is losing,” John Allen, the retired Marine general charged with coordinating the ISIS campaign, said in July.

“I am confident that over time, we will beat, we will, indeed, degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in March, using the government’s preferred acronym for the group.

“No, I don’t think we’re losing,” President Obama said in May.

Yet a growing group of intelligence analysts persisted with their complaints. For some, who have served at CENTCOM for more than a decade, scars remained from the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq, when poorly written intelligence reports suggesting Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, when it did not, formed the basis of the George W. Bush administration’s case for war.

“They were frustrated because they didn’t do the right thing then” and speak up about their doubts on Iraq’s weapons program, the defense official told The Daily Beast. Article from the Daily Beast.

The Pentagon Ups the Ante in Syria Fight

Hundreds of U.S. Special Forces troops are heading overseas to train Syrian rebels to battle the Islamic State, but White House dithering and bureaucratic confusion could make it hard for them to pull it off. This article was writen by Seán D. Naylor, an intelligence and counterterrorism senior staff writer for Foreign Policy. He previously spent 23 years at Army Times, where his principal beat was special operations forces. He is the author of 'Not A Good Day To Die' – The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda and the forthcoming Relentless Strike – The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command.

The Special Forces group that ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001 is preparing to deploy to Jordan to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State, but many of the U.S. military’s most elite warriors have a gnawing fear that those efforts may be too little, too late.

Four years after the start of the uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the Army’s 5th Special Forces Group is getting ready to establish a multinational special operations task force in Jordan to train and equip Syrian rebel forces that the United States deems “moderate” — which means allied with neither the Islamic State nor al Qaeda’s local affiliate, al-Nusra Front.

But daunting challenges lie ahead for 5th Group. They include finding and vetting enough moderate rebels to make a difference on the battlefield; potential friction with the CIA, which has its own rebel training program going on in Jordan; the Obama administration’s refusal to let special operations forces fight alongside the rebel forces they have trained; and a confusing chain of command that none of the relevant American military headquarters seem willing or able to explain.

To complicate matters further, the general in charge of the training mission in Jordan is considered one of the special operations community’s most capable senior officers, but as things stand he is scheduled to rotate out of the country just as the training effort gets underway.

The stakes are enormously high for Washington and its allies. The Obama administration has publicly vowed to keep U.S. forces out of the line of fire in the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, in part to guard against the prospect of more American fatalities in a conflict the U.S. public had overwhelmingly turned against in recent years. The White House is instead hoping that members of some of the military’s most secretive and elite units can rebuild the shattered Iraqi army and stand up a force of tribal militias willing to fight the Islamic State, while simultaneously helping to train and equip a new rebel force in Syria. Failure in either location is likely to embolden the United States’ enemies in the region — Iran, the Assad regime, the Islamic State, and al-Nusra Front — and seriously damage American prestige.

The ban on Special Forces trainers entering Syria is just one of a number of Obama policy directives hampering the special operations training effort — and, with it, the success of the overall U.S. mission against the Islamic State, according to special operations officers. Another is a more general pressure to minimize the U.S. footprint on the ground in Jordan and Iraq. The military is still waiting for the formal authorization to deploy “large formations” of special operations forces, said a special operations lieutenant colonel. “It all goes back to the national policy, and there’s a lot of frustration with that,” he said.

There is also a real risk that the Special Forces soldiers will find themselves in competition with the CIA for the same dwindling band of moderate rebels. The CIA is already training Syrian rebels in Jordan, but that effort is limited by the relatively small number of operatives that Langley can devote to the effort. Hence the introduction of the 5th Special Forces Group, which can train several times the number of guerrillas as the CIA can. “This is an industrial-size problem,” said a special operations officer who has been tracking the issue from Washington. “You need an industrial-size solution.”

The job of mediating between the CIA and the elite military forces will fall to Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata, a highly regarded Special Forces officer who runs both the U.S. Central Command’s special operations command and an “interagency” task force that will oversee the training efforts in Jordan. “The choice of title for Nagata’s organization is not accidental,” said the special operations officer in Washington, in reference to the word “interagency.” “[His job] is to try and keep the line [between the CIA and the special operations forces] clearly established and try to keep everybody on the proper side of that line.”

On the ground, the training mission itself will be run by Col. John Brennan, 5th Group’s commander, who previously led a squadron in the Army’s famed Delta Force. Brennan will command a combined joint special operations task force in Jordan during the next few months, with the mission of training Syrian rebels. The word “combined” refers to the participation of other countries; the military is keen to involve as many local partners as possible. “If we turn this into Fort Bragg East we’re not doing the [Jordanian] monarch any favors,” said the special operations officer in Washington. “We want an Arab face on this thing.”

Finding and vetting moderate rebels will be the task force’s first major challenge, and one that will likely be left to U.S. allies, in particular the Jordanians and Saudis, said the special operations officer in Washington. However, there are doubts as to whether enough rebels and would-be rebels who meet U.S. criteria remain in Syria. “It’s a commonly held position here that when you say ‘moderate opposition,’ those guys were killed off two years ago,” said the special operations officer in Washington.

Even if enough Syrians can be recruited, it will take years for the training pipeline to produce the numbers required to change the situation on the ground in Syria. “They’re talking like two, three years for this training effort to produce anything, and they were struggling just to get it off the ground,” said a senior special operations officer with close knowledge of U.S. policy deliberations on Iraq and Syria.

Other than the need to keep as much of an Arab face as possible on the training effort, the prospect of an indefinite, but certainly multiyear, mission is another factor driving the size of the American commitment in Jordan down. “This is going to be a long-term effort and we’re going to have to pace ourselves to a degree,” said the special operations lieutenant colonel. In practice, this means that 5th Group will rarely have more than 200 Special Forces soldiers in the country at a time, a force theoretically capable of training roughly 7,000 guerrillas at one time. But the real numbers are likely to be much lower. “If they could put out 5,000 guys every 90 days that would be an extraordinary success,” said the senior special operations officer familiar with policy deliberations on Iraq and Syria. “But I don’t think the numbers will be anything like that.”

The length of time required to turn those guerrillas into an effective fighting force depends on several variables, including their likely mission and whether or not they are being trained to integrate the use of crew-served weapons like mortars and antitank rockets into their maneuvers. “If you’re taking guys off the street and trying to form them into cohesive units, anything less than 90 days, I think you’re putting yourself at risk,” the senior special operations officer said. “They’re not going to withstand first contact [with the enemy].”

The best hope for achieving success through the Special Forces effort would be to follow the model that worked so well for 5th Group in Afghanistan in late 2001, according to special operations officers. This would entail allowing the A-teams to accompany their charges into battle in an offensive campaign supported by U.S. and allied air power and intelligence. The problem is that the Obama administration has ruled out letting Special Forces teams enter Syria — a policy decision that has frustrated many in the special operations community, who say it’s vital for there to be Special Forces advisors on the front lines but doubt the Obama administration would ever authorize it. “If that’s the way it works best, I can almost guarantee you that’s not the way the administration is going to let us proceed,” said the officer tracking things from Washington.

Another problem is a bureaucratic one: The military has a baffling array of special operations and conventional headquarters that are already established or are mooted to soon deploy to the region. Also in Jordan is a U.S.-led multinational effort named Operation Gallant Phoenix, aimed at tracking the foreign fighter flow into Iraq and Syria. Begun as an initiative under Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which controls the military’s most elite special operations units, and JSOC’s higher administrative headquarters, U.S. Special Operations Command, it has expanded to include participation by U.S. Central Command and U.S. European Command, said the senior special operations officer. Although sometimes referred to as the “foreign fighter task force,” Gallant Phoenix doesn’t have troops of its own to send out on raids or direct assaults and instead passes on the information it receives to allied countries.

With the Islamic State’s foreign fighter contingent now estimated by the United States to exceed 20,000, it makes more sense to address the problem through allied governments and law enforcement, said a retired special operations officer with intimate knowledge of ongoing operations. “It’s too big a problem to kill with any kind of kinetics,” he said.

Joint Special Operations Command also has a small military contingent headquartered in Iraqi Kurdistan. Called Task Force 27, it is built around Delta Force — which has long enjoyed close relations with Kurdish security and intelligence forces — and is led by the Delta commander, a colonel. Task Force 27’s focus is on targeting the so-called high-value individuals who comprise the Islamic State leadership. Most of the task force’s effort has been devoted to Syria, but it has also paid attention to potential targets in the Mosul area of Iraq. However, other than at least one hostage rescue attempt, Task Force 27 has conducted no direct action missions against Islamic State targets, several special operations sources said. “If the time comes when the president makes a decision, ‘Hey, we’ve got a chance to capture [Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi’ ... they might be poised to do that, but to my knowledge, nobody’s given them a green light to do that,” the senior special operations officer said.

In addition to the Delta elements in Iraqi Kurdistan, there is also a three- to four-man Delta cell at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, that manages intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance flights launched from Incirlik air base, the senior special operations officer said. The United States had been providing that sort of support along the Turkish border to the Turkish government for several years. When the Islamic State kidnapped almost 50 employees of the Turkish Consulate and 30 Turkish truck drivers in Mosul in June 2014, the Turkish government gave the United States permission to send flights south across the border to try to locate the hostages, the senior officer said.

One similarity between the missions in Iraq and in Syria is that in both cases, the United States is late to the game. As the Islamic State expanded its control over northern Iraq and northeastern Syria, the United States did little. Only when the group overran Mosul in June did the U.S. government stir to action, according to the special operations officer in Washington. “If not for the catalyst of our embassy potentially falling, we’d probably be doing nothing,” he said.

The military dispatched a crisis response force in anticipation of having to evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. That force included 5th Group’s combatant commander’s in-extremis force, a reinforced Special Forces company specially trained for counterterrorism missions, as well as Navy SEALs and Air Force special operations elements, said the special operations officer in Washington. That force remained in Iraq, and transitioning the special ops contingent there to a “less ad hoc” force “has been an effort,” he said. But that new force is slowly gathering, under the command of Brig. Gen. Kurt Crytzer, a Special Forces officer who is Nagata’s deputy in Central Command’s special operations command.

Headquartered at a base beside Baghdad International Airport, Crytzer’s command is known as Joint Special Operations Task Force – Iraq, and will likely include Navy SEALs and Marine special operations elements as well as A-teams from a Special Forces group other than 5th Group, which is expected to be consumed with the mission in Jordan. (With 3rd Group and 7th Group heavily committed to Afghanistan and Latin America, the chances are good that the additional SF teams will come from 1st or 10th Groups, said the special operations lieutenant colonel.) Also included in Crytzer’s task force are several allied special operations contingents.

But although the U.S. special operations forces in Iraq, Jordan, and Iraqi Kurdistan are all focused on the same enemy — the Islamic State — they do not share the same chain of command. “It’s not the model that they have in Afghanistan, where everybody’s under one command,” said the senior special ops officer with close knowledge of U.S. policy deliberations on Iraq and Syria. “It’s still this kind of a bifurcated command,” with different reporting chains for the secretive Joint Special Operations Command elements, sometimes known as “the national mission force,” and other special ops units like 5th Group, known as theater special operations forces.

Crytzer reports directly to Army Lieut. Gen. James Terry, which runs the U.S.-led allied war effort in both Iraq and Syria from a headquarters in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. Nagata, however, reports straight to Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of U.S. Central Command. The Joint Special Operations Command force in Iraqi Kurdistan, Task Force 27, has yet another chain of command, meaning that no single special operations officer in the theater commands all the U.S. special operations forces, a situation that disturbs some in the special ops community.

“The enemy’s got unity of effort and we don’t have that. And they’ve got unity of command too,” said a recently retired colonel with close links to U.S. Special Operations Command. “How many headquarters do you fucking need?”

Muddying the waters further are rumors that Maj. Gen. Darsie Rogers, the head of U.S. Army Special Forces Command, might deploy to the Middle East with yet another new command. Rogers’s spokeswoman declined to comments.

Yet another challenge comes from the fact that Nagata, arguably the most important officer in the effort, will have to move jobs just as the unconventional warfare campaign is getting underway in earnest. By June, Nagata will have been at the helm of Central Command’s special operations component for two years, the standard tenure in that position. Because Nagata’s career has included tours in the CIA, Joint Special Operations Command, and regular Special Forces, as well as multiple jobs in Washington, some view him as uniquely qualified for the role he currently fills. His centrality is sparking talk of the military switching around the command structure so he can stay in the region longer. (The Pentagon set a precedent for this in 2006, when it gave then-JSOC commander Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal a third star and kept him in command, in order not to disrupt his task force as it eviscerated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq group, the forerunner to the Islamic State.) Despite the challenges, the chance to deploy to the Middle East and conduct a classic Special Forces mission has many in the community licking their lips. “There’s such a lot of anticipation about this right now ... because this is a very good SF mission,” the special operations lieutenant colonel said. However, he noted pointedly, “You’ve got to be careful of wanting a mission too bad.”

Special Ops to Obama: Let Us Fight ISIS, Already

They’re supposed to be at the forefront of the battle against ISIS. But U.S. special operators say the Obama administration’s restrictive rules of war are harming their mission. Fighting simmering frustration in their ranks over ISIS advances in Iraq and Syria, top U.S. special operations commanders say they are building forces for a multi-generational fight—not a war that will be won in the next few years.

“We recognize this is a longterm prospect,” said Gen. Joseph Votel, the overall leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, in remarks to The Daily Beast during a special operations forum in Tampa. “We’re patient.”

“We talk about it being a 15-year struggle,” added Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, who heads the Air Force Special Operations Command, said describing the fight.

But many special operations officers and troops both in Tampa and Washington don’t want to wait that long to take the fight to ISIS. They were eager to talk about their aggravation over fighting by remote in Iraq and Syria: having to advise Iraqis, Kurdish Peshmerga, and rebel Syrian fighters from afar instead of joining them in battle.

“We are doing everything through cellphones… It’s hard to do much when you can’t go outside the wire,” said one special operator, using the military jargon for the perimeter of a base.

They blame the hands-off approach on an Obama administration unwilling to risk even small numbers of American lives in battle, burned by the fallout of the loss of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and intent on preserving the legacy of President Barack Obama’s troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“You can’t say ‘We’re with you every step of the way, except when you are going on combat operations,’” said a former senior special operations official briefed on the ISIS campaign.

He and many other officers, current and former, at the conference believe both Mosul and Ramadi could have withstood the assault of the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS, if a small number of U.S. military advisers had been working with Iraqi forces at the front lines.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the debates over war strategy.

“They know as long as there are Americans with them, that if they get in trouble, there is intelligence,” and medical evacuation, the former senior official said. “They don’t have faith in their own chain of command to do it, so rather than being captured and slaughtered by ISIS, they’ll break and run.”

Another former senior special operations officer said this is the normal tension that occurs every few years between America’s political leadership that weighs the public’s reaction to U.S. casualties, and a group of professional risk-takers who want to fight alongside those they’ve trained to fight.

“It’s a generational thing,” said the officer, who said U.S. forces were similarly frustrated when training Nicaraguan forces in the 1980s. “Every few years, there is a place where the U.S. administration won’t let U.S. forces accompany those they’ve trained,” the officer said. “This younger generation has to get over it.”

U.S. Central Command’s program to train Syrian rebels—a special operations mission—has been delayed partly by congressional funding delays, and partly because it’s been difficult to find trustworthy candidates without being inside Syria, according to current and former U.S. officials involved in the process.

Votel said he hadn’t heard that vetting was a problem, nor had he heard frustrations expressed over the pace of the fight.

But faced with the necessity of having to fight by remote, the special operations commanders asked industry members present at the National Defense Industry Association conference to find new ways for the Americans to communicate remotely with foreign partners in the field—a necessity in places like Syria, where U.S. troops rely on Kurdish and other foreign partners to relay intelligence and targeting information by cellphones that can be hacked or intercepted.

The head of the Navy SEALs, Rear Adm. Brian Losey, said the nature of the fight is changing who they’re recruiting, with SEALs needing to raid one day, and work with dipomats, intelligence officers, and foreign officials the next.

“We’ve started to put more value on intellect,” Losey said, with almost half the incoming enlisted SEALs in the past two years having college degrees.

Frequently working in small, far-flung teams, “they are representing America all by themselves,” he said.

While some of the special operations commanders at the conference privately voiced concern over ISIS’s recent advances, they all said this will be a decades-long war that requires a lot more than U.S. military firepower to win.

“In this struggle, you don’t kill your way to victory,” added Heithold. “You do have to put pressure on the leadership in order to affect them. But it is not in itself the answer.”

“That’s why we talk about it being a 15-year struggle,” he said.

“We can continue to mow the grass and try to take ’em out, but it’s not a winning strategy,” added Lt. Gen. Charles Cleveland, the head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command. “We’re going to have to start thinking of root causes,” like instability or economic deprivation—something that the military can only really contribute to by training local forces, leaving the rest to other branches of government.

“We have to try to set the conditions so that 8-year-old today doesn’t become the jihadi in 10 years… or even less than that,” he said.

Article by Kimberly Dozier on the Daily Beast

US Special Forces Engage ISIS for First Time, Inflict Heavy Casualties

US Special Forces Engage ISIS for First Time, Inflict Heavy Casualties An article by Hunter Roosevelt, published on Controversial Times.com on December 17, 2014

Reports out of Iraq indicate that American Special Forces “advisers” have engaged ISIS in ground combat for the first time.

ISIS forces attacked an Iraqi Army outpost occupied by more than 100 Americans around 1 a.m. local time. The American forces responded “equipped with light and medium weapons, supported by F-18? fighter jets according to sources on the ground.

According to Shafaq News Iraq, US troops have entered with its Iraqi partner, according to Colonel, Salam Nazim in line against ISIS elements and clashed with them for more than two hours, to succeed in removing them from al-Dolab area, and causing losses in their ranks, at a time American fighter jets directed several strikes focused on ISIS gatherings that silenced their heavy sources of fire. He points out that the clashes took place between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.

A field commander told reporters that the Americans were able to inflict heavy casualties on ISIS while suffering no casualties of their own while forcing the terror group back to their base some 10 kilometers away.

Sheikh Mahmud Nimrawi, a prominent tribal leader in the region, said that “US forces intervened because of ISIS started to come near the base, which they are stationed in so out of self-defense, they responded, welcoming the US intervention, which I hope will not be the last.“

The Sheikh continued, “We have made progress in al-Dolab area, in which ISIS has withdrawn from to the villages beyond, after the battles which involved a private American force , and provided a great impetus firearm, and opened hubs around the region enabled them to storm and surprise ISIS fighters.”

The short version is that ISIS attacked a base where more than 100 Special Forces “advisers” are stationed and took a two hour beating from both the air and the ground while the good guys took no casualties.

Why US Special Forces failed to rescue James Foley

US intelligence officials still know relatively little about the workings of Islamic State militants. James Foley may have been traded by insurgent groups before ending up in IS hands, which complicates the intelligence picture stated Anna Mulrine, a Staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor in an August 21st article.

The failed attempt to rescue journalist James Foley before he was killed by Islamic State militants – and the ongoing efforts to track down other American hostages before it’s too late – illustrate a glaring shortcoming in US military capabilities: that good US military intelligence on these militant groups is in short supply.

Although the Pentagon greenlighted the deployment of Special Operations Forces (SOF) to Syria – along with the US military’s most high-tech air and ground components – the mission did not result in a rescue.

“Unfortunately, the mission was not successful, because the hostages were not present at the targeted location,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement Wednesday evening.

Even so, defense officials sought to put a positive spin on the mission. “This operation, by the way, was a flawless operation,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a briefing with reporters Thursday afternoon. “But the hostages were not there.”

The Pentagon’s unusual confirmation of a failed Special Forces mission – made at the behest of the White House – was in large part an effort to reassure the American public that the United States has not sat idly by during the meteoric rise of the Islamic State (IS).

But the news drove home the point, too, that US intelligence officials still know relatively little about the workings of IS.

Pentagon officials bristled at this implication, however. “Was this a failure of intelligence? No,” Secretary Hagel insisted. “The fact is that intelligence does not come wrapped in a package with a bow. It is a mosaic of many pictures, many factors.”

The problem, he added in a favorite Pentagon maxim, is that “the enemy always has a say in everything.”

True, hostage rescue operations using Special Forces are “extraordinarily complicated” under any circumstances, says Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, a nonresident fellow in the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That’s in large part because “high-value hostages are high-value assets to our adversaries, and they’re going to do what they can to preserve that asset, so they are going to be kept in highly protected, inaccessible places,” he says.

This is further complicated by the fact that as Al Qaeda leadership has been fragmented through US military strikes, the jihadist movement has become more diffuse as well, with “increasing numbers of groups and jihadist fighters,” says Paul Scharre, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who previously served as a specialist on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance programs at the Pentagon.

Mr. Foley, for example, may have been traded and bartered by different insurgent groups before ending up in IS hands, which in turn complicates the intelligence picture.

“Hostages may be traded for weapons, for territory. Government forces could give a hostage to a rebel group in exchange for leaving them alone in certain areas,” says Mr. Nelson, whose last military assignment before retiring from the Navy was with the Joint Special Operations Command.

Even when the intelligence picture is clearer, “one of the things people may not be aware of is that in Iraq and Afghanistan, when SOF would go on raids and go after terrorist networks, a huge number of those raids ended up in the person you’re looking for not being there,” Mr. Scharre says.

But even failed missions can be of intelligence value, analysts note.

“If the hostage had spent time at the site, you might have access to people who had been holding him at one time,” Nelson says. Then it might be possible to pick up information about “everything from when was the last time the hostages ate to their health, to what rank or role do you have in this terrorist organization, to what are your next set of battle plans?” he adds. “You rarely walk away with nothing.”

Even the grisly video of the execution itself is being scrubbed now by intelligence analysts, Nelson notes. “We now dust for electronic prints the way we used to dust for fingerprints. Every piece of intelligence is a piece of intelligence we can use,” he says. “Who was standing next to Foley in the video? Where did it happen? These are electronic clues.”