I see that RedState.org has sent two bloggers to Baghdad, who are staying at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC). They complain about the hours and days it takes to get there, marvel that the U.S. base in Kuwait has a McDonalds, and accurately describe the living conditions at CPIC.

Been there, done that. I resisted writing a similar piece, but if you want a slice of what us reporters go through, read their posts. They are dead right.

I have a similar but completely different piece in the works that I am calling “Scenes from a War Zone.” I got the idea from the title of Roger Simon’s film, “Scenes from a Mall.”

It will be a series of literary snapshots that illustrate the strangeness of life in the green zone. It will run on Pajamas Media’s main page as soon as I can get a reliable internet connection for more than a few minutes.

Here is an advance taste, a fragment of a rough draft. This scene takes place at CPIC.

The camoflage netting strung from the 10-ft.-tall jersey barrier to the concrete wall of the defunct parking garage provides the only shade for the Smoking Lounge at the Combined Press Information Center, the military’s green- zone holding pen for journalists. A podium-like object stands in the center; its dead-fish stink is designed to attract flies and kill them. Around this altar of insect death, is a motley collection of broken office chairs, plastic garden seats and two backseat benches ripped from minivans and mounted on concrete blocks.

Three hundred yards or so behind Private Eagan, lies the red zone and the war.

Col. Mark A. Martins has been “in and out of Iraq since 2003,” tasked with establishing the rule of law. Today he told me in Baghdad’s Combined Press Information Center that he is now optimistic.

What is interesting is the reason why.

On April 2, Iraqi courts formally began the equivalent of grand jury proceedings in two tell-tale cases: One involves an al Qaeda terrorist accused of killing scores of civilians. The other concerns a defendant known to public only as “Police Lt. Col. A,” a shia police man who is the subject of 42 complaints. Allegedly, he beat and abused sunni detainees and even raped a woman to compel her husband to talk. It didn’t work.

These cases summarize the current crisis, murderous enemies and dirty cops.

So why is Col. Martins optimistic?

(more…)

Senator John McCain writes about his recent trip to Iraq in the Washington Post–and is greeted by crickets.

McCain is actually acting like a statesman. He deserves to be commended, not ignored. His willingness to take on the congressional and media consensus shows guts and reveals character.

He was critical of the implementation of the war earlier and, based on direct experience there, now sees reasons for cautious optimism. When the facts change, he changes his mind.

Now let’s see if the media have the same ability.

The British sailors and marines are selling their stories to the British press–and setting off outrage in the U.K.

Where was the outrage when their leaders were bowing to the Iranians to secure their release?

I don’t share the anti-materialist outrage. The public, both in the U.S. and the U.K., will benefit of from hearing what the captivity was really like.

I especially want to hear from the two marines who did not crack. What they endured should be an object lesson to all soldiers who might one day be held captive.

On a side note, I see that Mark Steyn has stolen my line about Britannia no longer ruling the waves, but waiving the rules. I guess he watches Glenn Beck’s CNN show too.

KUWAIT CITY–Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the front pages of the Kuwait-based Arab Times, and almost every other paper in world, today by promising nuclear “good news” tomorrow.

Does any one think this will be good news for the rest of us? It is telling that the Arab press appears to be as worried about an Iranian atom bomb as Israeli media. (European and American media seem curiously ambivalent, perhaps because they believe the bomb is years away and that they are out of missile range anyway.Like Teddy bears, they are clutching false hopes than cannot really protect them.)

But, actually, it might be good news.

Iran has made dramatic announcements before–that have not panned out. Consider this CNN report from Nov. 14:

“We will commission some 3,000 centrifuges by this year end. We are determined to master fuel cycle, and commission some 60,000 centrifuges to meet our demands,” the president said at a news conference closed to foreign reporters.

Ahmadinejad said Iran hopes to celebrate its nuclear success during the “Ten-Day Dawn” festivities at the beginning of February, which mark the country’s victory in the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Of course, Iran had not achieved its goal by February 2007. American intelligence officials that I have spoke with do not believe that Iran has actually mastered the fuel cycle (i.e. can make their own nuclear fuel in sufficient quantities to breed more fuel). And if Iran had met their self-imposed deadline, they would have let the world know.

Maybe its April 9 announcement–the “good news”–is simply that it finally met its February goals.

Clearly, there are two Iranian nuclear programs. One is the actual program that we know little about. We know little because, even though Iran signed U.N. treaties to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency (the Vienna-based IAEA) and even signed a special annex agreeing to spot inspections by that agency, the Islamic Republic has not complied with international law.

Indeed, Iran sees international law as something to either keep the west impotently busy or to be boldly defied. Remember Ahmadinejad said: “…time is completely running in our favor in terms of diplomacy.”

The other nuclear program is the one that Ahmadinejad talks about. It is one that moves briskly and relentlessly toward deadlines and total success.

So what is the relationship between the two nuclear programs, the real one and the one Ahmadinejad describes? That is a matter of intense debate in intelligence circles, but let’s make some reasonable inferences.

The Iranian leader could well be bluffing or “talking big” as Saddam Hussein did in the early 1970s when he announced that he had atomic weapons and again in the late 1970s, when he said he was very close. (For a good history of Saddam’s 1970s WMD programs, read Schmuel Bar.) Few doubted Saddam’s intentions, which is why the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981. Saddam later learned to be more subtle in his WMD boasts in the 1990s.

This does not mean that we should ignore or minimize the threat of an Iranian bomb, or the past threat of an Iraqi one. “Fake it until you make it,” seems to be the motto in the Middle East, from pimping out your Mercedes while your family leaves in squalor to building big weapons while your nation begs for electricity and clean water.

Second, elements of the intelligence community have long suspected that Iran’s scientists are struggling to meet the increasingly ambitious demands of its rulers. The program has missed announced deadlines before. And, if the “good news” is that Iran has now met the targets it hoped to meet in early February, then tomorrow’s announcement would confirm that trend.

Why are Iran’s scientists having trouble? Again, we can only speculate.

Certainly the timetable might be unrealistic. These things take time. Any technician knows that when management does not understand a technology, its expectations tend to be like a Borges story–real-sounding, but not realistic.

And let’s not underestimate how hard it is to build a bomb or even make the nuclear fuel for one. The idea that you can build an atom bomb in your garage assumes that you live in a place with a highly advanced industrial structure that can deliver precision equipment, purified materials and so on. And if Iran had that, it would also have clean water and 24-7 electricity in every village. Iraq did not succeed in more than three decades of trying. But Iran has crucial advantages that Iraq did not have: the help of the Russians, the Chinese and Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan.

It is also possible that some scientists and engineers in the program actually do not want the mullahs to succeed. The Nazi nuclear program included a number of specialists, perhaps including program head and legendary atomic scientist Niels Bohr, who seemed to be slow-walking their work to keep Hitler from getting the bomb. (Of course these specialists were helped indirectly by allied bombings raids and bold acts of sabotage by Norwegian resistance and British special forces–factors missing in this equation.)

Whatever the cause, any sign that Iran’s nuclear program is hitting speed bumps is good news for us. For now.

Will use the time to take effective action?

Prof. Hasan Koni, the Turkish professor who I mentioned in an earlier post, gave me what amounts to a delicious speculation.

When I passed it on to various Turks and foreign journalists they smiled with surprise and delight. That does not mean that it is true, only that it is well received.

Here it is: The ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP, will nominate Kemal Dervis for president. He currently the head of United Nations Development Programme; his bio can be found here.

Why is this such a happy idea to Turks, at least the Westernized intellectuals that I have mostly talked to?

Dervis is the architect of Turkey’s semi-free-market reforms, which have brought prosperity to the country and popularity to the AKP.

But a shadow hangs over Turkey. The president, who serves a single 7-year term, steps down in May. The fear is that the prime minister, an Islamist who sounds like a liberal when he visits the West, may nominate himself. If he does and he wins, it is widely seen as the end of secularist Turkey. The president appoints the heads of universities, the supreme and lesser courts, and hundreds of other key government posts. An Islamist could easily remake the country in his image with the simple patronage powers of the presidency. People are policy, as Reagan used to say.

So nominating Dervis, who would almost certainly win in the May presidential election, would be a sign that Turkey will continue to free its economy, modernize its institutions and preserve its secular order. It is a move that would be good for the country and, incidentally, would preserve the strong economy that is the foundation of the AKP’s support.

Is this speculation right? Who knows? But the AKP has surprised its foes with common sense before.

Perhaps the most frequent question I get is: Why haven’t we caught bin Laden? I mean, after all, we have these multi-million dollar satellites, the largest army in the world et cetera?

It is a good question, but people generally do not like my answer. Americans are not good at manhunts and a war is not a manhunt, anyway.

The Unabomber was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for almost 20 years. It was only after his brother read the Unabomber’s manifesto in the New York Times that the FBI was able to find him. Or consider the case of the Olympic Park bomber, who was sought for almost half as long. Another fluke led to his capture. And these are fugitives hiding inside our country, where informants are motivated and speak English–and where our law enforcement holds sway.

In Pakistan, informants are unreliable and few and generally communicate through an interpreter. And all measures must be done through Pakistan’s police and intelligence services, which may or may not want to help.

Finally, remember that the quarry is disciplined. Check out this article in al Sharq al Aswat, the London-based Arabic news site.

Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s no. 2, says that he has not used a phone in four years–roughly from the time of the capture of Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s no. 3 who planned and ran the 9-11 attacks.

Without phone intercepts, it is hard to reliably pinpoint al Qaeda leaders.

Still, our manhunt was succeeded in one sense: We have made it harder for them to communicate rapidly. And maybe made them scan the skies fearfully.

There are two sides to every story. Below, based on an an account by Michael Yon, I posted a story entitled “Losing the Media, Losing the War.”

The military makes a pretty good case that Yon is exaggerating and may have had a beef with certain personnel. In fact, he did have secure access to storage and a decent work space.

Here is an internal e-mail from Col. Steven Boylan, who is in charge of embedded journalists in Iraq, and a copy of a letter that he sent to Yon.

(It does appear that they are reacting to my blog entry as well as Yon. If they ever need to correct, amplify or contextualize, they should e-mail me directly. I am always open to views of direct participants, especially those of our nation’s armed services.)

Read both sides. It may well be Yon who has answering to do.

From Boylan Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO
Sent Wednesday, April 4, 2007 12:47 pm To william.ivey@us.army.mil Subject RE: LOSING THE MEDIA, LOSING THE WAR…

Bill,

Of course, here is the rest of the story. I have just sent this to him and the boss:

HERE FOLLOWS THE LETTER COL. BOYLAN SENT TO MICHAEL YON.

(more…)

I just returned from a long meeting with Professor Hasan Koni, an expert in security policy and international affairs who runs the American Studies program at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

Don’t be fooled by his current professorial title. He is plugged into Turkey’s military and intelligence elite. He ran Turkey’s National Security Academy, where senior military officers and diplomats are trained from 1996 to 2003. Before that, he was a sought-after instructor at the War Academy, Turkey’s equivalent of West Point.

Most of military, intelligence and diplomatic corps have been his students, including General Edip Baser, who is working on Kurdish issues with U.S. Gen. Joe Ralston.

Prof. Koni told me that he is surprised by a sudden shift, in military circles, against the U.S., Turkey’s longtime ally.

On the secure web site of the Turkish military’s senior staff he was astonished to see the full text of Vladimir Putin’s recent anti-American diatribe, claiming the U.S. was violating international law in the Middle East. “For that to be there,” he told me, “it means it is an official, accepted view.”

In other words, the general staff endorsed Putin’s take on international relations. “it is surprising, to say the least,” he said, adding that Russia and Turkey have fought 13 wars and have been enemies for more than 300 years.

“Even two years ago,” he said, “it would not be imaginable for me.”

POST SCRIPT: Prof. Koni also provided some fascinating new information about the disappearance of Iranian General Ali Reza Asgari, which will soon appear on Pajamas Media main page.

There are a lot of reasons that the media seems hostile to the military, everything from ignorance to bias.

But Michael Yon, reporting from Iraq, in his new raw-but-ready RUBS series, touches on one so basic that most media critics have overlooked it: the military treats the media poorly. There are no secure places for photographers or reporters to store their gear. Housing is often a tent shared with day laborers from the third world (he compares it prison conditions in which reporters are afraid to take a shower, lest their gear be stolen). And finally, there is no easy way to access the internet or upload files–even though the military enjoys free wireless internet on most bases. They just won’t share it. They won’t even let you plug into their network.

If you treat the media like the enemy, they become the enemy.

Yon says that Fox News recently turned down an embed opportunity because the military could not provide a simple locker to safeguard their costly cameras from getting stolen.

The media has hearts and minds too. Someone should be thinking about influencing them by offering some basics. I doubt someone is.

On a earlier post, Yon asks a senior officer what could be done about improving the situation. The officer’s response? “I don’t care.”

The sad reality: troops in harm’s way get bad press because some well-fed public-affairs officer cannot bring himself to care. This is how wars are lost, not won.