Reply #12: THE WEB THAT THIS GOVT WEAVES WILL GET THEM IN THE END

[demlandslide2004]

Friday, November 21, 2003



Q: We are all very familiar now with the stresses on manpower on ground units in Iraq, Afghanistan and what that is doing to the force. It is hard to believe that intelligence assets aren't also stressed in the same way. And, in particular, not just trying to figure out what is going on in the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, but even moreso, trying to figure out what al Qaeda and its related organizations are doing in the 60-odd countries that they are based in. There have been concerns by members of Congress that in fact a lot of your assets are being diverted away from the larger fight against al Qaeda to Iraq, by necessity, because of what is going on in the ground there. I'm wondering if you can talk about the stresses that you are in fact under in terms of assets and personnel, addressing what is going on in Iraq, and then widening out to Afghanistan and then widening beyond that to the world at large and how much Iraq is detracting from the fight against al Qaeda?



Cambone: The war on terrorism is global. So the focus with respect to that war is global as well. And so the intelligence community writ large and the Department of Defense specifically continues to do the monitoring, the assessment and under take the appropriate actions to prosecute that war on a global scale. Whether it is the work being done at EUCOM or PACOM, obviously in CENTCOM, SOUTHCOM, all of the regional combatant commanders and their respective J2s, their intelligence shops and their joint intelligence centers are paying attention to the problem of terrorism in their area of responsibility in addition to the other things that they have to worry about -- narco-terrorism and all kinds of other things that might affect say, General Hill at SOUTHCOM. They work in a federated environment such that it is possible for them to exchange information and data very easily. They meet frequently on the video teleconferencing and so forth. At the level of the global war, there isn't a lack of focus and each of those JICs, the joint intelligence centers, are fairly robustly manned. They are not small organizations. Now, with respect then to any stress that their may be on the intelligence force, nearly by definition, since we have reduced the number of people we have for defense HUMINT for the human intelligence side of the equation, we are, as I said earlier, in the process of asking the services to increase the number of people who would be trained to operate as HUMINT teams in support of the units that are deployed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, by the way, to prosecute the current set of operations that are taking place. So yeah we are a little short on the human side; there is no denying that. Steps are in place to try to improve the numbers and the capability of the people who'd be involved.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20031121-0976.html





Cambone's defenders

Last week, we told how Lawrence DiRita, special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, came to the defense of Stephen Cambone, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. We had reported on Mr. Cambone's unpopularity in some Pentagon quarters for pushing budget cuts. Mr. DiRita, in a letter to The Washington Times, took us to task for understating Mr. Cambone's extensive defense experience.

This week, another Pentagon leader, Vice Adm. Mike Mullen, came to Mr. Cambone's defense. Adm. Mullen, who is deputy chief of naval operations for resources, requirements and assessments, said he wants to offer a different side of Mr. Cambone than the one we, and other writers, have presented.

"He has worked hard to be very collaborative in my experience with him," said Adm. Mullen. The admiral said he meets up to three times a week with Mr. Cambone on budget issues.

We have written that Mr. Cambone is combative and dismissive in some meetings with uniformed officers. Some resent his penchant to want to cut force structure, saying he fails to realize how it increases the risks of more casualties.

"I just haven't experienced any of those things," said Adm. Mullen, adding that he has not heard of complaints from other services.


http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring050302.html