Last week’s background briefing by an unnamed U.S. Central Command source to Pentagon reporters laying out the timeframe for an attack on Islamic State forces occupying the Iraqi city of Mosul has many intoning outrage that the U.S. is tipping off the enemy.
The outrage ran from Twitterati posting sarcastic memes designed to look like a dinner invitation to a letter to President Obama from Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham expressing a concern that the disclosures “not only risk the success of the mission, but could also cost the lives of U.S. Iraqi and coalition forces.”
“The mark on the wall that we are still shooting for is the April-May timeframe,” said the unnamed Centcom official in a telephone call piped into the Pentagon from the command’s headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base. (Being that I am in Tampa, home of MacDill, but not at the Pentagon, I couldn’t participate).
“There are still a lot of things that need to come together,” said the unnamed briefer. “And as we dialogue with our Iraqi counterparts, we want them to go in that timeframe, because as you get into Ramadan and the summer and the heat, it becomes problematic if it goes much later than that. But by the same token, if they’re not ready, if the conditions are not set, if all the equipment that they need is not physically there and they are trained to a degree in which they will be successful, we have not closed the door on continuing to slide that to the right. And so although we would like it to occur in the April-May timeframe, that decision will still have to be one that we’ll have to contend with in the future.”
In their letter, McCain and Graham say that “never in our memory can we recall an instance in which our military has knowingly briefed our own war plans to our enemies.”
I will have to send them a subscription to The Tribune.
Back in November, an unnamed Centcom official told me pretty much the same thing, only that at the time they were shooting for January if all the conditions were right.
But the conditions weren’t right, so the timeline shifted to the right, another unnamed Centcom official told me on Friday (at a paper where we are loath to use unnamed sources, I have already used the word “unnamed” more in the previous 11 inches of copy than I have during my 10 years at the Tribune).
“We provided no tactical-level details,” said the unnamed Centcom official. “Not one word of what was provided was of operational value to the enemy. As far as timing, we have been talking about a Mosul offensive for months. As we said at the time, it is conditions-based. As you know from your previous interview, the date slipped. The conditions had not been right.”
The date could slip to the right again, said the Centcom official.
“If the conditions are not right, to carry forth the offensive to retake Mosul at that time, then it will shift again,” the official said.
So are McCain and Graham, who are demanding to know who at Centcom was responsible for the briefing and whether they had prior approval from the White House, justified in their criticisms?
A couple of former Centcom general officers that I talked to before seeing the McCain-Graham letter, including one who has blasted the administration’s approach to the Islamic State, told me that while unusual to say the least, last week’s briefing doesn’t make them uncomfortable.
“I have never seen it done before,” Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps four-star who ran Centcom from 1997 to 2000, said of last week’s Mosul disclosure, which came in response to a question by the AP’s Lita Baldor. “That is unusual. I have to believe there is a reason behind it, because it isn’t the norm.”
Zinni, who has leveled withering criticism at the Obama administration’s handling of the situation in Iraq and Syria, has no inside knowledge of current Centcom operations. But he said he can think of a few reasons why the command would telegraph its punches.
One reason, he said, “is that they are very certain they can take this town, and are hyping it so the defeat of Isis gets a lot of attention.”
Other possibilities?
“There is some sort of deception involved,” said Zinni. “I am speculating, but maybe they would like to see Isis try to reinforce the town, and detect that. And it could be psychological. You never want to telegraph to the enemy what you are going to do, but if the enemy is not capable of doing anything about it, I don’t know? They may have people inside town and it could have a great psychological operations impact.”
Sometimes, a move is so obvious that it doesn’t matter, said Zinni.
“Sometimes, operations you run, everybody knows you are doing it,” said Zinni, who likened it to the time he was in charge of the task force charged with getting U.N, forces out of Somalia.
“Everyone knew it was going to happen,” he said. “They were coming out. We were given the mission.”
While taking Mosul is different, “it is inevitable,” said Zinni. “Eventually we are going to retake Mosul.”
As for whether the briefing violates what the military calls OPSEC, or operational security, Zinni said it all depends.
“As far as OPSEC, it is the commander who puts the operational security tag on it,” says Zinni, which in this case would mean Army Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the current Centcom boss. “If he does not, which is out of the norm, there is a very specific reason which we probably won’t know until after the act.”
“If they are comfortable with it, I am not uncomfortable with it,” said Michael Jones, a retired army major general who served as Centcom’s chief of staff from 2010 to 2011. “It is vague enough that I am not sure if offers any advantage to the defender.”
Jones, who like Zinni has no direct knowledge of Centcom plans, said that he doesn’t know why Centcom would have laid out the timeline.
“I can imagine there might be several reasons why they might want to indicate that there is a time certain when something might happen,” said Jones. “It could be reassuring allies that are also going to participate. It can be to influence the activity of the enemy.”
Unlike Zinni, Jones doesn’t think Centcom is purposely putting out false information to fake out the bad guys.
“I doubt they would do that in a public media kind of thing,” said Jones. “It is forbidden to purposely use the deception piece with media, but in terms of making sure the bad guy knows you’re serious or committed, that’s fair game. I think if I were in their shoes, there are logical reasons why I might indicate time period, so that it doesn’t give tactical advantage to the enemy, but at the same time accomplishes one of the number of other things I mentioned.”
Zinni, repeating what he told me months ago, is over the whole waiting thing anyway.
“You could put a couple of America brigades out there,” said Zinni, which would mean upwards of 10,000 troops. “Maybe a neighboring country would help. There are five regional countries. If the U.S. would do it, you would have them out of there in a heart beat.”
Though Centcom officials say the nearly 2,500 airstrikes against Islamic State targets since Aug. 8 are achieving the desired affect of degrading the jihadi group’s ability to take and hold ground, and even supply itself in Mosul, which it captured last June, Zinni remains steadfast that airpower alone is no answer.
“A ground force is what it takes,” said Zinni. “You can’t control people without ground forces.”
That’s even more important, said Zinni, given the limited flow of arms to the peshmerga fighters taking on Islamic State in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq, and who are being counted on by Centcom to push eastward toward Mosul.
“Why not arm the peshmerga?” Zinni asked. “They are the best fighters, but we are reluctant to do it because the Iraqi government does not want to do it. But the peshmerga are the only reasonable fighters in Iraq.” The Iraqi army, said Zinni, “has a long way to go. The worst thing you can do is to send in Shia militias to take Sunni towns. Personally, I would have put U.S. ground forces in from the beginning. You would be pleasantly surprised at the number of people who would have joined us.”
But no matter how much Zinni would want that, it appears there are no plans to allow brigades, or even battalions of U.S. boots on the ground, unless those boots are being worn by Iraqi security forces or peshmerga.
In asking Congress to authorize the use of military force against the Islamic State, its allies and offspring no matter where they are, President Barack Obama once again stated his position that while commandos will be called on to take out high value targets, provide special reconnaissance and maybe, just maybe, be in a position to call in airstrikes, there won’t be the commitment of ground forces that would make Zinni happy.
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The Pentagon announced no new U.S. troop deaths in support of the ongoing operations in the Centcom region.
There have been three U.S. troop deaths in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and none in support of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.