USAID administrator travels to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Senegal

November 14, 2014 | Humanitarian & Aid, OVERSEAS INTEL

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah recently traveled to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Senegal, to meet with national and local officials, aid organizations, and staff coordinating the international response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

USAID is helping to coordinate an aggressive U.S. Government response to the Ebola outbreak that leverages broad expertise and personnel from several federal departments and agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and State, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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U.S. re-evaluating the need for combat troops on the ground in Iraq

November 13, 2014 | The Danger Zone

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is considering sending a limited number of American ground forces to fight alongside Iraqi troops as they launch complex missions to regain territory lost to Islamic State militants, the country’s top military officer said Thursday.

Thus far, American military personnel have been limited to serving as rear guard advisers to the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga. But Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that could change as the campaign against the Islamic State becomes more difficult.

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“As it evolves there are certain operations that could be more complex than the ones in which the Iraqi security forces are currently involved,” Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee. “There are some places along the path that I think will be fairly complex terrain for them, including, for example, Mosul. And eventually as they need to restore the border between Iraq and Syria.”

Dempsey said he was not predicting that American troops would be required alongside Iraqi forces in such operations “but we’re certainly considering it.”

In any event, Dempsey said the number of U.S. combat troops fighting with the Iraqis would be relatively small.

“We’ve established a modest footprint … Any expansion of that, I think, would be equally modest. I just don’t foresee a circumstance when it would be in our interest to take this fight on ourselves with a large military contingent,” he said.

President Barack Obama made ending the Iraq War a centerpiece of his foreign policy in his first term and has repeatedly stated that American soldiers would not return to ground combat in Iraq. That position has come under fire from congressional Republicans, who question whether the operation against the Islamic State can succeed without a change in the White House policy.

The Obama Administration is hoping that the new Shiite-led government in Baghdad will provide enough of a role for Sunni and Kurdish minorities that the Iraqi people as a whole will be able to handle the ground war on its own.

“If those assumptions are invalid, I will have to adjust my recommendations,” Dempsey said.

Despite Dempsey’s comments, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, appearing at the same hearing, repeated the Administration’s position that “U.S. military personnel will not be engaged in a ground combat mission.”

Republican hawks have criticized the administration for that taking that position.

“How can you successfully execute the mission you’ve been given to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL when some of your best options are taken off the table?,” the committee chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., asked, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “Declaring we won’t use ground forces is like telling your opponent you’re not going to play your best players.”

The Obama administration has asked Congress to authorize the use of military force against the Islamic State. In August the White House said it did not need a new congressional authorization. However, Obama said last week he would request a new authorization.

McKeon said that any authorization request that ruled out ground forces would be dead on arrival in Congress.

“I will not support sending our military into harm’s way with their arms tied behind their backs,” McKeon said.

In a written statement, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the Ranking Democrat on the committee, said he is “skeptical that we can assemble a majority” to pass use of force legislation because of the differences between the White House and the Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Regarding Syria, Hagel was asked whether the U.S. should also go after the regime of President Bashar Assad. The Obama administration has said that Assad has lost legitimacy, but it has thus far refrained from using military force against Assad's government, which is currently fighting the Islamic State and rebel factions.

The Turks and several key Arab allies of the United States reportedly want the U.S. to facilitate the overthrow of Assad. CNN reported this week that the Obama administration is rethinking its strategy in Syria.

Hagel told lawmakers that debates about whether to go after Assad poses a “fundamental question” for American policymakers.

“Assad is part of the equation of course. But … you could change Assad today and that’s not going to change all the dynamics quickly certainly in Syria,” he said. “[Assad] is a longer term part of this … but [the Islamic State] is right now … threatening the country of Iraq and the government of Iraq, and so that’s why we are dealing with that component first because we must.”

Another point of contention at the hearing was the administration’s decision to continue to release detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“The risk to our forces increases even more with terrorist detainees returning to the battlefield … The roughly 150 detainees that are left are the worst of the worst. To continue these releases — just as we have had to open a new front in the war on terror — is unwise,” McKeon said.

Hagel cited intelligence community assessments that the risk of detainees returning to the battlefield is low, and he told lawmakers that the releases will continue.

“If I can get assurances required by the host governments … that it substantially mitigates the risks, then I will sign” the release orders, he said.

As reported by By: Jon Harper/@JHarperStripes of the Stars & Stripes

U.S. Defense Department to Request $496B for Overseas Contingency Operations in 2015

November 11, 2014 | OVERSEAS INTEL

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department will likely continue asking Congress for war funding separate from the Pentagon’s base budget accounts and not subject to federal spending caps even if all American troops leave Afghanistan by the end of the year, experts say.

The Pentagon will submit a $496 billion 2015 budget request to Congress this month, a spending plan that does not include money for operations in Afghanistan. The war-funding measure, know as overseas contingency operations (OCO), is being delayed because the Afghan government has not approved a security agreement that would allow NATO troops to remain in the country beyond the end of the year.

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Despite US troop levels in Afghanistan falling 40 percent between 2013 and 2014, DoD’s spending request did not decline much. DoD requested $88.5 billion in 2013 and Congress approved $85 billion in 2014, adding $5 billion to DoD’s request.

Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said about $20 billion in Army and Air Force operations and maintenance funding, typically included in the base budget, was shifted to the OCO accounts in 2014. The Army and Marine Corps are funding pay and benefits for 38,000 troops out of the 2014 OCO budget, he said.

The OCO budget is not subject to base budget spending caps, known as sequestration.

“This is an uncapped funding stream that exists for DoD, and both the administration and Congress have been willing to use it to soften the impact of sequestration,” Harrison said on a conference call with reporters Monday.

This practice has “largely offset the cuts to the base budget from sequestration,” Harrison said.

“I think that this is a pretty dangerous situation for DoD to be in with being so heavily dependent on the OCO funding … because that funding stream could disappear quickly,” he said.

If all American troops leave Afghanistan by the end of the year, it will be difficult for Congress and the Obama administration to justify having any war funding after 2015, Harrison said.

Christine Fox, the acting deputy defense secretary, last week said she expects DoD to continue the practice of submitting OCO spending requests beyond 2015.

“I don’t believe it will be the last year,” she said on Feb. 25 at a conference sponsored by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse.

“We must reset the equipment that we put over there, we have to get out [and] we have to take care of people that deploy,” she said.

Harrison said there is “an easy justification” for a 2015 OCO request since the next fiscal year begins in October and US troops will be in Afghanistan at least until December.

“In 2016, I could see good justification for still having an OCO request even if there are no more troops in Afghanistan because we would likely still be providing some aid to the Afghan government in theory, as we continue to do with the Iraqi government, although a much smaller scale once we’re all pulled out,” Harrison said.

Even if all US troops leave Afghanistan by the end of the year, Harrison says he expects OCO requests to continue into 2015 and 2016 to cover the costs of repairing and moving equipment back to the US.

“By FY 17, it’s very much possible that there just wouldn’t be a justification for that [OCO] budget anymore and it could completely go away,” Harrison said.

Harrison said he would expect the OCO request in 2015 and 2016 to be “much lower” if no troops remain in Afghanistan.

“It would be harder to justify a $60, $70, $80 billion budget when we have no troops there,” he said.

Harrison says DoD has been funding between $20 billion and $40 billion of operations and maintenance items, such as flying training hours and depot maintenance, from its base budget in the OCO budget.

“If that funding stream goes away relatively quickly over the next few years, DoD is going to have a big bill they have to fit back in their base budget and that’s something they’re not planning for right now as far as we can tell,” he said.

Mark Gunzinger, also with Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, noted in the same call with reporters that the US military’s global operations tempo has increased over the past decade and will remain high.

“We’ll still need to support those other operations, that higher level tempo of operations,” he said.

OVERSEAS INTEL

USAID administrator travels to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Senegal

U.S. re-evaluating the need for combat troops on the ground in Iraq

U.S. Defense Department to Request $496B for Overseas Contingency Operations in 2015

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