Rudd Government announce 20 year defence plan.

On May 2^nd, the Rudd Government released its Defence White Paper, ‘Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific for the next 20 years’, with plans to ‘beef up’ Australia’s armed forces focusing particularly on air and naval capability in an attempt to keep up with the defence spending of the populous nations of Asia as their economies develop, namely China.

The white paper received plenty of media both domestically and abroad, focused on the hardware which the paper has committed Australia to and rightly so because it is going to cost a lot.

The Wall Street Journal published an article covering the paper, focusing on what money is going where, but fails to assess the details of the practicality of the paper and economic implausibility of the paper for a small country like Australia.

The paper reaffirms the government priority of defending Australia with a series of the equipment purchases over the next 20 years.

A centerpiece of the new strategy is the purchase of twelve new submarines, which Mr. Rudd said would be Australia’s largest-ever single defense project. The submarines will be capable of sea warfare, strategic strikes, intelligence collection and support for special-operations forces.

It is interesting to note that the Wall Street Journal made no mention of the fact that the Defence Force already has six submarines among its fleet and only have enough seaman to man three of these.

The government also plans new air-warfare destroyers and a new class of frigates. For its air force, Australia will buy around 100 joint-strike fighters, plus aircraft and maritime surveillance and response aircraft.”

Despite a sharp deterioration in its budget with the onset of the global economic crisis, the government said spending on defense will increase by 3% every year, after accounting for inflation, until the fiscal year ending June 30, 2018. After that, it expects defense spending to grow at an annual rate of 2.2%.

The government didn’t say how much it will spend, but it currently spends around 18 billion Australian dollars (US$13.14 billion) on its annual defense budget, excluding money spent on major new equipment. It said it hopes changes in the defense sector will help create savings as much as A$20 billion to help fund its plans.”

We can see that the Wall Street Journal’s Article fails to question or criticise the frivolous spending the Rudd government has committed in the paper, instead reaffirming that this spending will in fact benefit it’s most likely audience- America.  It merely reports what the Rudd government has planned to implement without looking at the economic repercussions or cracks which appear throughout the white paper.

VOA published a similar article, however we were able to recognise a voice of criticism,  realising that by conceiving China as an enemy to Australia, the white paper risks becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

Defense chiefs in Canberra say that China’s military build-up could be a cause for concern in the region.

While the government does not foresee any confrontation with the Chinese, it is planning for it, just in case.

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull says Prime Minister Rudd is sending out confused messages to both the United States and the Chinese.
 
“It makes no sense for Australia in 2009 to base its long-term strategy on the highly contentious proposition that Australia is on an inevitable collision course with a militarily aggressive China,” said Malcolm.  “The risk of Mr. Rudd presenting himself as some kind of trans-Pacific interlocutor is that he will be perceived by the Americans as being overly sympathetic to China and by the Chinese as a bearer of other people’s messages, rather than an advocate of his own.’

Domestically, the media coverage of the release of the White Paper raised doubts about the affordability of the ‘deliberately vague’, criticising the absence of dates and figures within the plan as well as the questioning the major increases in spending and the ‘waving of the red flag’ at China and the issue of recruitment to man this expensive new technology. ABC News reported ‘A defence and international security analyst says the Federal Government’s defence plan will not deliver what it promises to’.

Professor Dupont questioned investments including doubling the submarine fleet to 12, saying the money should be spent recruiting personnel.

“The people issue is a critical one, everyone says that,” he said.

The Government says the defence budget will save $22 billion over 10 years.

Professor Dupont says the government will find it hard to save that.

“Every government that comes to power says it is going to find savings in defence, and if you look at the track record, they never find what they say they will,” he said.

“So you’d have to put a big question mark over whether they can find that sort of money consistently every year for 10 years.

The Australian published an article strongly addressing the uncertainties and inconsistencies of the paper.

The decision to invest even more of our scarce defence dollars in big surface ships goes dead against the arguments that the white paper makes about how the operating environment in Asia will change in future decades.

Warships are useful in low-level conflicts, but against the advanced maritime forces we see growing in Asia today they will be simply too vulnerable to be cost-effective.

Meanwhile the army has been overlooked. This white paper sensibly rejects the idea that military priorities should swing sharply towards the land forces needed for stabilisation and peacekeeping operations. But it goes too far the other way and risks leaving the army too small to fill the tasks expected of it in places such as East Timor and Papua New Guinea.

In fact, for all the talk of a bold new approach to defence, the policy announced at the weekend mostly just confirms the plans for the future of the ADF that the Government inherited from its predecessor. The same goes for the budget. This white paper leaves the pattern of defence funding where it was set by Howard, at least until next week’s budget. It therefore assumes that Australia can remain a militarily potent middle power on the edge of a growing Asia in which our relative economic weight is shrinking fast, without spending more of our wealth on defence. That is a heroic assumption.

The general consensus within the media  is that the paper will not work, it is inconsistent, unclear and leaves much to be answered, what it has set out to do is attempt to keep up with populous Asian powers, with rapidly growing economies, but fails a cost benefit analysis and has neglected the most likely features of any future conflicts Australia will be involved in- the ground troops.

Iraq denounce Iranian Airstrike.

Iraq have condemned Iran over the airstrikes on Kurdish villages this week which were covered in After the Surge’s last blog. Iraq’s foreign ministry summoned Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad, to express the disapproval and protest against the Iranian shelling of villages in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

“The Iraqi Foreign Ministry demanded an immediate end to those violations which could lead to negative consequences for bilateral relations,” it said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The region has come under frequent bombardment by Turkey and Iran in past months, in raids targeting the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan [PJAK] and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK].

“While Iraq understands the Iranian authorities’ motivation to secure its borders, it will not be achieved by unilateral actions, but by bilateral contacts and constructive dialogue,” the statement said, according to AFP.

Iraq’s Kurdish regional government lodged a similar protest on Sunday, and also called on Kurdish separatists to end all attacks on Iran and Turkey.

3 Kurdish villages attacked in Iranian airstrike in Iraq.

Iranian aircrafts attacked three Iraqi villages over the weekend, appearing to target Iranian Kurdish separatist group, The Party of Free Life in Kurdistan. The details of the attacks remain unclear with conflicting reports from various media outlets. The airstrikes are the first by Iran on Iraqi soil since the U.S Invasion and could complicate Obama’s efforts to normalize relations with Tehran.

Airstrike launched on Kurdish Villages. PHOTO-CIA Worldfactbook BORDER

Al-Arabiyah television stated that “Iranian planes raided those villages” while The Voice of America article stated that the attacks were carried out by ‘unidentified helicopters which remained in Iranian airspace’ according to Wired.com

It is a serious development because the Iraqi airspace is under the control of the US Air Force and under US protection. So the raids are either approved by the United States, as was the case when a US nod was previously given to the Turkish Army, or such operation was a surprise by the Iranians. According to eyewitnesses, the planes were flying at very low altitudes, which may indicate that they were trying to escape detection by radars. So these planes were able to attack many locations. Eyewitnesses and official Kurdish sources said that the raids were carried out by fighter jets and not helicopters. Al- Arabiyah Television reported.

Iranian Airstrike PHOTO- Wired.com

The airstrike comes just 2 weeks after a clash between Iranian police officers and members of the PJAK separatist group, a battle which Al-Jazeera reported to have killed at least 10 Iranian policeman and 10 PJAK members.  

ABC News has reported that these were in fact Iranian helicopters –

Iranian helicopters attacked three Iraqi Kurdish villages in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday, the first time Iran has used aircraft against Kurdish rebels.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

“At 4:00am (local time) they attacked with artillery the villages of Kani Saif, Jomarasi and Kara Sozi, that belong to the Panjwin district,” a senior Iraqi border guard official said.

“After the attacks, at 9:00am three Iranian helicopters attacked these areas again,” he said. “This is the first time they have used helicopters.”

The official added that the area was not considered a stronghold of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish separatist group that appeared to have been the target of the raid.

The raid will no doubt strain relations further between Iraq and Iran, and reignite the conflict between the PJAK and Iranian forces on the border.

How well was the Iraq War reported?

Patrick Cockburn, Orwell Prize winning journalist for The Independent, reflects on the tasks he and his colleagues faced in reporting ‘the most fiercely debated conflict of modern times’ – The War in Iraq. The Independent published this article in the wake of a spur of violence.  Cockburn’s opinion piece is particuarly valid, given that he is one of the few journalists to have reported for the Independent over the entire course of the conflict.

Journalists are departing from Iraq. In Baghdad US newspapers and television are slimming down or closing their bureaux. The British media always had a slighter presence but there is less and less coverage of the war. This might be justified by saying there is no war to cover, but Iraq is still the scene of a horrendous amount of violence with suicide bombers killing at least 144 civilians in the past two days.

Cockburn cites the main reason for reduced foreign interest in Iraq as the US withdrawal of it’s forces along with the fact that US military casualties(evidently the ones that make the news) are steadily declining, despite the de-escalation in violence however, Iraq is still one of the most dangerous and unpredictable places in the world.

 As the war de-escalates it is worth asking how the foreign media performed during a conflict which has now gone on longer than the First or Second World Wars. Could somebody outside Iraq reading the newspapers, watching television or listening to the radio have got a real understanding of what was happening in the country? Was the news reporting better than it had been in Vietnam to which it is often compared? There should be a number of health warnings here about war reporting in general. In one sense it is easy because war provides instant melodrama which people want to see or read about. Demand for news is generally greater than supply. But the melodrama is often misleading as to what is generally happening. This is particularly true of television because on modern battlefields there is usually very little to see. This has been since the end of the 19th century when armies began being armed with rifles using smokeless powder firing long distance. Everybody with any sense kept their head down.

In practice, the television camera is an immensely influential but clumsy and misleading instrument for covering warfare. For instance, during the rout of the Iraqi army during the American invasion of 2003, there were frequent pictures of tanks on fire giving an impression that the Iraqi army had fought to the end. This was an important point to establish since, if Iraqi soldiers had refused to fight for Saddam Hussein, then they might not feel they had been defeated and be capable of resuming the war later on.

The worst coverage of the Iraq war was probably at the beginning and at the end of the conflict. At the beginning there was the uncritical acceptance that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. In the last two years Washington had equal success in selling the “surge”, the limited reinforcement of US troops employing more aggressive tactics, as turning the tide in favour of the US. A danger now is that this myth will take on a life of its own leading to similar methods being employed in Afghanistan and the far right in the US blaming President Obama for withdrawing from Iraq just as victory was being won

Clinton Reiterates US Commitment?

Fresh on the heels of twin terrorist attacks and a resurgence of fear and anxiety amongst Iraqis, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a surprise visit to Baghdad to reassure the United States’ commitment to Iraq as they begin to withdraw troops. The Washington Post published an article covering Clinton’s visit as she attempted to rationalise the events to facilitate immediate purposes, no doubt an even like this last year would have been used as evidence to prove the surge’s failure.

“I wanted to come today to repeat the commitment that President Obama and I and our government have to the people and nation of Iraq,” Clinton said at a town hall-style meeting at the U.S. Embassy that was broadcast on Iraqi television.

“As we make this transition, the United States will stand with the people of Iraq,” she said.

The violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically since the worst days of the war, according to the U.S Government Accountability office, from an average of 180 attacks daily in June 2007 to 27 a day in January. However, the recent spike in the deathtoll demonstrates that insurgents are still able to obtain explosives and outwit Iraqi security forces.

Clinton played down the latest burst of violence, telling reporters she saw “no sign” it would reignite the sectarian warfare that ravaged the country in recent years. She said that the Iraqi government had “come a long, long way” and that the bombings were “a signal that the rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction.”

With the Obama administration planning to cut back from 140 000 troops to 50 000 by 2010 and this recent bloodshed, believed to be carried out by Sunni insurgents in an attempt to diminish the credibility of the Shiite led government, Clinton’s words would evoke little confidence with these ’signals’ of Iraq going in the right direction seemingly backward.

“It looks like, to us, that the situation of Iraq is not so important, or not in the same level of importance, for the new administration,” a human rights activist said.

Clinton vigorously denied that, saying that the troop withdrawal will be done in a “responsible and careful way” and that the U.S. government will increase its assistance for civilian projects, such as strengthening the justice system.

Another questioner, an Iraqi journalist, told Clinton that “frankly, some people are concerned” about the U.S. military drawdown. “There are so many people and so many citizens who don’t have enough faith and confidence in the Iraqi forces,” he said.

Clinton said the U.S. government will continue to work on building up Iraq’s police and military, which have roughly doubled in size in the past two years.

“But we need to be sure that all of you are supporting a strong, nonsectarian security force,” she said.

As Clinton attempts to rationalise the retreat of US forces and ease the worries of the Iraqi government, I couldn’t help but scrutinise, call me oldfashioned or backwards if you will, but I tend to associate calculated suicide bombings with ‘people dying’, rather than ’moving forward’. 

 

Was the UK mission in Iraq a success?

The British forces in Iraq held an official ceremony in Basra yesterday, symbolic of end of their six years of operations in the country.  The BBC published an article covering the ‘Flag down Ceremony’ as 20th Armoured Brigade took part in a flag-lowering with a US brigade. Those who had attended the ceremony seemed adamant that the presence of the British in Basra had been a positive one.

We’ve been slowly working, as part of a coalition together over the six years, to achieve an end-state which is an Iraq which is secure, happy, at peace with itself and its neighbours.

“We’re slowly but surely transitioning towards that.”Lt. Col Edward Chamberlain.

The Article went on to ask question: Was the UK Mission in Iraq a success?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown seemed to think so declaring the British involvement a “success story”.

Mr Brown, who held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in Downing Street, said: “Today Iraq is a success story”

“We owe much of that to the efforts of British troops. Our mission has not always been an easy one, many have said that we would fail.”

“Britain can be proud of the legacy that we leave there”

The stance of the Stop the War Coalition’s which was featured in the article was quite the contrary to say the least,  labelling the war as a ‘disaster’, with the 179 British soldiers’ deaths made ‘more acute by the pointlessness of the UK presence’ in an illogical invasion, justified by fabricated motives i.e. Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

“The British soldiers will leave Basra in a much worse condition than they found it, its population depleted and demoralised, its infrastructure devastated.” A spokesperson said in response to the Gordon Brown’s comments and to Iraqi president Jalal Talabani’s statement that the mission had been one of ‘liberation’.  “In the past the British forces came to occupy against the will of the Iraqi people,” he said.

The views of Jalal Talabani and Brown’s have been effectively contrasted to those of the Stop War Coalition, effectively displaying neutrality in the article however we are able that it is laden with disapproval, seen through the use of the SWC to criticise Brown and the Iraq War as a whole. On closer reading one is able to examine other factors used by the BBC to criticise the war, without coming out blatantly and saying what a terrible squander this really was.  The article included data of the UK troop death toll, links to details on each of these casualties and the civilian death toll in Basra as a result of the conflict as estimated at between 3,302 and 3,766, according to data from the Iraq Body Count.

The article also goes on to detail the potential political aftermath of the UK involvement in the Iraq War. Despite the fact that the troops are being withdrawn  month ahead of schedule, the debate over why they went over there in the first place does not look set to subside, with opposition leader David Cameron calling on a full inquiry into the Iraq War, reminiscent of that carried out by the Franks Committee into the Falklands Conflict.

 ”After years of foot-dragging, I believe it is the time for the government to announce a proper Franks-style inquiry.

“Instead of starting in many months’ time, it should start right now.

“There are vital lessons to learn and we need to learn them rapidly and the only justification for delay can, I’m afraid, be a political one.”

UK Troop Death Toll- BBC

Storm of Violence in Iraq Strains Its Security Forces

As American forces begin to hand over a greater amount of control of cities in Iraq to Iraqi police, an outbreak of escalated violence ensued with Friday’s deathtoll a staggering 160 and many more wounded, attributing to this was twin suicide bombings in Baghdad’s Shiite Shrine. The New York Times covered the attacks and increasing violence in Iraq and the conflict and division between the Shiites and Sunnis, addressing various potential follow up stories which branch off the terrorist attack itself.

Like many recent attacks, the bombings appeared intended to inflame sectarian tensions, to weaken Iraq’s security forces and to discredit its government.

A loose coalition of Sunni militant forces, the Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for carrying out many of the recent attacks.

The bombings on Friday ominously echoed attacks like the one at a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed and pushed the country toward civil war.

The latest bombings — there have been at least 18 major attacks so far this month — so far have not prompted retaliatory attacks, but they have strained what remains a fragile society deeply divided between Sunnis and Shiites.

Two suicide bombers struck within five minutes of each other on streets leading to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim and his grandson. One of the attacks, and perhaps both, were carried out by women, witnesses said.

Nearly half of those killed were Iranians making a pilgrimage to the shrine, a golden-domed landmark in the predominantly Shiite Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad that is devoted to 2 of the 12 imams of Shiite Islam. At least 125 people were wounded, many of them also Iranians.

April is already the deadliest month in Iraq this year with at least 349 Iraqis killed in war-related violence. Suicide bombings account for about half the deaths this month, have not taken such a toll on the Iraqi population since February 2008. The attacks are believed to have been carried out by Sunni insurgents, attempting to destroy the authority of the Shiite government.

The New York Times article focuses primarily on how this violence encapsulates the challenges to come for the Iraqi forces as American forces withdraw and address the now dwindling confidence of the people in the government’s security protocol. 

American and Iraqi officials have expressed growing concern that the Islamic State of Iraq, Al Qaeda and other extremists have been able to regroup and exploit gaps in security that are forming as American commanders have closed scores of combat outposts across the country, leaving day-to-day security in the hands of the Iraqis. “All the killing of Shiites is done by Al Qaeda,” a man who identified himself only as Abu Mohammed said after Friday’s bombings.

“America was not able to finish them off. How can our forces do it?”

Inside Iraq

 Inside Iraq is a blog updated by McClatchy Journalists based in Baghdad and the outlying provinces, these stories aren’t just a sketchy and detached news update that we usually see from the other side of the world but a first hand account of the devastation being inflicted upon the victims of this war. The latest blog post describes the aftermath of blast that killed at least 16 people and injured 45 civilians, these events receive little media coverage, which can be attributed to the frequency and subsequent indifference from the public, these blogs challenge this ignorance by providing a hardhitting and raw depiction of Iraq.

I walked slowly down the street which was, until the explosion a lively street filled with men, women and children. I saw some of them but they were still under the effect of the explosion. Their faces tell the story of ongoing pain and suffering of Iraqis.”I just can not understand why the insurgents target the civilians. They are not security forces like us. They don’t cause any harm to anyone. They just want to live”

With these words and with a strong will to control the tears, the policeman who escorted me to the scene of yesterday’s explosion started the conversation. I couldn’t give him any answer because the same question troubles my mind. The blast  killed at least 16 people and wounded some 45. The death toll likely rose today.

This blog acts as a commentary and follow up of the story itself which questions the so-called stability of Baghdad and a recent spout of violence.

The bombing rattled public confidence in government efforts to promote an atmosphere of business as usual, with three world leaders visiting Baghdad this week. The blast, which also wounded more than 45 people, called into question just how safe Baghdad is these days.

 The pictorial and editiorial efforts of this journalist create a vivid picture of the trauma and suffering, each of the seven photos enhancing the story of on-going pain & destruction one that we fail to see in numb news coverage and a 30 second speel on yet another bombing in Iraq in most media coverage which we have become so accustomed to seeing. 

This form of media is emotionally charged, allowing us as readers to connect on a whole new level, bringing the utter devastation to the forefront,  to understand on a deeper level, to see how spilt Iraqi blood is a part of everyday life, to realise the great injustices and to question how well major media report on Iraq …. 

The power of the Blogosphere must never be underestimated!

The Price of War.

The ABC published some interesting figures this week, noting the financial cost of the ‘War on Terror’. The Iraq War has made quite a substantial contribution to the now $1 trillion that has been spent by the US.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Iraq war accounted for $US533.5 billion in Defence Department spending obligations between 2001 and last December, while spending on operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and the Philippines totalled $US124.1 billion.

Last year’s obligations totalled $US162.4 billion.

So,  lets take a brief moment to see how well this money has been spent.

Iraqi Civilian deaths -100,000 according to Iraq body count

US Military Deaths -4265

Weapons of Mass Destruction – Zero

George Bush declaring “Mission Accomplised”  -Priceless

And people are still dying for no reason, the US economy continues to plummet but lets keep throwing $720 million (per day!) at a pointless, resultless and illegal war in Iraq.

America’s own terrorists stand trial.

 

 

"The Hooded Man" Torture in Abu Ghraib

It’s quite ironic that in George Bush’s “War on Terror” the US military was able to produce some terrorists of it’s own . In March 2007 3 American soldiers allegedly bound, blindfolded and executed 4 Iraqi prisoners then dumped their bodies in a canal to hide their hideous crimes.

Joseph P. Mayo is standing trial as i type on charges of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, and obstruction of justice, according to an army statement.

Although there has been a shortage of violence in recent months in Iraq, the sheer devastation which the war caused has provided no shortage of  media interest and coverage in ‘follow-up’ stories.

This article published in The Australian tends to focus on the current trials of Mayo, John E. Hatley and Michael P. Leahy (an Army medic- go figure) and the ‘canal executions’, but is sure to remind the readers that this was not one iscolated incident and recaps on a string of  allegations of violence and torture towards Iraqi civilians and prisoner executions.

Several US troops have already faced trial in connection with alleged or proven killings in Iraq, at courts both there and in the United States.

In one case, eight US Marines were initially charged in connection with the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha, west of Baghdad, in November 2005.

So far, at least seven of the accused have either been acquitted or had charges withdrawn before court martial.

In another case involving the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her father, mother and younger sister, four soldiers were convicted by a court martial and handed sentences of up to 110 years in prison.

The last defendant, Steven D. Green, is to be tried next month in a civilian court in Paducah, Kentucky and could face the death penalty if convicted.

This article is relatively fair to the subject and is primarily narrative based, but evokes the idea that Saddam’s rule of Torture and Humiliation has been replaced by America’s own in Abu Ghraib and left me questioning.. who are the real terrorists?