After Chattanooga, arm troops stateside?; Lockheed acquires Blackhawk maker Sikorsky; Trump insults his way to relevance; Dempsey’s final word on Iraq; And a bit more.
The search for answers in last Thursday’s shooting that killed five service members at two military centers in Chattanooga, Tenn., now includes depression, drug and alcohol abuse—as well as a trip to Jordan last year where the shooter reportedly attempted to “clean himself up.”
First responses: take guns out... and hide your uniforms? “Governors in at least a half-dozen states ordered National Guardsmen to be armed…and Florida Gov. Rick Scott went a step further Saturday by immediately relocat[ing] recruiters to armories,” AP reported yesterday. The states include Scott’s Florida, plus Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Indiana. And the Marines Corps’ recruiting command raised force protection levels to “Charlie,” and told recruiters to stop wearing their uniforms on the job, which has outraged many vets and service members. Military Times’ Jeff Schogol has it here.
Lawmakers promise new measures allowing armed recruiters, but it’s anyone’s guess if they’ll move on that this week. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week the nationwide response will be a Defense Department policy decision following a thorough investigation—not that that will keep lawmakers (in Tennessee and in Congress) from sponsoring legislation on it. How thorough...?
One week to come up with a plan: Defense Secretary Ash Carter directed the services to take “additional force protection measures at our bases and installations” and asked the services to get back to him over the next few days with recommendations. “Obviously force protection everywhere around the world, abroad and now at home, is a big priority for us at the department, and will continue to be,” Carter said, en route to Tel Aviv.
Thursday’s attack was not terrorism—“It was a rational, horrific act of war” that deliberately targeted American soldiers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Slate’s William Saletan argued late last week in this provocative piece parsing legal definitions coupled with some uncomfortable truths about the U.S. global counterterrorism campaign.
A Purple Heart debate already is brewing for the five troops killed in Thursday’s attack. US News’ Paul Shinkman has that angle—and how it all hinges on motive—here.
BREAKING: Lockheed Martin this morning announced it will acquire helicopter maker Sikorsky for $9 billion. (After tax benefits, the cost is reduced to $7.1 billion, according to a Lockheed statement.) The U.S. government must still approve the deal, which is projected to be finalized by the end of the year. Check back with Defense One for more on this today.
Dempsey’s final answer: No more U.S. troops are needed in Iraq, even as Sunni-Shia rifts are slowing Baghdad’s offensive to recapture the Ramadi, in Anbar. Foreign Policy’s Dan De Luce reports while traveling with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey on what many consider to be his last trip to Iraq as America’s top military officer.
“Officials inside the Iraqi government had an ‘internal debate’ about which forces should take the lead and which city held by the jihadists should be targeted first,” Dempsey said, according to FP. “In a compromise, Iraqi leaders agreed to target Ramadi first with government security forces at the forefront while Shiite militias would stage a blocking action on the outskirts of Fallujah to choke off key supply lines.”
“Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry, defended the tempo of the offensive near Ramadi and said bridges and other key areas had been seized on the outskirts of the city this week. He said the operation was being carried out in a deliberate manner to avoid civilian deaths or unnecessary damage to the city’s infrastructure. ‘We are not in a hurry,’” he said.
Dempsey, after meeting with coalition commanders on Saturday: “I asked the senior leaders point-blank: ‘Are we at the point where, in order to make sure this mission succeeds, that we need to be here in greater numbers and go farther forward?’ And the answer was ‘no.’” More from USA Today, here.
The Islamic State group, or ISIS, claimed Friday’s bombing in eastern Iraq that killed more than 115 and wounded more than 100 others. “The bomb tore through a marketplace on Friday as shoppers prepared for a major Muslim holiday in Khan Bani Saad, a mostly Shiite town about 12 miles from Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province,” the New York Times reports.
Meantime in Syria, the U.S.-led coalition has dropped leaflets over ISIS headquarters in Raqqa promising “freedom will come,” AP reported yesterday.
Carter, in Israel, played his part, saying the Iran deal does nothing to take the U.S. military option off the table, AP reports. His words—which Iran’s foreign minister called “an unwise and dangerous temptation—came after wrapping talks with Israeli officials concerned about, among other things, the security implications of an anticipated $10 billion post-sanctions jolt to the Iranian economy.
“Pentagon officials say Carter’s visit was planned prior to the conclusion of nuclear talks and is not intended as a reassurance tour,” the Washington Post reported last night. “But this week’s meetings in Tel Aviv and in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, will focus in part on plans for countering Iran’s support for common adversaries, which include the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Houthi rebels in Yemen.” Other announced stops to come: Saudi Arabia and Jordan, where concerns brewing between strange bedfellows against ISIS and Iran remain front and center.
Hey, Kerry tried to get Congress first dibs. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during last week’s Iran nuclear talks tried to get Congress the first say at the new accord prior to international review at the U.N. Security Council. But Kerry was shot down by Iran, Russia and others at the table in Vienna, NYTs reports. A letter sent to the White House late last week by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senators Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., has done little to change procedures for today’s UNSC vote, scheduled for 9 a.m. EDT. More below on Congressional review.
NATO friendly fire kills Afghans. “Poor coordination” is to blame for a NATO airstrike Monday morning that killed seven of Kabul’s troops about 30 miles east of the capital in Logar province, AP reports.
From Defense One
Searching through digital clues for insider threats is unimaginably daunting—and the Pentagon wants to do it anyway. How daunting? For example, if you were to scan every piece of electronic communication between soldiers and their contacts from Fort Hood, Texas, ahead of the 2009 attack, your graph would include nearly 15 million different nodes—people, devices, and other communication points—and almost 5 billion messages. Tech Editor Patrick Tucker explains how it gets even more complicated from there, beginning right here.
Trying to regulate war and terrorism on social media: Two provisions floating around the House and the Senate are part of the growing U.S. efforts to counter terrorists’ use of social media. But they unfortunately leave many tech and security policy questions unanswered, the Council on Foreign Relations’ David Fidler writes.
On the Iran deal, it’s not too soon to ask if it was worth it, Brookings’ Shadi Hamid writes in this piece, saying the U.S. compromised too much for a deal that is, “on balance, ‘good’—but only if we read the agreement in a vacuum.”
Welcome to Monday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Kevin Baron. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Find our subscribe link here. (And if you want to view today’s edition in your browser, you can do that here.) And please tell us what you like, don’t like, or want to drop on our radar right here at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
Ok, ok….sigh...Trump. When Mitt Romney says you shot your own campaign in the foot, it’s pretty bad. Donald Trump is taking fire for saying of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. on Saturday: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump, predictably, is standing by his remarks about McCain, a Vietnam War veteran who was tortured as a prisoner of war.
McCain’s response on Monday’s Morning Joe: “I’m not a hero,” [but] Trump “owes an apology to the families of those who have sacrificed in conflict and those who have undergone a prison experience in serving their country.” That here.
“Shouldn’t we just keep our war heroes’ military records off the political table, once and for all,” asked Scarborough. Good question. McCain agreed, noting he strongly opposed the Swift-boating of fellow Vietnam vet John Kerry in 2004.
Rick Perry, a veteran and former Texas gov: “Donald Trump owes every American veteran and in particular John McCain an apology.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close McCain friend who just retired from the Air Force after decades of service, predicted early voters would tell Trump: “You’re fired.” Romney tweeted: “The difference between @SenJohnMcCain and @realDonaldTrump: Trump shot himself down. McCain and American veterans are true heroes.” Read more about how Trump’s greatest liability is Trump in this great piece over at The New York Times.
Speaking of McCain and Graham, the three amigos are getting back together—Graham, McCain, and former Independent Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, are reuniting to launch what Graham’s presidential campaign has dubbed the “No Nukes for Iran” Tour, “aimed at encouraging members of Congress to vote against the bad deal negotiated by the Obama Administration.” First stop: a “town hall” Monday in New York City, followed by Indiana, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Minnesota, “and more” over the next 60 days—timed to coincide with Congress’s review period for the deal. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Sunday they had officially transmitted the Iran agreement to Congress, meaning today, July 20, is Day One of the two-month congressional review.
Half of all execs who work in “critical infrastructure” think a cyberattack is three years away. Energy producers, financial services, transportation companies, telecommunications companies types spoke up, according to a new report released today from Aspen Institute. More than 70 percent of survey respondents think cybersecurity threats to their organization are escalating. The execs also support cyber information sharing between businesses and government to prevent attacks, with some three-quarters agreeing greater cooperation was key to preventing and recovering from cyber attacks.
Nobody believes the (yawn) “cyber Pearl Harbor” will hit them. “When asked to evaluate their security posture in retrospect, 50 percent reported that they would have considered their organizations ‘very or extremely’ vulnerable three years ago; by comparison, only 27 percent believe that their organizations are currently ‘very or extremely’ vulnerable.” Read the report in full, here.
Cyber cheaters on Ashley Madison (Now do we have your attention?) face cyber vigilantism. Avid Life Media, parent company of the sadly popular marital cheating site Ashley Madison, has acknowledged that they suffered a big breach. The hackers, a group calling themselves Impact Team, are demanding that Avid Life Media take “take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. The other websites may stay online.” Krebs on Security has that one.
And airmen at Alabama’s Maxwell Air Force Base could soon have the option of attending a new “cyber college,” Air Force Times reports here.
Ben & Jerry’s loves the Pentagon! Well… Robert Holland, the former CEO of ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is joining the Pentagon’s Defense Business Board, a wing composed of experts offering a fresh perspective on reforming the department’s acquisition process. “Holland spent most of his career in more conventional businesses, from Mobil Oil to Mckinsey & Co. where he gained a reputation as a 'turnaround artist' who could rescue companies from their own dysfunction — something the Pentagon could use.”
Also joining the board: Retired Marine Corps two-star Arnold Punaro, who is “a gleeful bomb-thrower with zero patience for Pentagon inefficiency and real eagerness for radical solutions,” according to Figuro News. “That includes a non-entirely-joking proposal to make a pile of every procurement regulation and “put a match to it.” For a full list of the new members, head over here.