Today's D Brief: Trump’s unexpected Iraq news; He wants sheriffs at polls; CDC reclaims Covid data; Pompeo’s pad; GOP’s QAnon problem; Postal Service 5-O; And a bit more.
The U.S. military will be leaving Iraq “shortly,” President Donald Trump blurted out Thursday — but he gave no specific date or timeline when speaking to reporters during Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi’s first meeting at the White House.
“We have been taking our troops out of Iraq fairly rapidly, and we look forward to the day when we don’t have to be there,” Trump said. “We were there, and now we’re getting out,” he continued. “We’ll be leaving shortly.”
How shortly? When a reporter pressed the president on a timeline, Trump turned to Secretary of State Pompeo, “Mike, what would you say to that?” Pompeo: “As soon as we can complete the mission.”
Are they serious? Trump said this halfway through a standard Q&A with with visiting new Iraqi prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi. It wasn’t a formal announcement, and it came after about 10 other versions of Trump causally boasting how he’s reduced U.S. troops there and in Syria.
BTW: Roughly 5,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Iraq, training and supporting the Iraqi military, including in the ongoing fight against ISIS, Defense One’s Katie Bo Williams reports.
Trump also gloated about his Syria pullout order. “As you know, in Syria we're down to almost nothing, except we kept the oil. But we'll work out some kind of a deal with the Kurds on that. But we left, but we kept the oil. And we left the border. We said Turkey and Syria can take care of their own border; we don't have to do it. And that worked out very well."
To the doubters, he said, “I remember when I did that, I was scorned by everybody. They said, ‘This is terrible.’ Well, I did it. It's now two years ago. ...we removed our troops. Nobody was killed. Nobody. And now they protect their own border like they have been for hundreds of years. And we’ll — we've left. But we did keep a small force, and we kept the oil. And we'll make a determination on that oil fairly soon.”
Rapid counterpoint. Brett McGurk, ISIS war envoy under Trump who quit in protest of the pullout alongside SecDef Jim Mattis, said the president “has NO CLUE what’s going on with US troops under his command and in harm’s way,” in a tweet Thursday, shortly after the Kadhimi-Trump presser. “His own SECDEF [Mark Esper] consistently says they’re doing something different from what he says they’re doing. This is totally incoherent and dangerous.”
What’s more concerning, McGurk asked, “Does [Trump] know US troops 48 HOURS AGO were in a firefight with Syrian regime forces?” He then shared a video link of that firefight, which you can see here.
And one more thing: “The US military statement about the firefight says nothing about ‘keeping oil’ because it knows such a mission would be illegal,” McGurk tweeted, concluding, “Trump has no idea our troops are now forced to navigate checkpoints manned by Syrian and Russian forces on a regular basis.”
Guess who McGurk has endorsed for president? The diplomat is the first person to appear in the big video of national security leaders supporting Joe Biden, aired at this week’s Democratic National Convention.
Bigger picture: “The meetings this week [between Iraqi and White House officials] were part of a broader strategic dialogue between the two countries to reconfigure relations,” Defense One’s Williams writes. Read on, here.
From Defense One
Trump Says US Troops Will Leave Iraq 'Shortly' But Provides No Timeline // Katie Bo Williams: Pompeo said it would take place "as soon as we can complete the mission."
An AI Just Beat a Human F-16 Pilot In a Dogfight — Again // Patrick Tucker: In five rounds, an artificially-intelligent agent showed that it could outshoot other AI's, and a human. So what happens next with AI in air combat?
A Great Change is Coming // Amir Husain: Software, AI, autonomy — these are the ultimate weapons. The Pentagon must get serious about integrating AI into everything it has for 'hyperwar.'
Pentagon Extends Deadline for Contractors' Ban on Chinese Equipment // Mila Jasper: Vendors will get additional time to comply, but the department is not seeking mass extensions, Acquisition Chief Ellen Lord told reporters.
This week's Global Business Brief // Marcus Weisgerber: UAE has long wanted F-35; Days numbered for US using Russian rockets; Space Symposium delayed to mid-2021 and more.
NSA Offers Tips To Limit Location Data Exposure // Mila Jasper: The National Security Agency released a set of guidelines outlining how the federal workforce and the general public can mitigate risks associated with personal location data.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson with Kevin Baron. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1831, enslaved African-American preacher Nat Turner led a four-day rebellion of nearly 70 slaves and freed Black people in Southampton County, Va. The group attacked and killed approximately 60 white people, many of them women and children. Turner was captured and later hanged that November. Thirty-two years later, on this same August day in 1863, white former school teacher William Quantrill led a group of some 450 Confederate guerrillas in a massacre of more than 160 abolitionists at the Union town of Lawrence, Kansas. Quantrill was eventually killed almost two years later by Union troops in Central Kentucky.
Troops on Election Day? Well, President Trump pledged to send “sheriffs” and “law enforcement” to polling places this November 3. That’s what he told Sean Hannity during his purposefully timed live phone-in interview during Joe Biden’s acceptance speech, which was being carried on every other network other than Fox News.
Trump critics have been wondering aloud just how far the president will take his pre-election, unsubstantiated claims of mass fraud directed against him — and what Americans in and out of government should do about it. On Monday, he said, “The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” but the Washington Post reports why that’s not even something Trump can do.
"Trump has no authority to deploy local law enforcement officials to monitor elections, although his campaign could hire off-duty police to work the polls," Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine, told CNN. "If Trump did so, it likely would trigger legal action from Democrats, who would claim the move amounted to a voter-suppression tactic. And it would have echoes of a case that resulted in a federal court decree that for decades sharply restricted the Republican National Committee's 'ballot security' work without prior judicial approval.”
America’s coronavirus tracking data will now be rerouted back to the CDC, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. “The reversal comes after increasing reports that the new system has been plagued by delays and inconsistencies in data since being implemented in July. Among other things, certain key statistics, such as inpatient beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, were updated only once a week, rather than daily or multiple times a week, as under the CDC system.”
Update: More than 174,000 Americans have died from coronavirus complications to date, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. The New York Times reports there’s been a 17 percent decrease in new cases across the country over the past week (compared to the two weeks prior).
Where cases per capita are still rising: Virgin Islands, North Dakota, Guam, Iowa, Kansas, Hawaii, South Dakota, Wyoming, Connecticut, Maine and Vermont.
CDC’s new data tracking plan involves working in collaboration with the U.S. Digital Service, which the Journal reminds us was the “small agency set up during the Obama administration to help improve HealthCare.gov, the website that administered the market for insurance plans as part of the Affordable Care Act.” They’re now tasked with “build[ing] a modernized automation process” for hospital data, an HHS official said.
The old plan: “The [Department of Health and Human Services] instructed hospitals last month to no longer report numbers on new cases, hospital capacity, inventories of key supplies and other data through the CDC’s National Health Safety Network,” the Journal writes. “Instead, the facilities were directed to report daily numbers through the HHS Protect system using software provided by TeleTracking Technologies Inc., a hospital IT specialist that won a roughly $10 million contract with the HHS this year."
By the way, “A Congressional subcommittee said it was investigating whether the switch was politically motivated.” Read on, here.
GOP reactions to Trump’s embrace of QAnon. With the ongoing pandemic harming Trump re-election prospects, Trump and Republicans across the country “appear to have taken to openly courting believers” in the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon, the New York Times reported Thursday. Adherents include the Texas Republican Party, House candidate Lauren Boebert from Colorado, Oregon Senate candidate Jo Rae Perkins, and "a heavily favored Republican congressional candidate in Georgia," Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It should be noted, “There is hardly universal support inside the party for QAnon,” the Times writes. However, “far more than any congressional candidate, it is Mr. Trump and his campaign surrogates who are normalizing QAnon inside the Republican Party.”
Some of GOP voices speaking out against QAnon include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy from California, Sen. Liz Cheney from Wyoming, and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse. Read on at the Times, here.
Happening now: Trump mega-donor and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is currently testifying (livestream here) before senators in defense of his first three months overseeing the Postal Service. Right at the top, he’s already refused to reinstate the removed postal sorting machines, an issue that was just one spark to the firestorm of election fraud claims. “There is no intention to do that,” he told Congress. (On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said he told her that, btw.)
ICYMI: Congress wants to know why the Chinese are helping the Saudis build uranium plants, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have requested a White House briefing, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
“The Saudis appear to be hiding significant parts of their nuclear program, which calls into question their intentions,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told the Journal, adding that “China is exploiting the situation.”
Signatories to the letter also include Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; Rand Paul, R-Ky. A bit more behind the paywall, here.
Pompeo’s living in Army officer housing at Fort Myer. Is that legal? On a hill overlooking Arlington National Cemetery, one highway exit away from the Pentagon, with stunning 180-degree views of Washington, DC’s monuments and skyline, there are a couple rows of elegant brick houses. Among them live, usually, members of the Joint Chiefs, including the chairman, the Air Force chief, and the Army chief. The rest are reserved for senior Army officers. And now Mike Pompeo.
Early in his tenure, Politico reported Thursday. “Pompeo and his aides initially tried to arrange for the chief U.S. diplomat and his family to live close to the State Department in the Potomac Hill campus, where the Navy maintained some homes.” — which is where Adm. Mike Mullen lived as Navy chief and Joint Chiefs chairman, next door to SecDef Robert Gates — “But ultimately the Pompeos moved into U.S. Army housing at the Fort Myer base in Virginia, according to people familiar with the issue.”
Context: The Pompeos sold their Kansas home several years ago and rented a Virgina home while he was CIA director. That’s normal. Pompeo asked the agency to remodel a mansion-conference center property into a home for himself. That’s not normal. For the Fort Myer request, State says its lawyers cleared it, but, "the memo comes to light as the State Department inspector general’s office pursues a probe of whether Pompeo and his wife, Susan, have improperly used taxpayer resources for personal reasons." Read on, here.
Bad grades for U.S. Navy shipyards: "75% of planned maintenance periods were completed late for aircraft carriers and submarines in FY 2015-2019, with an average delay of 113 days for carriers and 225 days for submarines," the GAO writes in a new report.
The two main causes for the delays: "Unplanned work that is identified after maintenance planning is finished, and shipyard workforce performance and capacity. As a result, the Navy relies on the excessive use of overtime to attempt to address these issues."
Apropos of nothing: Russian mercs really don’t like being watched. Bellingcat has uncovered internal Wagner documents that show a CNN team was intentionally harassed and followed throughout its reporting trip on Russian mercenaries in Central African Republic.
And don’t miss our podcast on the Wagner group from earlier this year, here.
And finally today, from the Steve Bannon indictment: Someone appears to have used border wall money to buy a boat that’s named “Warfighter,” the New York Times Evan Hill noticed Thursday on Twitter.
ICYMI: Bannon was arrested by inspectors from the U.S. Postal Service — with an assist from the Coast Guard — while cruising the Long Island Sound, near Connecticut, in a $28 million mega yacht called “Lady May.” Read the local coverage from the Hartford Courant, here.
And Vox reminds us: “Yes, the post office can arrest people.”
Have a safe weekend, everyone. And we’ll see you again on Monday!