From today's Inside the Army (subscription required):
Senior Pentagon officials have prepared a memo for Defense Secretary Robert Gates' signature that would give US Special Operations Command the lead in overseeing US efforts to train foreign security forces, defense officials tell Inside the Army.
The decision to pick SOCOM for the job of managing the field of "security force assistance," or SFA, is all but made, according to sources. But publicly, officials are tight-lipped about the move because senior leaders are still reviewing what one official dubbed the "implementation memo" that would finalize the arrangement...
The memo, drafted by Michael Vickers, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, has yet to be blessed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, according to sources familiar with the document.
According to several officials, SOCOM chief Adm. Eric Olson has long been lobbying Pentagon leaders for the SFA lead.
Gates last year said the US military must increasingly take on the role of training and advising foreign security forces to prevent terrorists from destabilizing regions around the world where stability is crucial to American interests.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, officials believe a capable police and army are a prerequisite for the eventual withdrawal of US forces. "Arguably the most important military component in the war on terror is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern their own countries," Gates said in an Oct. 10, 2007, speech at the annual conference of the Association of the US Army in Washington.
According to defense officials, the debate in the Army about how to prepare the ground service for a greater role in mentoring foreign security forces centers around two questions: Does the service need a dedicated force structure for the mission, and should specialized forces or general-purpose forces take on the brunt of the work?...