For the most part, the news media missed the entire story as it unfolded.

For all the hype of today's 24/7 instantaneous news, the media were consistently about six months behind important developments on the ground in Iraq. Newspaper readers in 1876 got more timely information about the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

The author will host a live chat at 1330 EDT today.

Do you agree with the assessment? Can you think of more examples? Counter-examples? Is there an open source group doing a better job reading the tea leaves (not just reciting the party line) than journalists at large, or a sub-group of journalists that are providing more reliable and less trailing indicators? Your thoughts welcome here in comments below at any time, and on USA Today at 1330.

Officials: Belt-tightening Will Cut 1 Command - Anne Gearan, Associated Press. Officials briefed on the decision say Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to eliminate a major military command in Norfolk, Va., and try to cut the Pentagon's use of outside contractors by 10 percent next year.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will conduct a press briefing at 2:30 p.m. EDT in the DoD Briefing Room, Pentagon 2E973.

Andrew Exum at Abu Muqawama - "One of the wisest military analysts I know remarked, upon hearing the rumors, that JFCOM does three valuable things that either the joint staff or another command will now have to pick up: 1) Writing joint doctrine, 2) Monitoring force readiness and modernization across the services, and 3) Coordinating U.S. and NATO modernization efforts."

Update

Via the press briefing here's SECDEF Gates decisions:

1. Reduce the funding for support contractor personnel by 10 percent a year for the next three years.

2. Freeze number of Office of the Secretary of Defense, defense agency and combatant command manpower positions at the fiscal 2010 levels for the next three years.

3. Freeze the number of senior Defense Department leaders at fiscal 2010 levels. Expect this effort to cut at least 50 general and flag officer positions and 150 senior civilian executive positions over the next two years.

4. Increase the use of common information technology functions within DoD.

5. Freeze overall number of required oversight reports, cut by a quarter the money allocated to these reports.

6. Eliminate boards and commissions no longer needed and cut overall funding by 25 percent for these boards and commissions.

7. Immediate 10 percent cut in funding for intelligence advisory and assistance contracts and a freeze in the number of senior executive service positions. Also moving to end needless duplication in the DoD intelligence community.

8. Eliminate the offices of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Network Integration and the Joint Staff's section for command, control, communications, and computer systems.

9. Eliminate the Business Transformation Agency.

10. Eliminate U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Update # 2

Sec. Gates Announces Efficiencies Initiatives - DoD News Release. Today, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced a series of initiatives designed to reduce overhead, duplication, and excess in the Department of Defense, and, over time, instill a culture of savings and restraint in America's defense institutions. These initiatives represent the latest of the secretary's efforts to re-balance the priorities of the department and reform the way the Pentagon does business. As part of the fiscal 2010 budget, the department curtailed or cancelled nearly 20 troubled or excess programs - programs that if pursued to completion would have cost more than $300 billion. Additional program savings have been recommended in the defense budget request submitted this year.

Gates Announces Defense Cuts, Allocates Funds to Priority Needs - Al Pessin, Voice of America. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday announced the elimination of a major U.S. combat command and other steps designed to save money and protect his department's ability to defend the country during a time of economic constraints.

Obama Calls Gates Announcement 'Step Forward in Reform' - American Forces Press Service. President Barack Obama today called Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' announcement concerning Pentagon efficiency initiatives "another step forward in the reform efforts he has undertaken to reduce excess overhead costs, cut waste, and reform the way the Pentagon does business." In a written statement, Obama added that the initiatives "will ensure that our nation is safer, stronger, and more fiscally responsible."

Mullen Issues Statement on Gates Initiatives - American Forces Press Service. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a statement today supporting initiatives announced by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates designed to make the Defense Department more efficient.

Joint Forces Command Responds to Gates Announcement - American Forces Press Service. We all will work to carry out the Secretary's decision to disestablish Joint Forces Command. There will be much hard work and analysis in the time ahead and we will do the best we can to provide solid data on which to base decisions.

Gates Strives to Change Pentagon's Culture - Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service. The initiative to reduce Defense Department overhead and to eliminate duplicative capabilities is part of a larger thrust to change the culture of the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today.

Making Good on Pledge, Gates Outlines Military Cuts - Thom Shanker, New York Times

Gates: Pentagon to Cut Thousands of Jobs - Craig Whitlock, Washington Post

Gates' Budget Ax Swings at Pentagon Overhead, Joint Forces Command - Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor

Gates Orders Cuts in Pentagon Bureaucracy - David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times

Officials: Belt-Tightening Will Cut Major Command - Anne Flaherty and Anne Gearan, Associated Press

Defense Secretary Gates Targets Jobs - Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today

Gates Puts Meat on Bone of Department Efficiencies Initiative - Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service

Gates Says Defense Bureaucracy Bloated, Declares Cuts in Contractor Jobs - Viola Gienger, Bloomberg

Gates Announces Major Personnel Cuts at Defense - Katherine McIntire Peters, Government Executive

U.S. Defence Secretary Gates Proposes Officer Corps Cuts - BBC News

Pentagon to Cut Contractor Budget 10 Percent a Year - Agence France-Presse

Webb Expresses Concern about Norfolk Command - Jeff E. Shapiro, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Virginia Stands to Feel the Most Pain from Defense Cuts - Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post

Gates will Eliminate Norfolk's Joint Forces Command - Kate Wiltrout, Virginia-Pilot

Bipartisan Group Blasts Defense Closure Plan - R.E. Spears III, Suffolk News-Herald

Va. Governor, U.S. Reps Condemn Pentagon's Cuts - Bob Lewis, Business Week

McDonnell Attacks Joint Forces Command Decision - David Macaulay, Newport News Daily Press

Gates to Shut Down Va. Command - Jen Dimascio, Politico

JFCOM to Be Shut Down? - Max Boot, Commentary

The Political Audacity of Bob Gates - Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic

Gates Launches Latest Battle Against waste... and Against Congress - Josh Rogan, Foreign Policy

Pentagon War on Waste: Winners and Losers - Sandra Erwin, Defense News Magazine

'Culture of Savings and Restraint' - Colin Clark, DoD Buzz

Odierno Yet Again Asked to Eliminate His Job - Craig Whitlock, Washington Post

A Different Kind of War tells the story of how the coalition planned the campaign against the Taliban regime and then used its military forces to overthrow that regime in 2001. The study then focuses on how The U.S. Army came to take a leading role in a campaign that evolved after the establishment of a new government for Afghanistan in 2002. That new campaign slowly evolved into a counterinsurgency effort that featured combat missions, reconstruction operations, and training programs for a new Afghan army. The study closes with a chapter that highlights the implications for The U.S. Army of these four years of operations in Afghanistan.

Download A Different Kind of War at the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute.

A Small Wars Journal / MountainRunner Crosspost

Last week, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) convened the third annual Magharebia.com Writers Workshop. The workshop is a professional development course for new and established writers for AFRICOM's Maghreb-centered news and information website, www.Magharebia.com. According to AFRICOM public affairs, the event "introduced new media tools and technologies while stressing the importance of sound journalistic principles for writing, blogging and podcasting."

The website www.Magharebia.com was started in 2005 by U.S. European Command (EUCOM) to "reach out to a younger audience in the North Africa region with news, sports, entertainment, and current affairs about the Maghreb in English, French and Arabic." It is similar to EUCOM's other sponsored news and information website, www.SETimes.com, "the news and views of Southeast Europe."

These news sites are established and maintained under the regional Combatant Commander's theater security requirement. In other words, due to the absence of information outlets focused on the region (excluding tightly controlled local propaganda stations), the Defense Department created and maintains these sites to provide news, analysis, and commentary collected from international media and contributors paid by the Combatant Commands. Their purpose is to increase awareness of regional and global issues to mitigate security threats that may stem from a lack of information, misinformation, or disinformation by local populations.

The purpose of the sites and the training is laudable and required. The just concluded professional development conference is great in that it promotes an exchange of ideas, encourages proper journalistic practices, and explores the use of new technologies. However, this and the sites themselves should be conducted, guided, and managed by the State Department, primarily State's public diplomacy professionals.

The problem, of course, is resources. The State Department lacks both the money, the headcount, and the skills to create and manage sites like www.Magharebia.com and www.SETimes.com. The Defense Department, specifically the Combatant Commands, has a valid requirement the State Department cannot support at this time resulting in the continued militarization of America's engagement with global audiences.

The State Department, specifically the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, must be empowered and equipped (money and personnel) to take over these activities that support the requirements of the U.S. Government's engagement around the world.

Establishing regional sites (and transferring existing sites) like Magharebia and SETimes is important. These should not be brought under the umbrella of www.America.gov, which, with the passage of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2010, should be split up, with parts merged with www.State.gov and other parts into regional sites.

These sites could continue to operate in close proximity to the Government or become surrogate sites similar to RFE/RL.

These sites could move into State's geographic bureaus, but these also do not have the skills, capabilities, or authorities necessary. State's geographic bureaus are headed by an Assistant Secretary, a rank that lacks the necessary political power and highlights State's organizational focus on countries rather than regions.

The best model is to expand and empower State's public diplomacy and public affairs office as a global communicator for both the enterprise and across the government, as the situation warrants. State would be a service provider, supporting requirements and providing guidance and integration. It should have been doing this for years, but State's long lasting focus on diplomacy, rather than public diplomacy, plus Congressional misunderstanding of the requirements of civilian-led communication and engagement, created a vacuum, which the Defense Department (often unwillingly, tentatively, and frequently clumsily) filled.

These websites should be a topic of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy as a case study in unmet requirements and the building of capabilities, capacities, and addition of necessary authorities to demilitarize America's public diplomacy (or government-sponsored communication for those who disagree VOA et al are "public diplomacy"). This should also be a subject of inquiry by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as explored by the new Coordinator for the Bureau of International Information Programs.

What do you think?

See also:

Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2010

A Proposal for Reorganization at Foggy Bottom

Do we need a National Strategy on Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication?

Reforming Smith-Mundt: Making American Public Diplomacy Safe for Americans

"I think one of the hardest nuts to crack is that we have traditionally depended on suppressive fires to enable our maneuver. Will we have the ability to conduct suppression on suspected adversary positions, or will ROE demand clearly identifiable targets? Against a foe using a Hizbollah style defense, suppression would be the best way to get dispersed maneuver forces close enough to uncover the small enemy elements, especially those that will use the population as cover. Absent active suppression, we have to "lead with our chin" and allow them the first shot (basically an ambush) before going in. If the adversary has the advantage of choosing to initiate combat, it will be tough going, especially during initial assault/insertion phases. This is especially true if he is armed with a fair number of simple G-RAMMs, or coastal anti-ship missiles."

What followed from Operation Desert Shield has been a Twenty Years War against Iraq. Or at least Twenty Years and Counting. Although the end of this long war now seems in sight, some analysts believe America's troubles in Iraq are destined to extend well beyond December 31, 2011.

Some readers of this blog, along with many soldiers who have recently fought in Iraq, were not born when Operation Desert Shield began. With that thought in mind, we should pause on this 20th anniversary to contemplate whether the Twenty Years War was inevitable and whether it represented the best (least cost, least risk) choice available to U.S. policymakers.

In March 1991, President George H.W. Bush and his advisers opted for a Treaty of Versailles type settlement after the liberation of Kuwait. Saddam's regime was allowed to stay but was isolated and punished. Many at the time called for a Tokyo Bay solution -- a march to Baghdad, the removal of the regime, and presumably some sort of occupation. Bush the Elder and his advisers rejected that, explaining that such a course exceeded their mandate and would fracture the coalition they had assembled.

As the Twenty Years War has revealed, Bush the Elder's Versailles settlement didn't work any better than its namesake after World War I. In 2003, Bush the Younger attempted to finally bring the low-level war to an end by executing the Tokyo Bay option. The result was much pain and still no certainty that the Twenty Years War is really coming to an end.

Were there any other realistic options? Could Bush the Elder have opted for a Congress of Vienna instead of Versailles? Just as the European powers brought in Talleyrand to the Congress of Vienna and eventually allowed France a largely equal say after the Napoleonic Wars, should the United States and the other victors after the Kuwait war have worked with Saddam to establish a stable regional settlement? Iranian power still needed balancing, a role Iraq had played in the 1980s, and one Iraq still needs to play. By passing on a Congress of Vienna solution, did Bush the Elder pass up an opportunity to turn Iraq from a liability into an asset?

We have to assume that Bush, James Baker, and Brent Scowcroft, all experienced realists, were fully aware of the Congress of Vienna option. The obvious problem was that from a U.S. perspective, Saddam was simply too toxic to deal with. In order to generate public support for a military offensive to eject the Iraqi army from Kuwait -- which at the time many feared would become another Battle of the Somme -- Bush had to amplify Saddam's evil impression. That succeeded in generating support for the offensive. But it ruled out a Congress of Vienna after the war. In theory, the Clinton administration could have made a fresh diplomatic approach to Iraq. But the cost at the time of maintaining the Versailles settlement seemed low while the political risk of approaching Saddam was deemed too high.

War termination is a messy subject. The Twenty Years War goes on. Happy Anniversary!

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Writing in Small Wars Journal, Gregory Conti and Jen Easterly, both U.S. Army lieutenant colonels, discussed the problems the military faces recruiting "cyber warriors" into the newly created Cyber Command, which aims to "conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to ... ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."

Yet Conti and Easterly note that Cyber Command will recruit from an already tiny pool of cybersavvy talent, a pool made even smaller by Cyber Command's requirement that its soldiers pass security clearances, polygraph examinations, and drug screening. Meanwhile, Cyber Command will have to compete with the likes of Google for talented techies who may not find military culture all that inviting. It should come as no surprise to eventually find Cyber Command mostly staffed by highly-paid civilian contractors rather than uniformed soldiers or career civil servants.

Cyber Command's recruiting difficulties are a microcosm of the broader troubles the military, especially the Army, now faces. The all-volunteer military has been a success and should be retained. But evidence continues to mount that the Army has grown as big as it can under the all-volunteer system. If circumstances ever required a significantly larger Army, Army leaders and U.S. society would have to get used to an Army of much lower quality at the margin. Deploying such a force, especially into stability operations, would entail taking greater risks and paying higher costs.

The recently released Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Independent Panel report called for an overhaul in the military's personnel system. The report concluded that compensation costs for the all-volunteer force have exploded and are no longer sustainable. Active-duty head count has declined from 2 million in 1991 to 1.37 million in 2009. Yet in spite of this 32 percent decline in head count, military personnel costs (in constant 2005 dollars) have grown from $122 billion in 1991 to $130 billion in 2009 ($60,939 per head in 1991 versus $94,533 per head in 2009, adjusted for inflation).

Even with this vast expansion in soldier compensation, the Army has had to reduce enlistment standards to fill its ranks. According to the QDR Independent Panel, these reduced standards include raising the maximum enlistment age to 42; accepting more recruits without high school diplomas, with criminal records, and in Category IV (low mental aptitude) on the Armed Forces Qualification Test; and increasing the numbers of noncitizens serving. The overall population of the United States is growing, but the cohort qualified and —to volunteer for military service is shrinking. (Seventy-five percent of American youth are ineligible for military service for physical, mental, or educational reasons, or due to criminal records.) The prime recruiting base seems to be narrowing by geographic area and to families of veterans, increasingly turning military service into a "family guild."

Immediately after taking office, Defense Secretary Robert Gates directed the Army and Marine Corps to increase their headcounts in response to the pressures of Iraq and Afghanistan. Regrettably, this decision collided with the evaporating pool of suitable military recruits. The Army recently released a report that studied suicide prevention and the Army's mental-health issues. The report revealed a broader range of rising high-risk behaviors and criminality in the Army's ranks. Part, maybe most, of the increasing incidence of suicide in the Army is related to the strain of wartime deployments. But the report noted that 68 of the 120 suicides (57 percent) the Army suffered during the first half of 2010 were to soldiers who had zero or one deployment.

Over the past five years, the Army has suffered from increasing rates of discipline problems, crime, and drug use. The suicide prevention report noted that during this time, enlistment waivers increased and soldiers who previously would have been dismissed during initial training for unsuitability were instead retained, presumably due to the requirement to increase the Army's head count. Indeed, the Army calculated that one-third of the soldiers recruited to meet the Army's higher end-strength would have been dismissed from the service under the previous quality standards. It seems highly likely that the Army's retention of soldiers it would previously have found unsuitable for service is related to the increased suicide rate, along with other behavior problems.

Thus, in spite of sharply increased (and in my view, well-deserved) compensation, the Army has reached an upper boundary on its size -- unless Army leaders and the country are —to accept rapidly declining quality and rapidly increasing trouble at the margin. The increasing U.S. population is not offsetting the declining propensity to volunteer for military service or the shrinking percentage of the youth cohort medically, mentally, or socially qualified to serve.

If the Army has reached the bottom of its U.S.-based recruiting pool, where could it go for additional manpower if it needed to? The U.S. military has a long tradition of recruiting non-citizens into its ranks. This would be a tempting option for expansion although language, culture, and security clearance problems place limits on its use. Instead, foreign auxiliary forces, organized, trained, and equipped by U.S. special operations forces, are likely to be used to supplement deployed U.S. forces, especially during long low-intensity stabilization operations.

Finally, can a military culture attract and retain the widely diverse sets of skills needed for modern military campaigns? The problem extends beyond the culture clash between Cyber Command and Google as they bid for computer hackers. As we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, a stabilization campaign requires infantrymen, anthropologists, truck drivers, linguists, pilots, cost accountants, snipers, warehousemen, IT whizzes, negotiators, commandos, public relations artists, artillery gunners, teachers, report writers, construction foremen, nurses, and many other specialties.

But can one organizational culture hold together such a motley collection of specialists? The Army is trying but seems to be straining against a limit. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have compensated through the hiring of a vast number of contractors. Today, soldiers, civil servants, and contractors march off to the battlefield together.

Institutional culture is vital for the success of military organizations like the Army and Marine Corps. Such organizations take great risks when expansion requires them to lower their standards or when they attempt to absorb into their ranks outside cultures that are a bad match. The Pentagon's exploding personnel costs and the tragic consequences of the Army's need to lower its recruiting standards show that the military has reached the bottom of the U.S. recruiting pool.

If the Army needs additional manpower, perhaps it should be standard operating procedure for the Special Forces to recruit it from the indigenous population within the war zones. And maybe Cyber Command is best left for the contractors.

Presidents and Their Generals: A Conversation with Eliot Cohen - Q&A. When President Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal and sent General David Petraeus to Kabul in his stead, he wrote the latest chapter in a long narrative of civil-military tensions in America.

Ebb Tide - Seth Cropsey. American's many post-Cold War land wars have obscured important strategic truths, among them the real value of the U.S. Navy.

Caught on a Lee Shore - Dakota L. Wood. Redefining the strategic niche of the Marine Corps may be the key to a future as glorious as its past.

In the Army Now - Richard A. Lacquement, Jr. The Army's reluctant embrace of counterinsurgency and stability operations is the right choice. Now comes the hard part: to institutionalize it.

Up in the Air - Richard B. Andres. The Air Force is in a tailspin, and a fundamental strategic myopia is the reason.

Benevolent, Adaptable and Underappreciated - Jeff Robertson. A technology-enabled temptation to shorten the tether on Coast Guard operations threatens the future of a uniquely resourceful organization.

Unreserved Support - Paul McHale. A former Congressman makes the case for giving the Active Reserves their due.

Two good reads at the US Army War College's

Strategic Studies Institute:

Organizing To Compete in Political Terrain by Dr. Nadia Schadlow.

In this analysis, the author identifies some of the continuing obstacles to

achieving civil-military integration in war. She argues that there are continuing

disagreements about who should lead the shaping of the political landscape in

war and that while doctrine has advanced in this area, good doctrine does not

guarantee the effective execution of governance-related tasks. Sound operational

approaches are required as well.

Got Vision? Unity of Vision in Policy and Strategy: What It Is and Why We Need It

by Dr. Anna Simons

Moving beyond "unity of effort" and "unity of command," this monograph identifies

an overarching need for "unity of vision." Without someone at the helm who has a certain kind--not turn, not frame, but kind--of mind, asymmetric

confrontations will be hard (if not impossible) to win. If visionary generals

can be said to possess "coup d'oeil," then unity of vision is cross-cultural

coup d'oeil. As with strategic insight, either individuals have the ability

to take what they know of another society and turn this to strategic--and war-winning--effect,

or they do not. While having prior knowledge of the enemy is essential, strategy

will also only succeed if it fits "them" and fits "us." This means that to convey

unity of vision a leader must also have an intuitive feel for "us."

Both works are well worth a look. They're eminently relevant to current

issues and the broader practice of small wars, and are written by authors we respect a

great deal.