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the drones and the goons of baghdad...

goons in baghdad

U.S. Drones Patrolling Its Skies Provoke Outrage in Iraq

By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

BAGHDAD — A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.

The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering plans to field unarmed surveillance drones in a handful of other potentially “high-threat” countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.

The drones are the latest example of the State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, for example, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

pro-democracy bites the dust...

CAIRO — The American Embassy in Cairo on Sunday took the highly unusual step of sheltering U.S. citizens employed by ­nongovernmental organizations amid fears that they could be detained as part of a crackdown on pro-democracy groups, according to U.S. officials and a former NGO official.

The move comes a week after Sam LaHood, director of the International Republican Institute’s program in Egypt, was barred from boarding an international flight in Cairo. LaHood is the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Several other NGO workers later learned that they had also been barred from leaving the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/low-turnout-in-second-phase-of-egyptian-vote/2012/01/29/gIQAIpLFaQ_story.html?hpid=z4

trimming the frat...

The State Department has asked each component of the massive U.S. diplomatic mission in Baghdad to analyze how a 25 percent cut would affect operations, part of a rapidly moving attempt to save money and establish what a top official on Wednesday called “a more normalized embassy presence.”

“We’re going to be looking at how we’re going to do that over the next year,” said Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides. “What we’re not going to do is make knee-jerk decisions” that could jeopardize the security of the thousands of U.S. citizens working in Iraq, he said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/state-department-seeks-smaller-embassy-presence-in-baghdad/2012/02/08/gIQAQMX2zQ_story.html?hpid=z3

sending goons back to baghdad...

 

As the Fourth of July weekend comes to an end, most Americans are still recovering from BBQs and fireworks displays. For several hundred U.S. military personnel, however, the end of the weekend just marks the start of another week in Iraq, helping the struggling Iraqi government fend off the militants that have taken over a vast swath of territory. Since the crisis first began in mid-June, the Obama administration has announced several waves of troop movement into the region and into Iraq specifically. As of last week, the announced number heading for Iraq now totals 770, with almost all of those forces already in place prior to the recent holiday. Here’s a look at what those newly returned soldiers and other military personnel will be doing in Iraq for the foreseeable future:

Protecting the U.S. Embassy

The majority of the forces are being sent to Iraq with the goal of protecting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The embassy there is a massive, fortress-like compound — the largest and most expensive embassy the U.S. maintains — but despite its size, administration officials are still concerned with the potential for attacks on such a clear target. After the 2012 attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, which has lead to a massive political headache for the White House in the months since, the State Department has been eager to pull diplomats out of harm’s way.

It’s because of that worry that, as outgoing Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement on June 16, that the 270 military personnel that Obama was sending to the region would be assisting with “the temporary relocation of some staff from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to the U.S. Consulates General in Basra and Erbil and to the Iraq Support Unit in Amman.” Despite that, the administration insisted the “U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remains open, and a substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission.” After that initial wave of 275 was approved, a second letter was sent to Congress under the War Powers Resolution on June 30th, announcing the authorization of another 200 personnel to Baghdad, bring the total charged with providing security up to 470.

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/06/3456225/iraq-american-troops/

 

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