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US Commander Orders Quick End to "Long War"    [

    Air Force Pinched by Iraq Ground War
    By Tom Raum
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 24 April 2007

    The Air Force's top general expressed frustration on Tuesday with the reassignment of troops under his command to ground jobs for which they were not trained, ranging from guarding prisoners to driving trucks and typing.

    Gen. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, said that over 20,000 airmen have been assigned worldwide into roles outside their specialties.

    With President Bush and Congress in a standoff over Iraq spending, the Pentagon is shifting money among services and accounts, including drawing down funds earmarked for other later purposes.

    "Somebody's going to have to pay us back," Moseley said. "I don't have to want to have concerns about getting that money back."

    In a breakfast session with a group of reporters, Moseley said he was trying to be realistic. "We live in a joint world. We live in a military that's at war. And we live in a situation where, if we can contribute, then sign me up for it."

    Still, the Air Force general added, "I'm less supportive of things outside our competency."

    He said people were being assigned to jobs they weren't trained for. He cited Air Force airmen being used to guard prisoners and to serve as drivers and cited one instance in which an Air Force surgeon was assigned typing chores after three days at her new post.

    "We got her back," Moseley said.

    Others are being assigned to help the Army provide security in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Moseley said he didn't mind the use of airmen as drivers as much as some of the other new duties usually performed by the Army, such as guarding prisoners.

    "Not only do we not have a prison, but very rarely do we have anybody in prison," he joked.

    "So, to take our people and train them to be a detainee-guarding entity requires `x' amount of time away from their normal job," said Moseley.

    "Those are the things that are very frustrating," he said.

    He said the swap-outs come at a time when the Air Force's budget is burdened, when there is little money for new aircraft and when maintaining an aging fleet of older planes, some of them going back to the 1950s and 1960s, is getting increasingly expensive.

    "Operational and maintenance costs have gone up 180 percent over the past 10 years, operating these old aircraft," he said.

    As part of Bush's troop buildup in order to try to secure Baghdad and nearby hot spots, there are currently about 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

    Of these, about 9,500 are Air Force. An additional 1,100 airmen are in Afghanistan, according to the Air Force. Roughly 24,100 Air Force personnel are stationed throughout the broader region.

    With much of the action in Iraq now focused on neighborhood-to-neighborhood efforts to contain violence, there has been less attention on the roles of the Air Force and the Navy.

    Moseley said the Air Force still has vital responsibilities in Iraq, including striking targets, surveillance and search and rescue missions.

    The Pentagon says it has enough money to pay for the Iraq war through June. The Army is taking "prudent measures" aimed at ensuring that delays in the bill financing the war do not harm troop readiness, such as moving money from other accounts, according to instructions sent to Army commanders and budget officials April 14.

    The Defense Department also said it plans to ask Congress to approve the temporary reprogramming of $1.6 billion from Navy and Air Force pay accounts to the Army's operating account.

    The $70 billion that Congress provided in September for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has mostly run out, and the Army has told department officials to slow the purchase of nonessential repair parts and other supplies, restrict the use of government charge cards and limit travel.

    On another subject, Moseley said he had ordered a review of vulnerabilities of U.S. military satellites, partially in response to China's anti-missile test in January, in which it used a missile to destroy one of its own old weather satellites. He said he found China's move alarming.

    China's motives remain unclear, but demonstrating that it can shoot down one of its own satellites also suggests it could knock another nation's satellites out of the sky if it chose, which Moseley said would be widely seen as an act of war.

 

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    US Commander Orders Quick End to "Long War"
    By Andrew Gray
    Reuters

    Tuesday 24 April 2007

    The U.S. military's Central Command has stopped calling its fight with Islamist militants the "long war" and says the change reflects its aim of reducing troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan over time.

    Gen. John Abizaid, the previous head of Central Command, coined the phrase to stress that the broader conflict with militants would not end with the current wars and the term has been widely used by senior U.S. officials and commanders.

    President George W. Bush used the phrase in his State of the Union address last year.

    "Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy," he said.

    But Abizaid's successor, Adm. William Fallon, has decided the term sends the wrong message to the Middle East, the area covered by his headquarters, by suggesting intense combat with many U.S. troops will continue there for a long time to come.

    "The idea that we are going to be involved in a 'Long War', at the current level of operations, is not likely and unhelpful," Lt. Col Matt McLaughlin, a Central Command spokesman, said in an e-mail message on Tuesday.

    "We remain committed to our friends and allies in the region and to countering al Qaeda-inspired extremism where it manifests itself, but one of our goals is to lessen our presence over time," he said.

    "We didn't feel that the term 'Long War' captured this nuance," McLaughlin said.

    McLaughlin said Central Command, based in Tampa, Florida, had "moved away" from the phrase in the last two weeks. He said Fallon, who took command last month, ordered the change after a recommendation by staff.

    The shift is in keeping with public comments by Fallon, who has said that he is not a patient man, that time is short in Iraq and he wants to see results.

    The move, first reported by the Tampa Tribune newspaper, also reflects the difficulties the United States and other Western nations have had in defining the conflict with al Qaeda and other militants after the September 11 attacks.

    Bush adopted the phrase "war on terror" but European and other states have avoided it, believing it suggests a narrow military campaign when major diplomatic, political, economic and crimefighting efforts are also needed to be successful.

    Despite his public differences with some European countries, Donald Rumsfeld also disliked the term and its variants when he was defense secretary.

    "I think that it is really a long struggle as opposed to a war, which implies armies, navies, air forces and marines contesting each other," he said in December.

    Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Fallon's concern was "completely appropriate" but would not predict if other officials would also modify their language.

    While dismissing the "long war," Central Command has not yet offered an alternative.

    "We continue to look for other options to characterize the scope of current operations," McLaughlin said.