State with its own mini-army? Tell me we don't need a Department of Everything Else!

AP story details how State is now building its own mini-army to guard itself inside Iraq once US troops leave.

The gist:

The State Department is quietly forming a small army to protect diplomatic personnel in Iraq after U.S. military forces leave the country at the end of 2011, taking its firepower with them.

Department officials are asking the Pentagon to provide heavy military gear, including Black Hawk helicopters, and say they also will need substantial support from private contractors.

The shopping list demonstrates the department's reluctance to count onIraq's army and police forces for security, despite the billions of dollars the U.S. invested to equip and train them. And it shows that PresidentObama is having a hard time keeping his pledge to reduce U.S. reliance on contractors, a practice that flourished under the Bush administration.

In an early April request to the Pentagon, Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's undersecretary for management, is seeking 24 Black Hawks, 50 bomb-resistant vehicles, heavy cargo trucks, fuel trailers, and high-tech surveillance systems. Mr. Kennedy asks that the equipment, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, be transferred at "no cost" from military stocks.

Contractors will be needed to maintain the gear and provide other support to diplomatic staff, according to the State Department, a potential financial boon for companies such as the Houston-based KBR Inc. that still have a sizable presence in Iraq.

"After the departure of U.S. forces, we will continue to have a critical need for logistical and life-support of a magnitude and scale of complexity that is unprecedented in the history of the Department of State," says Mr. Kennedy's April 7 request to Ashton Carter, theDefense Department's undersecretary for acquisition and technology.

Old story:  State is built for the Core--not the Gap.  And when situations get even somewhat dicey inside the Gap, it's basically "show's over" for State--unless it outsources the function.  

We need something built for frontier integration in all its complexity, and it's not quite DoD and it's not quite State but something in between--something for the everything else.

Just wait until these guys kill some locals, because if I'm an insurgent or terrorist, I simply engineer that scenario time and again until I get the disastrous outcome that serves my purposes.

Comments

[Ted O'Connor]

In reality, an embassy is protected by the host country's police and military. Have we all forgotten the loss of our embassy in Iran? "Spontaneous" demonstrations are orchestrated by the host country's political powers or at least "allowed" by the host country in order to appease some local group. Throw some rocks, burn the flag, mug for the cameras and go home. If things get out of hand, it's the local riot police that step in.

So, now we have State admitting, more or less, that we have no confidence in the Iraqi police or army. Our embassy in Baghdad is a fortress. Built with the idea that it would be regularly attacked by bombers and snipers. The final cost...a state secret...pun intended.

It's the Alamo.

Tom is right. What do we gain when the evening news shows dozens of dead Iraqis sprawled outside the walls? How many times a month, a week, will we see video of a suicide bomber start on his journey to paradise right in front of our embassy? How many vehicles will be ambushed trying to deliver supplies or personnel?