- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Mudge Lives: China seeks hackers for information warfare, follows Clinton's lead
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

<http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/breaking2453418.064583333.html> World Tribune.com -- China seeks hackers for information warfare, cites Clinton's example Special to World Tribune.com EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COMWednesday, February 16, 2005 Zhang Zhaozhong, director of the Military and Equipment Teaching and Research Center of the National Defense University, said the government is hoping to recruit computer hackers as part of its information warfare operations. Zhang noted that former U.S. President Bill Clinton invited hackers to the White House for a discussion of network security. China could also follow this example to mine the skills of hackers, Zhang said. He said that recruiting hackers would enhance information security levels. The comments appeared in the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po. The newspaper reported Feb. 10 that a well-known Chinese hacker organization, the Honker Union, had disbanded. The group claimed thousands of members, including network security professionals. The group claimed to have successfully attacked the White House Internet site, and it was part of a joint Chinese effort to conduct attacks on U.S. websites following the April 2001 mid-air collision of a Chinese F-8 jet and U.S. EP-3 surveillance aircraft. Other hacker groups that reportedly took part in the attacks were the Hacker Union for China and China Eagles. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

'SS Jimma: The American Mystery Sub
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

Code-named "Killer Rabbit"... Cheers, RAH ------ <http://www.strategypage.com/search.asp?target=c:\inetpub\strategypageroot\f…> StrategyPage.com February 16, 2005 SUBMARINES: The American Mystery Sub January 14, 2005: The USS Jimmy Carter (SSN 23), a modified Seawolf-class submarine, is used for missions the navy does not like to talk about. The Carter displaces 12,151 tons submerged, is 100 feet longer than a baseline Seawolf (453 feet compared to 353 feet). She is also slightly slower than a baseline Seawolf (61.1 kilometers per hour compared to 64.8 for the baseline Seawolf), and carries the same armament (eight 30-inch torpedo tubes with fifty weapons). The Jimmy Carter, though, was not designed for combat patrols. She is officially a testbed, much like the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Memphis. However, her real role is to eventually replace the Sturgeon-class submarine USS Parche, which was taken out of service in October, 2004. The USS Parche also has a 100-foot long extension - although that was installed during a refit that lasted from 1987-1991. The Navy is very reluctant to give out details about the Jimmy Carter, and she is often placed in a covered drydock (to keep her away from prying eyes in space as well as on the ground). This is not surprising. The methods and sources of intelligence are protected very closely by the intelligence community, and the Jimmy Carter is going to be one of the prime sources of intelligence. The Jimmy Carter is capable of carrying 50 special operations personnel, but her primary mission will be intelligence gathering. The Navy doesn't talk much about the intelligence-gathering missions it has carried out in the past, or currently. One of the missions Parche carried out was the maintenance of taps on undersea phone lines between the Russian naval bases of Petropavalosk and Vladivostok (the famous "Ivy Bells" mission). Other missions involved electronic intelligence. Submarines are ideal for this mission - they can often supplement coverage by aircraft and satellites. This supplementary coverage it vital. Aircraft can be detected and have limited range and satellites have predictable orbits. Dummy transmissions can be used to throw them off. Submarines, on the other hand, are unpredictable things - particularly nuclear-powered submarines. There is no way to know a submarine is there unless it either chooses to reveal its presence (usually through the creation of a flaming datum) or something goes wrong (a collision - like which happened with the USS Tautog). Submarines often get data on new naval units - often shadowing them and collecting "hull shots" (pictures of the hull of a ship or submarine) and a very good idea of the ship's acoustic signature (for future identification). In time of war, the Jimmy Carter will provide support for various missions, like raids by SEALs and other special operations units. Often, these groups will split up for missions, which could run the gamut of raids or advising partisans, or a single large mission could be carried out. Often, their delivery will be by the Advanced SEAL Delivery System, supported in a Dry Dock Shelter. She will also have additional command and control facilities, and storage for additional munitions and fuel. You will not hear much about what the Jimmy Carter does if the United States Navy has its way. The submarines are called the Silent Service. This is doubly true for those submarines like Jimmy Carter and Parche - which engage in intelligence gathering. Their successes remain secret - failures will probably make the press. Seawolf Jimmy Carter Parche Length (feet) 353 453 401.5 Displ. (tons) 9,137 12,151 7,800 Speed (km/h) 61.1 64.8 46.3 Crew 130 130+ 50 SF 179+ Torpedo tubes 8 30" 8 30" 4 21" Weapons 50 50 23 Comparison of special operations subs Jimmy Carter and Parche. Seawolf included for comparison to Carter.- Harold C. Hutchison (hchutch(a)ix.netcom.com) -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

What is a cypherpunk?
by Anonymous 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

Justin writes: > No, I want the right to fair use of material I buy. If someone sells > DRM-only material, I won't buy it at anything approaching non-DRM > prices. In some cases, I won't buy it at all. Well, that's fine, nobody's forcing you to buy anything. But try to think about this from a cypherpunk perspective. "Fair use" is a government oriented concept. Cypherpunks generally distrust the collectivist wisdom of Big Brother governments. What fair use amounts to is an intrustion of government regulation into a private contractual arrangement. It is saying that two people cannot contract away the right to excerpt a work for purposes of commentary or criticism. It says that such contracts are invalid and unenforceable. Now, maybe you think that is good. Maybe you think minimum wage is good, a similar imposition of government regulation to prevent certain forms of contracts. Maybe you think that free speech codes are good. Maybe you support all kinds of government regulations that happen to agree with your ideological preferences. If so, you are not a cypherpunk. May I ask, what the hell are you doing here? Cypherpunks support the right and ability of people to live their own lives independent of government control. This is the concept of crypto anarchy. See that word? Anarchy - it means absence of government. It means freedom to make your own rules. But part of the modern concept of anarchy is that ownership of the self implies the ability to make contracts and agreements to limit your own actions. A true anarchic condition is one in which people are absolutely free to make whatever contracts they choose. They can even make evil, immoral, wicked contracts that people like you do not approve of. They can be racists, like Tim May. They can avoid paying their taxes. They can take less money than minimum wage for their work. They can practice law or medicine without a license. And yes, they can agree to DRM restrictions and contract away their so-called fair use rights. One of the saddest things I've seen on this list, and I've seen it many times, is when people say that the laws of their country give them the right to ignore certain contractual elements that they have agreed to. They think that it's morally right for them to ignore DRM or limitations on fair use, because their government said so. I can't describe how appalling I consider this view. That anyone, in this day and age, could consider _government_ as an arbiter of morality is so utterly bizarre as to be incredible. And yet not only is this view common, it is even expressed here on this list, among people who supposedly have a distrust and suspicion of government. I can only assume that the ideological focus of this mailing list has been lost over the years. Newcomers have no idea what it means to be a cypherpunk, no sense of the history and purpose which originally drove the movement. They blindly accept what they have been force-fed in government-run schools, that government is an agency for good. That's one interpretation. The other is worse. It's that people on this list have sold out their beliefs, their ideals, and their morality. What was the bribe offered to them to make them turn away from the moral principles which brought them to this list originally? What was so valuable that they would discard their belief in self ownership in favor of a collectivist worship of government morality? Simply this: free music and movies. The lure of being able to download first MP3s and now video files has been so great that even cypherpunks, the supposed defenders of individual rights and crypto anarchy, are willing to break their word, violate their contracts, lie and cheat and steal in order to feed their addictive habit. They are willing to do and say anything they have to in order to get access to those files. They don't feel the slightest bit of guilt when they download music and movies in direct contradiction to the expressed desire of the people who put their heart and soul into creating those works. They willingly take part in a vast criminal enterprise, an enormous machine which takes from the most creative members of our society without offering anything in return. And this enterprise is criminal not by the standards of any government or legal code, but by the standards of the morality which is the essence of the cypherpunk worldview: the standard of self ownership, of abiding by one's word, of honoring one's agreements. This poisonous activity has penetrated to all parts of internet based society, and its influence has stolen away what honor the cypherpunks once possessed. Its toxic morality ensures that cypherpunks can no longer present a consistent philosophy, that there is nothing left but meaningless paranoid rantings. I challenge anyone here to answer the question of what it means to be a cypherpunk. What are your goals? What is your philosophy? Do you even recognize the notion of right and wrong? Or is it all simply a matter of doing whatever you can get away with, of grabbing what you can while you can, of looting your betters for your own short term benefit? Is that what it means to be a cypherpunk today? Because that's how it looks from here.

11 31

Watching Outgoing E-mail
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

<http://www.forbes.com/2005/02/16/cx_ah_0216tentech_print.html> Forbes Ten O'Clock Tech Watching Outgoing E-mail Arik Hesseldahl, 02.16.05, 10:00 AM ET Sometimes it's amazing that people in the business world continue to use e-mail at all. Sure it's convenient and fast, but it's also an increasingly difficult method of communication to manage, especially if your company is covered by some of the new regulatory rules like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and the like. There are new rules governing how long a company must store your e-mail, and if someone takes your company to court, how quickly you must be able to produce copies of e-mail messages covered by a subpoena. There are new standards coming in to play governing the level of an employer's legal responsibility for the e-mail that their employees send around the office. One case frequently cited is that of Chevron, now part of ChevronTexaco (nyse: CVX - news - people ), which in 1995 paid a $2.2 million out-of-court settlement to four female employees after the women said that an e-mail circulating around the office containing some tasteless jokes created a hostile work environment. A startup company called InBoxer, demonstrating a new software product here at the Demo Conference this week, has shown that companies can and will try to minimize their exposure to these kinds of legal risks by screening the e-mails that employees attempt to send. InBoxer, which used to be called Audiotrieve, calls its new product OutBoxer, and it scans outgoing e-mail messages looking for inappropriate content, unauthorized disclosure of information and tries to encourage senders to clean up their messages before they actually send them. CEO and Founder Roger Matus says as part of building its technology the company scanned and analyzed more than a half million e-mail messages written by senior executives at Enron. Those messages, which have been made public as part of the investigation into Enron by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, proved useful, he said, for the purpose of analysis and testing an e-mail filtering technology. Matus says OutBoxer uses a technique called "linguistic processing" that is in part derived from related work in speech recognition by his co-founder and chief technologist, Sean True. Using its methods against the Enron mails, the company found that 20% of those messages contained some "non-business" content. Another 4% of the messages--or about one in 25--in the Enron collection contained content that was either pornographic, racially or ethnically insensitive or which contained questionable images. So, people pass around obnoxious e-mails. Big deal, right? Well, you may have a thick skin or simply not be offended easily, but how about when it comes to company secrets being passed around? What's to stop somebody who just got passed over for a promotion from sending out some sensitive information about your best customers to an old friend who happens to work for a competitor? OutBoxer works with Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Exchange server and will in time extend its reach to Research In Motion's (nasdaq: RIMM - news - people ) Blackberry wireless e-mail devices as well. When it's running, it gives a range of responses to e-mails you try to send that it thinks you should at least think twice about. In some cases it will simply raise a red flag and point out that you may want to delete something in the message. If nothing else, if gives you a chance to listen to second thoughts and make sure you really want to send that e-mail. But in other cases it can be configured to prevent a user from sending a particular e-mail entirely. What it misses--and this raises another set of information security questions altogether--is the fact that many employees who would be likely to e-mail sensitive company information around would also tend to be naturally suspicious that their e-mail activity is already being watched by the company, even though it probably isn't. If they really want to send something they're not supposed to, they'll find a way to take it home and send it from a personal e-mail account not subject to the screening process in use at the office. OutBoxer is expected to be available this summer, and it will join InBoxer's other product, an anti-spam screening product called InBoxer. A price has yet to be set. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

FSTC Project Update
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

--- begin forwarded text

1 0

Re: SHA1 broken?
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

--- begin forwarded text

1 0

RE: [p2p-hackers] SHA1 broken?
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

--- begin forwarded text

2 1

Passwords? We don't need no stinking passwords
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/16/rsa_consumer_survey/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Security ; Network Security ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/16/rsa_consumer_survey/ Passwords? We don't need no stinking passwords By John Leyden (john.leyden at theregister.co.uk) Published Wednesday 16th February 2005 01:41 GMT RSA 2005 Concerns over online security are continuing to slow consumer e-commerce growth. A quarter of the respondents in a recent survey have reduced their online purchases in the past year and 21 per cent refuse to conduct business with their financial institutions online because of security fears. More than half (53 per cent) of the 1,000 consumers quizzed believe that basic passwords fail to provide sufficient protection for sensitive personal information. According to the RSA Security-sponsored telephone survey, poor management of PINs and passwords for access to online services, desktop computer systems, ATMs and other electronic accounts is a major vulnerability. As a major supplier of two-factor authentication products and services that offer an alternative to traditional static passwords, the issues raised by RSA Security's survey are more than a little self-serving. That doesn't mean its analysis is necessarily wrong, though. More and more security experts are lining up against the use of static passwords for e-banking; in part because the technique makes consumers easy prey for phishers. Even so, obituaries for the humble password may be premature. Adi Shamir, professor at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science and noted cryptographer, said: "Passwords are not completely dead. For low level security apps they are still sufficiently good. It depends on the application". One PIN to rule them all More than two in three respondents (65 per cent) quizzed in RSA Security's survey use fewer than five passwords for all electronic information access and 15 percent use a single password for everything. These figures are unchanged from a similar survey last year. John Worrall, VP of worldwide marketing at RSA Security, said: "The majority of consumers are aware of the problems associated with passwords, but until they are presented with a reliable, easy-to-use alternative, they're going to continue to exhibit poor password management practices." . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

Gates: security concerns propel IE7 launch
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/15/gates_rsa_2005/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Security ; Network Security ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/15/gates_rsa_2005/ Gates: security concerns propel IE7 launch By John Leyden (john.leyden at theregister.co.uk) Published Tuesday 15th February 2005 19:17 GMT RSA 2005 Information security concerns have prompted Microsoft to release a new version of Internet Explorer before the next version of Windows ships. Contrary to previous plans, Microsoft will release IE7 as a beta in "early summer" 2005. Longhorn, the next iteration of Windows, isdue late next year. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates today said IE7 will offer Windows XP SP2 advances in defending against phishing and malware but failed to go into any details. IE7 will also be included in Longhorn but its availability on other platforms remains unclear. In a keynote address at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Gates singled out spyware and social engineering such as phishing and spyware attacks as the "fastest growing challenge". "There's no exploit involved," he said. "Social engineering attacks take the privilege of a user and fool them into running code they don't want to run." Microsoft has decided to make its Windows Anti-Spyware, released as a beta earlier this year and downloaded by 5m users, available at no extra charge to licensed Windows users, Gates announced. Microsoft also intends to introduce a consumer-focused anti-virus product by the end of the year. Gates repeatedly highlighted information security as a "top priority" for Microsoft. "It's the one thing we need to make sure that we get absolutely right to deliver the digital revolution," he said. Microsoft is spending $2bn of its $6bn research and development budget on security. Windows XP SP2 is a key building block in Microsoft's efforts to make its software more resistant to attack. More than 170m users have downloaded the product since its release late last year, Gates said. More users have applied the update after obtaining it on a CD. To make it easier for customers to apply patches, Microsoft intends to bring its separate Office and Windows Update services under one umbrella from March 2005. This service will be aimed at consumers and small businesses. Gates appeared relaxed during his 45-minute keynote as RSA, even cracking a decent joke. He produced a spoofed version of doodles he made at the recent World Economic Forum, which were mistaken by a UK paper (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4220473.stm) for the jottings of Prime Minister Tony Blair. The spoof notes contained remarks such as "Why does Bill Clinton sit next to Angelina Jolie?" "Need cheeseburger" (a reference perhaps to Gates' expanding waistline) and his "password". -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

New Factor in Iraq: Irregular Brigades Fill Security Void
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110851686697056047,00.html> The Wall Street Journal February 16, 2005 PAGE ONE Bands of Brothers New Factor in Iraq: Irregular Brigades Fill Security Void Jailed by Hussein, Gen. Thavit Is Leading Thousands Now; Questions About Loyalty 'Toughest Force We've Got' By GREG JAFFE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL February 16, 2005; Page A1 BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the battle against insurgents here, two kinds of Iraqi military forces are emerging: the planned units and the pop-ups. The planned units of the Iraq Army, about 57,000 soldiers strong, are the result of careful preparation this summer between the U.S. and Iraqi commanders. The pop-ups started to emerge last fall out of nowhere, catching the American military by surprise. These dozen disconnected units totaling as many as 15,000 soldiers are fast becoming one of the most significant developments in the new Iraq security situation. The unplanned units -- commanded by friends and relatives of cabinet officers and tribal sheiks -- go by names like the Defenders of Baghdad, the Special Police Commandos, the Defenders of Khadamiya and the Amarah Brigade. The new units generally have the backing of the Iraqi government and receive government funding. While regular units of the Iraq Army have taken up residence on rehabilitated army bases, the others camp out in places like looted Ministry of Defense buildings, a former women's college, an old Iraqi war monument and an abandoned aircraft hangar. Frequently, U.S. officials don't find out about them until they stumble across them. Some Americans consider them a welcome addition to the fight against the insurgency -- though others worry about the risks. "We don't call them militias. Militias are...illegal," says Maj. Chris Wales, who spent most of January tracking down and finding these new forces. "I've begun calling them 'Irregular Iraqi ministry-directed brigades.' " The "pop up" label comes from other U.S. military officials in Baghdad. Troops who might have otherwise joined the regular Iraqi Army are drawn to these units because they are often led by a particularly inspirational commander or made up of people with similar tribal and religious backgrounds. This makes the units more cohesive and potentially effective against the insurgency. "Just show us where to go and we will eat the insurgents alive," an Iraqi in one of these units told Maj. Wales earlier this month when he tracked them down at a long-shuttered Baghdad airport. Dangerous Uncertainty The bad news is that these new units can inject dangerous uncertainty and confusion into an already complex battlefield. On Election Day, the Special Police Commandos were rushing one of their wounded soldiers to the hospital when they accidentally ran into an Iraqi Army checkpoint. The Iraqi Army officers opened fire on the Commandos' black SUV, killing the three people in the car. 1 See complete coverage2 of The Fight for Iraq. Some U.S. officials worry about the new units' allegiances, which often seem split between their religious and tribal sponsors and the central government, creating the risk that the units could be used as militias if Iraq falls into civil war. U.S. military commanders in Baghdad are especially concerned about the Defenders of Khadamiya, which is forming to guard a major Shiite shrine on the city's northern edge at the behest of Shiite cleric Hussein al Sadr. U.S. military officials worry that the group, which now numbers about 120 men but plans to grow to more than 800, could be used to settle internal Shiite scores or deployed in a Sunni-Shiite conflict. As these irregular units proliferate, U.S. officials face a thorny dilemma: whether to encourage these forces, whose training and experience varies wildly, or to try to rein them in. "There is a tension between on the one hand encouraging and fostering initiative and on the other executing the plan for the Iraqi Security Forces that everyone agreed on," says Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is overseeing the massive U.S. effort to help train and equip Iraqi military units. "To be candid, I would err on the side of fostering initiative. I want to get the hell out of here." The first of these military units, the Special Police Commandos, was formed in September by Gen. Adnan Thavit, the uncle of Iraq's interim interior minister. The unit started with about 1,000 soldiers. When Col. James Coffman, a senior aide to Gen. Petraeus, found them they were occupying a heavily damaged Republican Guard base a few miles from the U.S. embassy. "It was basically 1,000 guys at the time living in a bombed-out building with no electricity, no plumbing and no bathrooms," the colonel says. Col. Coffman, however, was struck by the unit's arms room, which was stocked with rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, mortar tubes and lots of ammunition. "The weapons were clean and organized," he says. He immediately went on a patrol with the unit and was impressed by both Gen. Thavit and his troops. The soldiers seemed to have a discipline that many of the U.S.-trained Iraqi Army units lacked. The 63-year-old Gen. Thavit, an intelligence officer in the old Iraqi Air Force, attended military academies in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia. In the mid-1990s he joined a small group of former officers plotting to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In 1996 their plan unraveled and Gen. Thavit was sentenced to life in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Gen. Thavit and his second-in-command, Maj. Gen. Rashid Flayeh Mohammed, were both released by Mr. Hussein along with thousands of other political prisoners and common criminals just before the American invasion. One of Gen. Thavit's former jailers, who gave him food and cigarettes, is now a battalion commander in his new force. The Second Defenders of Baghdad Brigade On Col. Coffman's recommendation, Gen. Petraeus visited the Commandos' base and was impressed with the troops. "When I saw them and where they were living I decided this was a horse to back," the U.S. general says today. He agreed to give the fledgling unit money to fix up its base and buy vehicles, ammunition, radios and more weapons. Unlike many of the U.S.-trained Army units, the Commandos, whose ranks today include several thousand soldiers, have had few deserters. In early January, insurgents crashed a car bomb into the gate of the unit's base, killing six Iraqi recruits who hoped to join the Commandos and injuring dozens more. Some of the injured went to the hospital, got bandaged up and then returned to the base that afternoon still eager to join. Forty-three Special Police Commandos have been killed in battles with insurgents since September and about 300 have been wounded, U.S. officials say. Part of the reason that the unit inspires such allegiance is that all of their recruits are hand-selected by Gen. Thavit and Gen. Mohammed. By contrast, most Iraqis who join the regular Iraqi Army are recruited at a half-dozen joint U.S.-Iraqi-run recruiting stations and lack the cohesive bond and pride that grows out of being handpicked. "The reason the Commandos are special is that a couple of great leaders at the top have just flat out put their imprint on that organization," says Gen. Petraeus. Some U.S. military officials, however, worry that the Commandos' allegiance is as much to their leader as it is to the Iraqi government. "If you tried to replace Gen. [Thavit] he'd take his...brigades with him. He is a very powerful figure. You wouldn't get that from other units," says Col. Dean Franklin, a senior officer in Gen. Petraeus's command. "Pound for pound, though, they are the toughest force we've got." Gen. Thavit says that his only goal is to defend the democratically elected Iraqi government against insurgents and criminals. "I could see that the police were not able to withstand the terrorists. As a professional soldier I believed it was my duty to help build a force that could work against the terrorists," he says. "I am an old man right now. I should be retired." In late November with the Iraqi elections approaching, homegrown units similar to the Commandos began popping up all over Baghdad. First came the Muthana Brigade, a unit formed by the order of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. It set down roots at a long-abandoned airport in downtown Baghdad. Like the Commandos, the unit appeared to be well-trained and was pressed quickly into service. "They went from not even existing to being as viable as any Iraqi Army unit out there in six weeks," says Col. Franklin. The Defenders of Baghdad, a far less disciplined unit made up of Baghdad Shiites, emerged in early January. The unit took up residence around Baghdad's Martyr's Monument, which commemorates Iraqis who died in the war with Iran. A few days later Maj. Wales, ordered in December to track the units, located the Amarah Brigade in a bombed-out former Ministry of Defense building. The U.S. Army's First Cavalry Division had been renovating the building for an Iraqi National Guard unit, but the Amarah brigade pushed the contractors out. The leader of the ragtag group of solders claimed to be a cousin of the Iraqi defense minister and said the minister's tribe had purchased the cooking equipment the troops were using to survive, according to Maj. Wales's report on the group. Over the next three weeks, Maj. Wales says, he tracked down five other new Iraqi units -- most of them from Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. For a week no new units popped up on his radar. Then on Jan. 30, the day before the Iraqi elections, Maj. Wales got a tip via his boss, Gen. Petraeus, that a new 2,000-man force calling itself the Second Defenders of Baghdad Brigade had formed somewhere in the city under the command of an Iraqi general named "Faris." But Maj. Wales's usual American and Iraqi sources had never heard of the unit -- or the general. "There are no generals named Faris in the Iraqi Army," one senior Iraqi general in the Ministry of Defense told him. Maj. Wales began to think Gen. Petraeus had been passed a bad tip. "There is no way in the world there could be a Second Defenders of Baghdad Brigade," Maj. Wales said. "It is just impossible. There is no place in Baghdad left to put them." Maj. Wales made a few more calls to U.S. liaison officers working with the Iraqis and turned up nothing. Finally, he got in touch with Gen. Babakir Zebari, Iraq's top general, who said the brigade had recently moved into tents and a hangar bay at Baghdad's long-abandoned Muthana Airport. On Feb. 1, Maj. Wales and a small team of American officers set out to find them. After about 15 minutes of searching the airport grounds, they found the brigade. About half of them were in civilian clothes. The other half wore new Iraqi Army uniforms. All of the men seemed to be from one or two Shiite-dominated towns in southern Iraq. Many said they were vetted by Sheik Ali Shalan of the Al Shamer tribe in southern Iraq. "I joined this unit as an expression of my love for my country," said Wathiq Rahim, a skinny young recruit from Hilla who was clad in a black Christian Dior T-shirt and rubber sandals. A short while later, Maj. Gen. Fouad Faris, the commander of the brigade, drove up in a white SUV. A small round man who trained at Sandhurst, the British military academy, Gen. Faris said there were 1,300 men at the airport under his command and an additional 1,500 on the way. "I am very close to the minister of defense, which is why he chose me for this mission," Gen. Faris said. The Americans later confirmed his account with top Iraqi military officials. It wasn't clear, however, what the troops were going to do. Initially the brigade was supposed to help guard election polling places, but they arrived in Baghdad two days too late. "I was just yelling at the men for not arriving here in time for the elections," he explained. Now the general suggested that his troops might be asked to guard the Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy is based. In the near term, he needed to find someplace better to house the men and set up a brigade headquarters. "This is not a good situation here," he told Maj. Wales. "It is much too crowded." The unit that has generated the most concern among American military officials is the Defenders of Khadamiya, the unit forming in northern Baghdad to guard the Shiite shrine. There is good reason for the unit. The shrine at Khadamiya draws some 800,000 Shiite pilgrims each year and poses an attractive target for Sunni terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi eager to set off a Sunni-Shiite civil war. But some U.S. military officials worry it could be used in internecine battles between rival Shiite clerics. Because the Defenders of Khadamiya force appears so closely aligned with prominent Shiite cleric Hussein al Sadr, some U.S. officers worry that other Shiite clerics might use the unit to justify forming their own unauthorized militias. In particular radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr might try to revive his Mahdi militia, which U.S. troops battled in Najaf and Sadr city this summer. Some senior officers in Gen. Petraeus's command have suggested the Americans ask the Iraqis to consolidate all the new units in Baghdad under a single division headquarters, putting them more firmly under the control of the central government and making it easier for U.S. forces to coordinate with them. But there are limits to U.S. influence. "There is no way we can stop the Iraqis from doing something they want to do. This is their country and their army now," says Lt. Col. James Bullion who works for Gen. Petraeus. "We can't put that genie back in the bottle." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0