Get beyond the surge. Go further than the talk about population protection being the new basis for U.S. efforts in Iraq. The Joint Campaign Plan is the comprehensive strategy for Iraq employed by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It's a fairly important document. And Congress can't see it, reports Rachel Van Dongen for Roll Call. (sub. req.)

In television interviews and press conferences, Gen. David Petraeus has described the Joint Campaign Plan as the key military and diplomatic strategy to stabilize Iraq.

Developed by the “big brains” on the ground, Petraeus points to a “unified” effort with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker to achieve political and military security in Iraq by 2009.

Yet despite repeat efforts at the highest levels and Pentagon promises, Congress has been unable to get a current copy of the plan.

After persistent requests from House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the issue has moved up the Congressional chain of command to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). According to an aide, Pelosi asked President Bush for the document several months ago in a White House meeting. Since then, Pelosi’s staff has “repeatedly” requested a copy, her aide said, but has not yet received one.

A spokeswoman for the House Armed Services Committee generously declined to attribute the stonewalling to partisan politics. Yet the committee's request for the plan has been outstanding since the Pentagon missed a March 30 deadline for it. What's more, even though Congress hasn't seen the document, the head of a Government Accountability Office unit mentioned in October 30 testimony that his team saw the plan on a recent trip to Iraq.

Nor is Congress the only one left in the dark about why it can't see the plan. Van Dongen called the White House for an explanation, and it sent her to the Iraq command, known as Multinational Force-Iraq. An MNFI spokesperson told her, "I do not know why the White House would refer you to us regarding these questions." The Pentagon didn't reply, either. Three cheers for openness in government!

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In the debate over the surge, there have been a number of questions raised within the government about an important metric for understanding whether the U.S. military's strategy is succeeding -- how Multinational Force-Iraq calculates sectarian violence.

Earlier this month, David Walker of the Government Accountability Office testified that he could not "get comfortable" with General David Petraeus' methodology for determining sectarianism, considering it too inferential to be reliable. His report, echoing objections from senior intelligence officials, instead tabulated the pace of attacks on civilians and found the surge didn't appear to have a significant effect on civilian-targeted violence. However, relying on data interpreted through the MNF-I methodology, Petraeus testified that sectarian violence had fallen in Iraq to mid-2006 levels.

The actual methodology MNF-I employs has remained unknown. Until now.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed two weeks ago, MNF-I has provided TPMmuckraker with its criteria for identifying ethnic and sectarian violence. We've added the methodology to our Document Collection, and you can read it here.

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While the House Judiciary Committee hearings are in recess, take a look at this great post from Ilan Goldenberg at Democracy Arsenal. Goldenberg combs through the just-released quarterly Pentagon report (pdf) and compares its civilian-casualty numbers (pdf) to those presented last week to Congress by General David Petraeus (also pdf). And sure enough, it appears that the quarterly report's numbers -- which were taken from Multinational Corps-Iraq, the command just under Petraeus' -- make the pre-surge period seem better than Petraeus' numbers; and the surge period seem worse.

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Gen. Petraeus downplayed the non-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency in his testimony and subsequent press appearances. But a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service last week pointed out that al-Qaeda in Iraq is a miniscule fraction of the insurgency. From Kenneth Katzman, the lead Iraq analyst for Congress' independent, nonpartisan research wing, AQI is:

A numerically small but politically significant component is non-Iraqi, mostly in a faction called al-Qaeda Iraq. Increasingly in 2007, U.S. commanders have seemed to equate AQI with the insurgency, even though most of the daily attacks are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents.

Katzman puts AQI's active strength at between 1500 and 3500 fighters. (Terrorism expert Malcolm Nance pegs it at about 1300.) That's compared to about 25,000 Sunni insurgents, according to U.S. estimates, though the Iraqi government puts them at about 40,000, with 150,000 "supporters." AQI certainly punches above its weight class -- Petraeus said it's responsible for today's murder of anti-AQI Sunni shiekh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, though George Washington University professor Marc Lynch thinks Sunni insurgents may have killed him -- but it's important to remember that the insurgency isn't a monolith under the control of al-Qaeda.

One week later, here it is: Gen. Petraeus' definition of sectarian violence.

Ever since the GAO report last week said it was "not clear" that the surge had contributed to a drop in sectarian deaths, Gen. Petraeus has been under pressure to explain his methodology. The GAO was agnostic on whether or not sectarian attacks had declined in recent months, citing that it required knowing a perpetrator's intent -- a task beyond the capabilities of the agency. But GAO was, at least inferentially, skeptical, noting that the broader pattern of attacks on civilians -- of which sectarianism is a proportion -- hasn't declined. And further reporting suggested problems with how MNF-I has tabulated sectarian casualties: one famous Washington Post story cited a senior intelligence official claiming MNF-I looks at where a bullet entered someone's head to divine sectarian intent.

Petraeus has disputed all of this. Yesterday, in Washington, Petraeus took a stab at an explanation. And in Baghdad, the Los Angeles Times reports, so did the U.S. military command, known as Multinational Forces Iraq, to combat the accusation that it's cooking the books to exaggerate the success of the surge. However, it's not exactly clear what that methodology tells us:

Stung by accusations that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, had presented selective statistics during his testimony before Congress, the military released a statement here outlining its definition of sectarian violence: bombings, killings or other attacks committed by an ethnic group or religious sect against another, for purely sectarian purposes.

That seems a little circular. As I wrote last week, determining sectarian killings isn't a matter of determining intent. There's plenty of evidence from a body that a killing was driven by sectarian motivations. Victims of sectarianism "generally are males found without identification documents and shot execution-style. The bodies usually are blindfolded and bound at the wrists, and often bear signs of torture," writes the LAT's Tina Susman. It may be that MNF-I's methodology makes sense, and the GAO was unduly harsh. Or not.

Here's MNF-I's statement in full:

Multi-National Force-Iraq defines ethno-sectarian murder as a murder committed by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.

Ethno-sectarian violence is defined as an event and any associated civilian deaths caused by or during murders/executions, kidnappings, direct fire, indirect fire, and all types of explosive devices identified as being conducted by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.

In our collection of data, a shot to the front or back of the head is not used to determine ethno-sectarian murder.

The number of ethno-sectarian murders has declined significantly since the height of the sectarian violence in December 2006. Iraq-wide, the number of ethno-sectarian deaths has decreased by over 55 percent, and it would have decreased much further if it not for the casualties inflicted by barbaric al-Qaeda bombings attempting to reignite sectarian violence.

It remains unclear why, as reported, the GAO, DIA and CIA have difficulty accepting MNF-I's definition of sectarian violence.

Surely this counts as a new land speed record for dropping something down the memory hole.

Tomorrow, President Bush will endorse the Petraeus plan for removing five Army surge brigades by July 2008. He's going to portray that incremental reduction as the spoils of victory. Just yesterday, however, Gen. Petraeus conceded that "the string is going to run out" on the deployments of the surge brigades by the summer, and since the active-duty Army doesn't have any more available brigades to send in relief and the reserve component (the National Guard and Army Reserve) is overtaxed as well, the surge just has to come to an end -- unless the Pentagon is willing to extend active-duty deployments even further, which Secretary Gates pledged in April not to do.

Just don't tell any of that to Tony Snow. "Wrong. You don't have to pull 'em out," Snow said today at the daily press briefing when challenged by a reporter.

Snow tried to portray the reporter's inquiry as an attack on Petraeus' credibility, even though Petraeus himself acknowledged the fact yesterday.

On at least three occasions that I counted during the Petraeus/Crocker hearings, Gen. Petraeus flatly stated that the U.S. is not providing weapons to the Sunni tribal fighters who, over the past year, have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq. On Monday I noted how the U.S. was giving the tribes money that they used to buy weapons, making Petraeus' assurance precious and legalistic.

But it turns out that earlier this year, U.S. commanders weren't so defensive about the terms of their deal with the tribes. Here's Major General Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, on those terms in June:

[Question] (on camera): Will the assistance or the coordination with these former insurgent groups extend to arming [them] or helping them out in logistics in any sense?

GEN. BENJAMIN MIXON, U.S. REGIONAL COMMANDER IN IRAQ: It certainly will. We have seen this in counterinsurgency operations before, using local nationals, if you will, arming them, forming them into scouts, if you will. And that's the primary role that we want to use them in. They know the territory, they know the enemy.

Did Mixon misspeak?

Gen. Petraeus didn't say that there isn't a non--al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency in Iraq anymore. But he's certainly been at pains to diminish its role. That might have to do with both his campaign plan against that very insurgency -- and a great deal with politics -- but it certainly paints a misleading picture to the public about who it is we're fighting in Iraq.

Today at the Press Club, he very briefly referred to the Sunni insurgency, urging reporters, "don't get me wrong" about its existence. But it would be very easy to get the general wrong, since his description of the ongoing Iraqi Sunni insurgency against the U.S. consigned it to an afterthought compared to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Shiite militias.

But it's the Sunni insurgency, primarily, that's responsible for the approximately 93 soldiers killed on average in Iraq each month this year. "It's not Al Qaeda in Iraq -- they are strictly a [car bomb] and occasional ambush group," says Malcolm Nance, a longtime counterterrorism expert and former adviser to the U.S. military in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "Nope, it's the ex-Ba'athists and Iraqi religious extremists."

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It's all over but the arguing. In a few days, Gen. Petraeus will be back at Camp Victory and Amb. Crocker will be back in the Green Zone. The next comprehensive official assessment of Iraq's political and military fortunes will come in March 2008, when Petraeus will decide when and if to schedule further reductions below the pre-surge force of roughly 130,000 troops.

But, until then, what information are we still missing, despite the last two days' worth of testimony? Here are a few of what Donald Rumsfeld used to call the "known unknowns."

Stastical Methodology. Forgive us for harping on this point, but at least twice yesterday, Senators noted to Petraeus that his figures for determining the status of security in Iraq are under question, only to decline to pursue any answers. By some estimates, Iraq in 2007 is more deadly for civilians than Iraq in 2006. Similarly, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, following on concerns from both the CIA and the DIA, said last week that it can't determine that sectarian killings are in fact on the decline. Petraeus referred today to his command's "pretty logical and rational" methdology, and said on Monday that the tabulation has remained consistent since before he took over the command. But though he hinted at it today, he didn't discuss how his command tabulates sectarian killings; whether his command relies on the Iraqi government for its total of civilian casualties; or if they revise its total of "insurgent" deaths after an engagement when eyewitnesses claim civilians were killed.

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Now we're getting somewhere. At the National Press Club this morning, Gen. Petraeus for the first time peeled back the curtain behind his questioned methodology for tabulating ethno-sectarian violence. Calling his methodology "pretty logical and rational," the general said he has a "three-page document" -- he read from it at his Press Club podium -- that refutes a senior intelligence official who told Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post that Multi-National Force--Iraq doesn't count front-of-the-head executions as sectarian incidents. "It's just not true," Petraeus said. So what is a sectarian murder?

"Civilians who show signs of being blindfolded, tortured or being shot anywhere, and so forth."

No word on how MNF-I tabulates civilian casualties. (Does it use Iraqi government data? Morgue data?) Also no word on why two of the larger U.S. intelligence agencies, with the largest analytic capability in the intelligence community, reportedly take issue with MNF-I's stats. So we'll be filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the methodology document today.

Finishing up, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) asked what's standing in the way of continued contracting fraud in Iraq. Neither Gen. Petraeus nor Amb. Crocker had much in the way of a detailed answer, but both singled out the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, as a key bulwark against waste, fraud and abuse.

Given that Petraeus wants to speed up weapons purchases by Iraq under the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales programs, maybe those safeguards should be looked at in greater detail.

Gen. Petraeus ranked the enemies the U.S. is fighting in Iraq at the behest of Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), and there was a notable absence: the non-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency. All of a sudden, practically every Sunni anti-U.S. fighter is now defined as al-Qaeda.

Petraeus listed al-Qaeda as "the wolf closest to the shed," followed by Shiite militias, who are the cause of much of the "ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad." After that came the "non-kinetic" enemies, such as getting the "institutional structures" established for the Iraqi government, problems with training the Iraqi security forces, corruption and so forth. As he was finishing his list, Petraeus then realized he had forgotten someone: "There are certainly still some Sunni insurgents out there."

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is, at most, 15 percent of the Sunni insurgency. One expert, Malcolm Nance, who's worked with the U.S. military and intelligence in Iraq, puts AQI at two to five percent of the Sunni insurgency. It's good news that several insurgent groups, like the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and toward us. The August National Intelligence Estimate is silent on the Sunni insurgency, but certainly doesn't say it has been marginalized.

That shouldn't be surprising: the recent ABC/BBC/NHK poll found that 93 percent of Sunnis believe that attacks on the U.S. are justified. What's more, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical powerhouse, recently issued a communique to the entire, fractious Sunni "resistance." If there's only a rump Sunni insurgency, someone forgot to tell the AMS.

Petraeus has repeatedly referred to himself as a "realist" over the past two days. But suggesting the Sunni insurgency is diminished to the point of marginality after the anti-al-Qaeda shift is, at best, wishful thinking.

Good question from Sen. John Thune (R-SD) to Gen. Petraeus. If the Iraqi security forces are ready to take over responsibility for Iraq before sectarian reconciliation has occurred -- not an unlikely scenario, given the dismal prospects for political progress, Crocker notwithstanding -- is the U.S. mission, you know, accomplished? Petraeus' answer: not necessarily. If the government was set to collapse, the U.S. might stay in Iraq to prop it up, even if the Iraqi Army and police are able to control the country. That's quite an extraordinary statement. Petraeus probably means to avoid limiting his options, but it's never before been suggested by anyone in uniform that we would stay in Iraq to support an Iraqi government after the Iraqi military has Stood Up.

With the largest U.S. presence in Iraq of the entire war, Baghdad is still being ethnically cleansed, and at least 1000 Iraqis (a very conservative estimate) are dying every month. Petraeus and Crocker didn't get any questions about Iraq in this context. Instead, senators have asked about a prospective humanitarian catastrophe in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal.

There's no doubt that's a legitimate question, since any withdrawal scenario has to contemplate disaster, not just for U.S. forces but for Iraqis. Here Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asks Crocker if post-occupation Iraq will be worse than the genocide in Darfur. Crocker doesn't quite endorse the statement, but says "the prospects for a truly catastrophic humanitarian disaster could be considerable." And indeed, it could be, and the country needs to debate that. Yet part of that debate should be the fact that sectarian cleansing is happening in Iraq right now, despite the best efforts of the largest U.S. force in Iraq since the invasion.

Given half the opportunity by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Gen. Petraeus eagerly backtracked on his earlier admission to Sen. Warner that he didn't know if success in Iraq would make America safer.

For an excellent illustration of the difference in candor between Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker that's emerged during these three hearings, take a look at this exchange with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Collins asked how much longer Americans could be expected to expend blood and treasure on a war without evident Iraqi political progress.

Petraeus responded that "if we arrive at that point a year from now, it's something I'll have to think very, very, very hard about," since America has "real national interests at stake." Even if you disagree with Petraeus' assessment, it's a fair point, and he didn't duck a hypothetical, which he easily could have done.

Crocker, by contrast, simply repeated his claim that the "trajectory" of political progress is "upward," thereby waving away the concern. "I can't say what I'll be saying in a year, or even six months from now, but I can tell you that I'll make the same objective and honest assessment I tried to do for this testimony."

Petraeus has been slippery in his own way during these hearings (see here and here for examples), but Crocker's statement that Iraqi politics is on the right course certainly doesn't instill confidence in his objectivity.

So much for "conditions." Under questioning from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Gen. Petraeus conceded that his timetable for ending the surge by July 2008 is due to the five extra active-duty Brigade Combat Teams coming to the end of their scheduled deployments and the lack of available units to keep U.S. troop strength at 162,000.

Remember this when President Bush on Thursday unveils his (read: Petraeus') "drawdown" plan -- and, for that matter, any time a politician says that the only "responsible" reduction of forces is one that's "conditions-based."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) doesn't think Gen. Petraeus has enough war on his hands. The senator (changing the subject from Iraq with "I want to go to Iran...") asked Petraeus if he wanted "the authority" from Congress to "pursue the Qods forces into Iranian territory." Petraeus, for some reason, politely declined to start a third contemporaneous U.S. war.

Once again, Gen. Petraeus was asked about how long it will take to draw down to his strategy's envisioned end state of five U.S. brigades on an "overwatch" mission. And once again he dodged, saying when the reductions need to take place will have to wait until "we get closer each of those times."

Months ago, Amb. Crocker told Joe Klein of Time magazine that "The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing." Or did he? Asked by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) if that was an accurate quote, Crocker equivocated repeatedly before finally saying "I do not recall saying that."

What does Klein think about Crocker's memory?

Update: Here's Klein's response: "He said it. I've got it in my notes. He never denied it or asked for a correction after it appeared in print and was featured on Meet the Press. He may not remember it, but he said it."

Perhaps the most difficult question for Iraq, no matter where you stand on withdrawal, is what happens after the U.S. leaves. Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) asked Amb. Crocker what confidence he had that the Anbar tribal shift against al-Qaeda could take hold in the absence of the U.S., and Crocker answered that the Iraqi government is investing billions in infrastructure development, including in Anbar. Fine, Sununu asked; but what will ensure that the Iraqi government will spend that money?

Crocker's answer: "There are a number of mechanisms Iraq has in place," including inspectors general in the ministries and the Commission on Public Integrity, to guard against corruption. Are they at all competent? "To a degree," Crocker said.

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Is it more important to fight al-Qaeda in Pakistan or al-Qaeda in Iraq? was Sen. Russ Feingold's (D-WI) question.

It was a fair one for Amb. Crocker, who came to Iraq after serving for nearly two years as ambassador to Pakistan. Crocker, anticipating where Feingold was clearly going with this, diplomatically answered, "I did not feel as Ambassador to Pakistan that the focus, the resources and the people needed to deal with that situation weren't available or weren't there because of Iraq." And yet, the July National Intelligence Estimate found that al-Qaeda Senior Leadership, as it's called, has reestablished a "safehaven" in the tribal areas of Pakistan. So Crocker didn't exactly "deal with that situation" satisfactorily. When Feingold pressed again for an answer, Crocker gave another diplomatic version: "In my view, fighting al-Qaeda is what's important, whatever front they're on."

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) then turned to General Petraeus. Petraeus' job isn't to fight, or to plan, the entire war; as he said to Feingold, it's a question better directed to Admiral Fallon, the Central Command chief, not to mention President Bush, Defense Secretary Gates, or Director of National Intelligence McConnell.

Feingold called the unwillingness to "seriously comment about how this relates to the larger global fight against terrorism" a "classic example of myopia, the myopia of Iraq."

Finally, the question on everyone's mind. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) asked how the turn of Anbar Sunnis against al-Qaeda relates to national reconciliation -- what Amb. Crocker and President Bush have endlessly called "bottom-up" reconciliation. Of course, there aren't any Shiites in Anbar, so how does that reconciliation work?

Both Crocker and Gen. Petraeus answered the same way: reconciliation can be perceived by the Maliki government's willingness to pay for Anbar "volunteers" to join the Iraqi security forces. What that really means is that the Interior Ministry is paying the salaries of 27,000 Anbari Sunnis to police their province. But Crocker said that, at least, the financing shows that the "two entities" -- Anbar province and the Maliki government -- are "establishing working linkages." Petraeus added that in Baghdad -- not really the area at issue in the substance of the question, but still -- the "volunteers" in Sunni neighborhoods against al-Qaeda are going to be allowed by the Maliki government to no longer be "fixed in place" for operations. That means that the ministries of defense and interior will send the Sunnis newly in their ranks to areas outside their own neighborhoods.

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