“This fall my tour at JFCOM is complete,” he said in an e-mail to Marine Corps Times. “At this rank, my future is up to the DOD leadership/Cdr in Chief, so I’ll see what, if anything, they intend for me to do.”

Coy as it may seem, that’s the equivalent of posting his resume for the next job. And Marine Corps Times pretty clearly wants Mattis’ next job to be Commandant of the Marine Corps, as you can see from the article produced. It’s not surprising: Mattis is one of the most respected generals in the entire military; easily the most respected Marine general; a commander of Marine infantrymen in Iraq; and a counterinsurgency scholar-practitioner.

This is all via Richard Allen Smith of VetVoice, who observes, “For anyone who has an interest in COIN, this is a good thing.”

Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, called the successful raid “potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency.” Well, military leaders said the same thing after the June 2006 killing of al-Masri and al-Baghdadi’s predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the insurgency intensified for another year, requiring the abandonment of al-Qaeda by Iraqi Sunnis, the successful ethnic cleansing of Baghdad during the broader sectarian war and the U.S.’s shift to a counterinsurgency strategy to tamp down violence beginning in late summer 2007. Odierno’s boss in that latter effort, Gen. David Petraeus, issued a more measured statement:

The deaths of these two leaders represent significant blows against extremism in Iraq. While we recognize that AQI retains the capability of carrying out periodic extremist attacks, Iraqi leaders have vowed to press the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq. In accordance with the Iraq-U.S. Security Agreement, U.S. forces will continue to assist and enable our Iraqi partners in that effort.

Update: Vice President Biden’s formulation echoes Odierno’s:

Their deaths are potentially devastating blows to al Qaeda Iraq. But equally important, in my view, is this action demonstrates the improved security strength and capacity of Iraqi security forces. The Iraqis led this operation, and it was based on intelligence the Iraqi security forces themselves developed following their capture of a senior AQI leader last month.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, center, pictured with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Gen. David Petraeus (WDCpix)

The commander of U.S. troops in Iraq did not give much indication in congressional testimony Wednesday that he would accelerate his schedule to withdraw troops to accommodate a possible troop increase in Afghanistan, a move the Obama administration is debating.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, testifying for the first time as commander of Multinational Forces-Iraq, told the House Armed Services Committee that his plan to reduce his 124,000 troops to 50,000 non-combat forces by August 2010 had “flexibility” built into it, and said that he would consider speeding up the drawdown as circumstances permit. He added that he foresaw removing 4,000 troops, about a combat brigades’ worth, by the end of October, which he said was ahead of his schedule.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

But Odierno focused much more on the dangers of drawing down forces too rapidly. “The important part is that we do not want to lose the security progress that has been made,” Odierno said in response to a direct question from Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the committee’s chairman. Odierno said that U.S. troops serve as a “psychological” backstop for both Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government so “drivers of instability” do not overtake Iraq’s “nascent democracy.”

“The plan we have, I believe,” Odierno said, “allows us to withdrawal deliberately and maintain what I believe is an appropriate level of security that the Iraqi security forces ultimately can sustain.” While Odierno said he and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, are working to transfer surveillance equipment and other so-called “combat support” assets from Iraq to Afghanistan, the most Odierno committed to changing his timetable was to say he was open to “speed up [withdrawal] if I think the situation on the ground allows it, or to slow down, and I will continue to make those judgments as we move forward.”

Shortly after Odierno testified, the White House held its first meeting of President Obama’s war cabinet to review Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy since the Afghanistan war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, delivered a still-classified request for additional resources to the Pentagon late last week. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on ABC’s “ThisWeek” that the U.S. does not have any uncommitted combat brigades to send to Afghanistan before January, owing to deployments in both Afghanistan and Iraq, raising questions about whether the Iraq drawdown needs to proceed more rapidly. Soldiers in Iraq, by Pentagon policy, must receive at least fifteen months of so-called “dwell time” to rest between deployments, and so the pace of withdrawal from Iraq impacts — but does not solely determine — the availability of Army combat brigades for Afghanistan. In July, Gates floated the idea of increasing Odierno’s withdrawal schedule, although he did not explicitly link it to a prospective Afghanistan troop infusion.

With ethno-sectarian violence down 77 percent in August 2009 compared to August 2007 — with, Odierno said, only 19 ethno-sectarian incidents over Ramadan 2009 compared to 978 in 2006 — Odierno proclaimed himself “confident” in the ultimate strategy to withdraw combat forces by August 2010 and all U.S. forces by December 2011. He repeatedly praised the performance and espirit d’corps of the Iraqi security forces and noted that “high-profile attacks” continued to decline across Iraq even after U.S. combat forces left their Iraqi counterparts in charge of stability in Iraqi cities and towns on June 30.

Yet Odierno said that security is “not yet enduring.” He cited weak Iraqi ministerial institutions and continued competition for land and resources — particularly between Iraq’s Arab majority and Kurdish minority — as continuing dangers, and said that one of his priorities was to build enduring Iraqi capabilities for security and governance in concert with the U.S. Embassy. By January 1, Odierno told the panel, he hoped to release a revised Joint Campaign Plan with the Embassy, a blueprint for concerted military and diplomatic action to strengthen Iraqi institutions in advance of ultimate U.S. military departure.

Odierno sidestepped a question on his relationship with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, which is reportedly uneasy, saying instead that his staff works closely with the Embassy’s diplomats. “We’re completely integrated at every level, we continue to be completely integrated,” Odierno stated.

When asked what counterinsurgency lessons learned in Iraq might apply to Afghanistan — as the 2007 counterinsurgency strategy there was recently cited by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to argue for a troop increase for Afghanistan — Odierno warned not to view one war through the prism of another.

“One of the lessons I’ve learned is that you’ve got to understand the environment. And you’ve got to understand the socio-economic, military, political issues that underpin the reason why violence is occurring. And from what I’ve seen, Gen. McChystal is doing exactly this,” Odierno said. But he did say that the U.S. would need to take a “whole-of-government approach” to integrate civilian and military components of the strategy in order to succeed.

Click through to the transcript of Odierno’s interview. He said that continued violence in Mosul makes him worry if the Iraqi security forces are really ready to take control of the city by June 30:

I’ve had some preliminary conversations with Prime Minister [Maliki]. It is going to be a very difficult political decision for him to decide whether US remains inside the city in Mosul or not. We will wait.

Asked to elaborate on coming out of the cities more broadly, here’s what he said in full to the reporter, Deborah Haynes, on the subject of continued violence in the Iraqi north:

What I would say about coming out of the cities is that I feel confident about coming out of the cities in most of Iraq. I even feel confident in Baghdad even following the recent attacks of yesterday. I do feel the security forces are capable of securing Baghdad. We will still be here to assist them, we will still have transition and advisory teams with them inside of Baghdad.

The agreement says that combat forces out of the cities by June 30 so all of our support forces will remain. But we will be prepared to assist them if they need it. So if there is a bad incident and they need assistance then we will be right there to help them and I think we’ve worked that out.

The two areas I am concerned with are Mosul and then Baquba and parts of Diyala province. We will conduct assessments and provide our assessment when the time’s right I want to give it more time because things can change pretty quickly around here.

Then there’s a clarification, framed as asking whether operations in the cities post-July might come across as “Americans not being true to their word.” Here’s Odierno’s response:

I think we have been very clear. We have turned over over 51 bases, we have closed many bases inside Baghdad. We have been very clear about this from the beginning. One of the things we promise to support Iraqis with is with our enablers, air if they need it. We help them with logistics, we help them with planning, we help them with intelligence, we have to be with them in order to help them. We can’t just not be with them. So in order to provide them those enablers we have to be co-located and continued to work with them.

This seems like thin ground for the Times‘ headline and framing. Everything he’s talking about doing — lending support to Iraqi troops who continue to operate in Iraqi cities — is consistent with the SOFA. No one’s ever said that Iraqi cities are no-go zones for U.S. troops after June 30. If Maliki indeed asks Odierno to stay in Mosul past June 30, that really is a problem from the perspective of the SOFA, but it doesn’t seem from the interview that Odierno is pushing for that prospect, and says explicitly that such a decision is cost-heavy and may not happen. Throughout the interview, he declares himself “comfortable” with the Iraq withdrawal timetable and the “flexibility” it provides him. I’ve had my doubts about Odierno’s commitment to the SOFA, but this isn’t setting off the alarm bells.

I’ll have the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Maliki and President Talabani while I’m here. Obviously we’ve spent a lot of time trying to get Afghanistan right. But I think it’s important for us to remember that there’s still a lot of work to be done here. And in addition to thanking our troops, I also want to send a strong message to our diplomatic corps and our civilians that they’re going to be critical to our success here.

We’ve made significant political progress. You’ve seen a greater willingness on the part of all the factions in Iraq to resolve their issues politically and through non-violent means. But with the national elections coming up, many of the unresolved issues may be brought to a head. And it’s very important for us to use all of our influence to encourage parties to resolve these issues in ways that are equitable and fair. And I think that my presence here can help do that.

What could probably do more than that is for Chris Hill, Obama’s nominee to become ambassador to Iraq, to get an up-or-down vote in the Senate when it returns from recess after next week.

Sen. Sam Brownback is holding up the nomination owing to a dispute over North Korea, and even neoconservatives in good standing like Max Boot consider the objections a bit trivial compared to the magnitude of the ambassadorial task in Iraq. Here’s Boot quoting an anonymous Bush administration official:

I agree with your post this morning on Chris.  I had the same differences with him over 6 PT [six party talks with North Korea] as Brownback and he wouldn’t have been my choice for Baghdad, but 1) absent some gross dereliction or other disqualifying factor the President deserves to have the diplomatic team of his choice, 2) Dave [Petraeus] and Ray O[dierno] really are anxious to have their civilian partner in place to take advantage of the progress we have made.  I think Brownback should let Chris have an up or down vote ASAP.  That is a different question than whether or not Brownback/Kyl or others want to vote against him to make a point.

Still, it’s conspicuous that Obama didn’t call for an up or down vote on Hill from Baghdad.

In that corner: a small band of GOP senators not on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led by Sam Brownback (R-Kans.), who’s threatening to hold Hill’s confirmation because he disapproves of Hill’s performance as North Korea envoy under President George W. Bush. The Washington Times editorializes against Hill: “If anyone wants Iran to have the same nuclear capability as North Korea, Hill is your man.” If you’re wondering how on earth the U.S. ambassador to Iraq has the ability to grant nuclear capability to Iran, welcome to the debate over the Hill nomination, which the committee takes up at 9:30 this morning.

Substantively, watch for Hill to go all-out in demonstrating his facility with Iraq, as he’s never served in the Middle East before. During Petraeus’ confirmation hearing to become U.S. military commander in Iraq in January 2007, he referenced the Shabak, a very-obscure-in-the-U.S. ethnic minority in Iraq, as a way of making a point about Iraq’s sectarian complexity. Will Hill go that deep? (The difference, though, was that Petraeus already had two Iraq command tours under his belt.) Look as well to hear how Hill will approach non-traditional diplomatic efforts in Iraq, like the governance-aid groups known as Provincial Reconstruction Teams, or whether he views U.S. diplomatic activity in Iraq rising while U.S. troops withdraw and Iraqis try to reach a stable political compact.

Politically, watch for which GOPers on the committee take up Brownback’s charges and go after Hill. I called around last week to figure out what the GOP senators on the committee thought about the nominee. They’re a rather green group, all freshman and, if I’m not mistaken, sophomores, apart from the ranking member. Not a single one besides Lugar took a position on Hill. Let’s see if the tone changes this morning.

It’s still a population-centric counterinsurgency campaign. Perkins talked about gradually moving U.S. troops out of installations in Iraqi cities by June in accordance to with the Status of Forces Agreement. To counterinsurgents, that raises red flags, since the idea of “commuting to the fight” from large Forward Operating Bases outside the population centers has a record of failure. So I asked Perkins if population-centric counterinsurgency was still the order of the day until the combat mission ends next year. “What’s important to understand is that the strategy is not changing, it’s still a counterinsurgency fight being waged,” he said.

The difference is that now it’s the Iraqi security forces that are increasingly charged with holding the population centers and living amongst the people. “As we move out, the Iraqis move in,” Perkins said. They’re already the “landlords” of the cities’ Joint Security Stations established during the surge, and the United States will withdraw from those as “tenants” gradually.

It’s worth noting that Tom Ricks, author of two authoritative books about Iraq, doubts this will work and thinks the whole withdrawal plan is overly optimistic, too reminiscent of President George W. Bush.

Getting a warrant isn’t that hard. Sure, U.S. troops now have to get warrants to detain Iraqis. But it turns out not to be an overly cumbersome process. There’s a joint U.S.-Iraqi military operations committee that helps get “preapproval” for missions. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and his deputies “sit down with the Iraqi leaders [and] discuss what operations we want to conduct” along with the force mix of U.S. and Iraqi troops, and there are “judges that we and the Iraqis work with.” Intelligence-driven operations that have to be conducted quickly are pretty much fast-tracked; and Iraqi commanders on-scene help execute whatever follow-on operations might be necessary. Overall, Perkins said that the consultative U.S.-Iraqi process is increasingly part of the United States’ “battle rhythm.”

There may not be a set structure for the Advisory and Assistance Brigades yet, but don’t panic. As I reported Monday, the U.S. military doesn’t yet know what the training brigades that are going to replace the combat brigades in Iraq will look like. Perkins said that Odierno’s command, Central Command and the Joint Staff ( the staff officers who support the Joint Chiefs) were all looking at the question, particularly in regards to what assets the new brigades will require. But the process isn’t really so new, he said. “We’ll look to units we have in the military, figure out what we need to do to them to task-organize them,” Perkins said. “Rarely do we send a unit as it existed at [its] home station without task-organizing it to conduct the mission.” It’s important to remember that “every soldier is a combat soldier,” he added. “They’re trained to take part in combat [and] defend themselves. The issue is what mission do they have.” Perkins remembered commanding a tank unit in Macedonia as part of a peacekeeping operation; to say the least, that’s not what tank units are used to.

It’s the Embassy’s time to shine. Or not. I asked Perkins about what the military’s mission will be in support of diplomatic activities. As it turns out, his division is based in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The news that he broke — as far as I’m aware, that is — is that the Provincial Reconstruction Teams have just secured “additional funding”; I’m trying to find out more on that. Maybe the State Department isn’t so rapidly transitioning to “a normal diplomatic mission” just yet. Beyond diplomacy, Perkins said, his command still works with development specialists, agronomists, the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF to ensure that Iraqi governance and economic activity, including the provision of necessary social services, remains in the wake of U.S. troop withdrawals.

Sayonara to the contractors. My pal Paul McCleary from Ares asked about the Christian Science Monitor’s story yesterday about reducing the number of contractors in Iraq. Perkins said it was sensible, and a function of need. “It’s logical that as our force structure comes down, … our logistical support comes down.” Besides, providing jobs for the Iraqis was both cost-effective to the American taxpayer; economically stimulative for Iraq; and a good way of denying an insurgent outfit a potential recruit who needs the money. Wonder why we didn’t think of that before.

It was conspicuous how rarely Perkins added caveats to his assessments. Only when he was invited to give closing remarks did he mention that there were still challenges ahead — but the first one he mentioned was the drop in oil prices that will impact the Iraqi government’s budget. Residual elements of al-Qaeda and the Shiite “Special Group criminals” now find it “very hard to get the passive support that’s so neccessary” for an insurgency to continue. Several times he repeated that with the end of the surge, troop levels have come down 20 percent as attacks have come down 90 percent, an implicit challenge to the notion that U.S. forces are the only thing between stability and chaos in Iraq. With a dual focus on U.S. troop withdrawals and improving Iraqi security-force capacity, the U.S. military command seems to have found a formula that “we think works well,” Perkins said.

Perkins repeatedly talked about what goals Gen. Ray Odierno’s command sought to meet by the deadlines of “31 August 2010,” when the combat mission ends, and “31 December 2011,” when the U.S. force presence ends. In other words, Perkins, like Defense Secretary Bob Gates, gave no indication that the United States plans to be in Iraq beyond 2011.

So what will the U.S. mission in Iraq look like between now and 2011, in Perkins’ estimation? I’ll summarize that in my next post.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, recently issued a directive asking his subordinate commanders to reduce the use of civilian contractors on at least 50 bases and small installations across Iraq and, where possible, provide employment to Iraqis instead. …

“This initiative supports our desired end state of a stable, sovereign, and prosperous Iraq,” General Odierno wrote in a directive dated Jan. 31. “It’s the right thing to do, so let’s move out.”

Odierno’s asking his commanders to cut their reliance on contractors — there are about 150,000 of them in Iraq, according to the Christian Science Monitor’s Gordon Lubold, which include 37,000 Iraqis — by five percent each quarter. He apparently made a point in his directive of criticizing the military’s reliance on contractors, and candidly told commanders that their troops may need to take up the shortfall. Whatever will happen to KBR’s Sri Lankan ice cream scoopers at the dining facility at Baghdad’s Camp Liberty?

The directive is outside the question of what will happen to private security contractors, since that’s not under the military’s jurisdiction. And there the big thing to watch during the transition to full Iraqi control is who bids on the State Department’s Worldwide Private Personal Security contract when it comes up for renewal in September. It’s currently split between Blackwat– sorry, Xe, DynCorp and Triple Canopy, but in January the Iraqi government announced it won’t accredit the-company-formerly-known-as-Blackwater and it’s unclear if DynCorp and Triple Canopy want the contract now that the Iraqi government put a provision in the Status of Forces Agreement stipulating that all contractors fall under its legal jurisdiction.

Beyond that particular contract, I recently spoke with Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, which might jocularly-but-uncharitably be called the mercenaries’ lobby, about what he thought about the future of private security in Iraq. Thanks to the improved security picture, “more businesses are in Iraq, and they hire private security,” Brooks said. “The large scale [operations are] diminishing, and the small scale is picking up.” Bodyguard work for businesses might be the future of private security, Brooks mused, comparing the situation to Colombia, where private security firms protect big shots from the various militias and terrorist groups.

Update: As Doug suggests in comments, I phrased that last part a bit poorly, but he seems to have read it as me quoting him as saying that PSCs were protecting militiamen and terrorists. What I meant to say, in accordance with our interview, was that they protect the big shots — from commercial interests, etc. — from the dangers of Colombian militiamen and terrorists. Apologies for the confusion.