by Jennifer C. Hunt

Straggles - Appears to refer to civilian stragglers who attach themselves to military units and become a pain in the butt because they don’t know procedures regarding safety and tactical issues and are largely empty weight. See previous blog for contextual significance.

Big Green Weenie- an expression used by marines to refer to instances in which they have been treated unfairly by the Marine Corps (Big Green Weenie).

Semper Gumpy – refers to individuals usually in the marine corps who are “always flexible” and “stuck with the “shit” jobs.

Butter-bar-boot-ass-lieutenant - a clueless college boy in a position of power or leadership.

Weekend warriors – lazy reservists

Motard- short hand for motivated retard or motivated idiot who kisses butt, loves the military, and volunteers for everything.

FUBAR - F….d up beyond all recognition.

F…ktard- Combination of the two words, f….g and retard that essentially means an expletive idiot. Can be used to refer to any  human creature that deserves the epithet, including an A-hole boss. Unfortunately the world, including the military, contains numerous f…ktards.

F…wit – Similar to the above but with a less severe case of idiocy. More like a frickin’ nitwit that a frickin’ retard.

Asshattery – Acts of existence performed by asshats.

Douchebaggery- Acts of existence preformed by douchebags.

Asshat – Someone who behaves in a manner somewhere between the more extreme douchebag and the less extreme A-hole although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. A typical asshat has the equivalent of sh..t for brains.

Assclown – Someone who makes a fool of him or herself by behaving in a manner that does not suit the realities of his or her role downrange (in country).  Similar in meaning to a clown (showoff/joker/idiot) who has sh…t for brains.

Fobbits- (sometimes spelled fobits). Soldiers and/or commanders who stay in the rear of battle and never leave the forward operating base (FOB) to go outside the wire (in the danger zone). Similar in some ways to REMFs, the Vietnam war military term for rear echelon motherf….ckers.

FNG – F….g new guy. A “rookie” soldier who’s is downrange and out of the wire for the first time. FNGs are generally treated with a some disdain until they have sufficient experience under their belt to have proven themselves as real  soldiers. Same word was used during the Vietnam war.

I will add to the list as I learn or think of additional brilliantly descriptive acronyms and phrases that are used by members of the military. Please feel free to add to my vocabulary but writing me at gmail or sending a comment.

My last blog has been confirmed in messages I’ve just received from people in the know – special forces guys, one Navy SEAL and a Green Beret. The individual below finds additional issues with the photo gallery that I didn’t see.

Comment 1:

You are absolutely correct. What is HTS trying to do, impress someone?  There is no need to be in full digies, especially w/ kevlar, vest and all that gear.  Part of gathering any type of information, aka “intelligence” is to be able to be approachable, not intimidating….

I never did like civs in camies, some of them emulate active duty roles when they are only there for support.  While not everyone in country sporting a beard and assault rifles are SF, in one of the pictures, I could vaguely pick out a cover with the two arrows that signifies Army SF and what looks like either a scout or pathfinder badge.  No one in their right mind would wear a fake, especially in country. It’s earned never given.

As for the girls taking part in special missions, that sounds bogus to me.  I can only speak for my time, and my SEAL command overseas, and not once did we allow straggles, especially females (no disrespect).  It’s a liability, and you are correct, they make perfect targets.  I would hate to be part of any security detail involving American civilian (social) scientists, my SGLI (Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance) does not pay enough. I did bump into marshals, and FBI, but only inside FOBS (Forward Operating Bases), … and only after snatch and grabs.

Social scientists are not going to make a difference in this war campaign.  We cannot change cultures. I think we have lost enough lives to support this.

Comment 2:

Based on the pictures I am  looking at I would state with confidence these are not Tier 1 soldiers.

My additional comments:

Mike S’s comments below have led me to think more deeply about the photographs. One of the major problems is that the accompanying captions are vague and confusing and leave open to interpretation what the female social scientist is doing with Special Forces soldiers. Are they involved in a particular mission? If so what kind and what is she doing in relation to them?  I also wondered if she or others requested permission to put up the photos.  Included are not only  photographs of members of the local population but also Special Forces officers.  Given that none of these people are public figures and HTS is not assigned the task of the media (to report observations to the public), those in the photographs should have provided consent before their images were broadcast all over the world. In situations in which it is impossible to request consent, the benefit of publishing the pictures should be weighed against the risks. I doubt if such matters were considered by the person(s) who posted the pictures involved.

December 18: I was just alerted to another mystery regarding these photographs and the possibility that an HTS social scientist was allowed to accompany a Special Forces team on a mission.  Technically such missions may be “black-ops” and therefore “don’t exist.” Furthermore, she would have to have top secret security clearance to participate. This leads me to wonder if my initial interpretation of what the social scientist was doing was pure conjecture and completely off base.

Still, I can’t imagine why HTS would publish on its website photos showing the faces of Special Forces soldiers as well as those of the villagers with whom the social scientist talked. 

In recent comments regarding the new face of human terrain team, I noted that the program no longer denies that it conducts intelligence and that the data collected is to be used for non kinetic purposes to minimize civilian and soldier casualties. Instead, according to the new HTS description, team personnel gather any sort of data to meet the needs of brigade and possibly other commanders… that could include just about any kind of cultural intelligence and more.

http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/htsImageSliderIraq.aspx

I made a mistake in ignoring the photographs that accompany the description. Click on Iraq and what do you see? Faces of HTS members. If they are still in theater, couldn’t this put them at risk? HTS members have been targeted in the past and at least one of those is dead.

There’s also photos suggesting the female social scientist who is featured in numerous pictures, accompanied soldiers on an “ODA” mission in Sinjar. One soldier is sporting a beard. The only members of the military who sport beards that I know about are Rangers and Special Forces. I have since been corrected on the previous sentence.  I’m told that Rangers don’t generally sport beards and not every soldier who does wear a beard is Special Forces (I know that defense contractors assigned to various missions sometimes wear beards etc but I was taking about  “active duty” soldiers.)

Regardless, it’s still seems possible that  this female social scientist knowingly accompanied a group of elite warriors (“targeting units” in lay terms) into an area of Iraq inhabited by insurgents. You’d be a fool to think she’d be allowed to keep her data (intelligence) to herself. She’s probably using a translator. Is he hers alone or one with the Special Forces? I’d bet he’s theirs and beholden to them.

(note… targeting units is my phrase and not one used by the military. I use it to denote the general goal of a elite unit such as  SEALS and Army Special Forces who are often assigned special missions requiring their expertise. These include gathering intelligence for subsequent purpose of targeting/snatch and grab missions, and other such efforts that HTS normally would not be part in because HTS is not appropriately trained and its missions are supposed to be  geared towards non kinetic aspects of the counterinsurgency. HTS is not also supposed to accompany battalions when their members are going out on missions directed at killing or capturing insurgents).

You’d also be foolish to think that the soldiers who are observing her actions aren’t noting with whom she’s talking in the village. Talk about research ethics and protection of human subjects!

Why would Special Forces units allow a human terrain team social scientist to accompany them on a mission into such a village unless they thought they could use her for purposes of gathering intelligence that would later be used in the planning of tactical-kinetic (lethal) operations? An alternative possibility, according to individuals who have communicated to me, is that they might have taken her on a bogus mission for their amusement – she is female and they are  men in a war zone.

Some thoughts on the term ODA as it is frequently used in the military: A Special Forces company consists of more or less six Operational Detachments Alpha teams (ODA teams). Each ODA specializes in particular skill sets required for the relevant mission including combat diving, mountain warfare, etc.

An ODA consists of  a number of men, each of whom have an occupational specialty key to the team, including intelligence, ordnance, weapons/ballistics etc.

My question is this – What in the  hell is the social scientist who is currently working in the HTS social science directorate, (an appointee of Montgomery McFate and Steve Fondacaro) doing  on a special forces mission?  If she doesn’t want to get involved with targeting – remember that at the the time of her hire social scientists were not supposed to be used for missions involving targeting – then don’t go up into the mountains with a team whose aim is killing the enemy.

This photo selection makes me wonder how many other social scientists were involved in operations that were directly involved in targeting even before the mission stated in the website for HTS was changed.

According to today’s New York times, “the New York City Police Department has assigned a ranking official to look into a wide array of allegations of misconduct, including charges that crime complaints were ignored or manipulated, in the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation.”

The officer assigned to the investigation is a deputy inspector, one rank above captain – so I wouldn’t exactly call the man “high ranking.” He’s totally dependent on Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for promotion to Inspector (full bird) and is therefore not yet even a chief. On the positive side, this means that the deputy inspector can only me demoted one rank if Kelly doesn’t like the outcome of his investigation. On the negative side, the deputy inspector doesn’t have a whole lot of power and remains dependent on the Police Commissioner for advancement of his career.

The main problem with the investigation as it is reported in the New York Times is that it focuses on the 81 precinct rather than the whole police department.  The investigation thus appears to assume a kind of “bad apple theory” of police misconduct.

The bad apple theory postulates that abuse of force and/or corruption or, in this case, the downgrading etc. of crime, is the problem of one or two bad people in the department but the barrel (the department) is clean. The 81 precinct is  “the bad apple” and there is nothing endemic or systemic in terms of the whole department about the problem at hand.

The end result of this investigation is that a head or two may fall but CompStat is likely to remain in place as it is. The investigation will deny that the problem is systemic and has to do with how CompStat is being used in a department run like a dictatorship. The Police Commissioner, Deputy Commissioners and Chiefs downtown have encouraged the expansion of CompStat to every itty bitty corner of the Department and continue to exert pressure on unit and precinct commanders and even lieutenants and sergeants to come up with numbers that can’t exist without some sophisticated manipulation of the numbers.

The fact is that CompStat needs to be redefined and reduced (de-expanded) and put in its original context – as part of an effort todecentralize power, empower police commanders, and make them creatively responsible and accountable for their commands. Today we have CompStat existing in a Department run by a few very high ranking fear and intimidation, micromanaging  bosses who are loyal to the Police Commissioner who exerts nearly total control while disempowering  precinct and unit commanders who are still held responsible if something goes amiss.

Conclusion: the barrel is rotten to the core.

(Cartoon by Anthony Mair -”Mairboy”)

Human Terrain Team Systems has a new face. The official website of the organization appears to  involve a little less spin and more accuracy in terms of the project goals, although it omits homage to the three social scientists who have thus far been killed. Soldiers and civilians who have been injured while working on HTT missions have never been officially mentioned at all.

The new face of HTS (Human Terrain Team Systems appears to be product of recent changes instituted by Sharon Hamilton who has taken Steve Fondacaro’s place as the acting director of the program.

For those that don’t know the program’s checkered history, here are some highlights: Since the first team deployed in 2007, three social scientists have been killed and multiple former or active duty military team members and their security, seriously injured or killed. One translator was kidnapped and later exchanged for detainees. Questions have been raised regarding issues of leadership at home and downrange, the selection and training of personnel, and the nature of relationships among members of teams.  There have been accusations of violations of ethical principles and  legal procedures as well. Complaints of routine discrimination against women and minorities run rampant and some HTT members have characterized HTS as a “hostile work environment” at home and abroad.  Two investigations were initiated in 2010. One involves an article 15-6 (general) inquiry containing 33 counts. The other was started by the House Armed Services Committee and turned over to the Center for Naval Analyses. Although these results are in, they have not been made public. HTT manager, Steve Fondacaro, was fired early summer, 2010. In August, Montgomery McFate, the head of the Social Science Directorate was also forced to resign.  HTS is currently looking through applications to find her replacement.

According to the new website: “The Human Terrain System (HTS) Project is an Army-led, OSD supported initiative to provide socio-cultural teams to commanders and staffs at the Army Brigade Combat Team (BCT) / USMC Regimental Combat Team (RCT), Army Division / Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), & Corps / Theater levels, in order to improve the understanding of the local population and apply this understanding to the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP). ”

“The HTS concept is to attach Human Terrain Teams (HTTs) to deployed BCTs / RCTs, Divisions, & Corps/theater, and support them with a CONUS-based Reach-back Research Center (RRC). The Human Terrain System uses empirical social science research and analysis to fill a large operational decision-making support gap. This research provides current, accurate, and reliable data generated by on-the-ground research on the specific social groups in the supported unit’s operating environment. This human terrain knowledge provides a socio-cultural foundation for the staff’s support to the Commander’s Military Decision Making Process (MDMP), both in planning and execution. It also enables a more effective rotation of forces through the creation and maintenance of an enduring, socio-cultural knowledge base.”

What is different between today’s and yesterday’s spin on the HTS website? The most obvious point is that today’s spin is poorly written and almost unintelligible to the lay and even military reader.  On the other hand, if I have correctly interpreted what it says, it does appear that the role of HTS has changed.

Today HTS no longer appears to be claiming its operations lie outside of military intelligence. No longer does the recruitment page stress that the mission of human terrain teams is to reduce casualties and aid the nonlethal aspects of the counterinsurgency. The mission appears to have formally changed to include any research about the human terrain (local culture) that mightl facilitate the military decision making process at battalion, brigade, and higher levels.

I don’t know what this all means. I’ve heard that Colonel Hamilton is doing the best she can as a temporary acting director trying to sort out a complicated program. I’ve also heard that the training hasn’t changed. If this is true, it’s not a good a thing because the training has little to do with the realities teams face downrange. I’ve heard that the situation has not yet improved in theater.

I did hear a rumor – and this is only a rumor – that Hamilton went  to Afghanistan to fire an individual in a leadership position and then ended up riding with him in an MRAP (armed vehicle) and was hit by an I.E.D. The person is still there. Maybe she got his side of the story and found out that he was good at his job and wasn’t what he was rumored to be. There is, however, one  team leader who should never have been deployed in the first place and has caused problems on every team to which he’s been attached. I don’t know how he’s managed to stay where he is. I suspect that he knows how to manipulate the law regarding defense department employees and has threatened to sue.

It’s looks like HTS is going to be around for awhile. In time, we’ll see if the new website reflects real changes within the organization or if it’s another effort to dress the windows to increase the funding of the human terrain machine.  If the program were seriously interested in change, they’d chop it down to size, introduce only ace teams to particular commands in theater, and only add to the roster of team deployments when they have top level personnel composing a new team. This is not a development that any defense contractor would want. The fewer people they bring in for training, the less money they make. The contradictions between the  interests of the program and the military and those of the defense contracting world may continue to undermine the project and aid to the toll of the uninformed, unprepared, unqualified personnel sent downrange, resulting in an increase in the numbers of injured and dead.

To quote Bob Dylan, my favorite musical poet in regards to this ironing out the issues with human terrain in the context of funding defense contractors to handle the recruitment and training aspects of the job, “I just said good luck!”

One of Sigmund Freud’s major contributions to the study of mental life was the introduction of the concept of the repetition complex. Applied to individuals, it suggests that people repeat in their adolescent and adult lives, conflicts from the past that are unresolved. The same model appears applicable to human terrain team system in its mode of attracting defense contracting companies to outsource the project after it’s been discovered that previous contractors are incompetent or worse.

In his last two columns, John Stanton (Oct 2010 Zero Anthropology ) provides a list of defense contractors bidding for “the new human terrain team contract.” Among them are Glevun Associates and McNeil Technologies. To quote Stanton, “As of 11 October 2010, 23 contractors had expressed an interest in running the US Army’s Human Terrain System and getting a share, or all, of the 7 million that comes with a contract award.”

Among the bidders are companies whose echelons are intimately familiar with fired top level  management personnel, Steve Fondacaro and Montgomery McFate, as well as other persons currently in the program who appear to be part of the problem from what I understand from persons downrange.  Stanton notes that people watching these new developments are losing sleep over the list of companies. ” One source saw the list …(and suggested it looked like) “circles from Dante’s Hell” (see Zero Anthropology for more detail).

In HTT training in Leavenworth, Kansas, students endure a very long course on research methods that has limited value for use in a war zone. I hear instructors are military buffs who get paid $1200 a day so it’s clear why they’d try and hang on to the gig. The main instructor is a female applied anthropologist who does survey (market) research in order to facilitate operations for major corporations, including those involved with the production of fast foods that help fatten the population and wreak further havoc with our nation’s health system. She’s never been downrange. For one week of the course, she is joined by a tall, lanky male cohort who is an expert in network analysis and who has also never been downrange. The pair spend a week attempting to teach network analysis to members of the human terrain team class so they can use it in theater to provide information to the military regarding relationships among members of the local population.

Three individuals, including two social scientists and one former marine, refused to engage in the exercise in one human terrain team class cycle. In the assigned exercise, the two instructors requested that students list names of classmates with whom they socialized at various times. The fact that the three refused to participate illustrates the obvious- that network analysis can be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. None of three students wanted the instructors or other members of the class to have information regarding their friends and associates in the program, lest it compromise those friendships, reveal too much to others, or be falsely interpreted out of the context of the relationships and expose them to harm in view of the politics of the program and the animosities that were beginning to surface in class.

“Camel-toe” – the nickname that one former military member of the class gave to the female instructor because she wears her stretch- jean-pant so tight you can see the outline of her vulva, was not happy about the three students’ obstinacy but handled it well enough. So did her network analysis co-instructor even though the three students had ruined a part of their little exercise.

For personal and intellectual reasons, I remain deeply ambivalent about the use of MAP-HT (which by the way has proven pretty useless in theater) or other more sophisticated mapping toolkit by human terrain teams for similar reasons that the three student refused to engage in the exercise in their class….In Afghanistan, having lunch with a member of the Taliban or an associate could easily be taken out of social context – what might be a meal that is the product of coercion or some cultural rule forbidding refusal to host a “neighbor” could be interpreted as something else. The result could be that innocent persons end up on the targeting list.  In the absence of interviews and other ethnographic data, it’s difficult to interpret the significance of “the network” such computer programs introduce with the help of data input by HTTs (human terrain team members).

However, I do believe that network analysis could be fruitfully applied to the defense contracting industry, in part because interviews could followup network findings and the data could be properly explored and interpreted in social context.

These defense contracting companies often subcontract out to each other, forming a system of favors and inter- dependencies and loyalties.  A lot of defense contractors are working in Iraq and Afghanistan in various capacities and many are linked to HTT. The relationships between managers at different levels may  turn out to work like a system of interlocking directorates in large corporations, tied to one to another through financial and other favors.

What does this have to do with human terrain team and who gets the contract? I don’t know. However, it’s certainly possible that the same failed and incompetent and even dishonest players will soon overtly or covertly be running the HTT show again with the result that fraud, bullying and other minor and more major forms of trouble will be reproduced over again among the HTTs in training and downrange.

This does not look good for those in HTT who still believe in the program and its formal mandate, to reduce causalities and aid the non-kinetic aspects of the counterinsurgency.

I noticed a new piece of human terrain team brilliance when I reviewed the photos on the website cited in my previous blog about Mac and his lovely rifle.  One photo in that blog depicts an attractive young woman wearing civilian clothes with a 9 mm pistol strapped to her side. I understand she’s a “social scientist” on a human terrain team and also maybe a general’s daughter. In one of of the photos, she’s pictured with a large sock monkey attached to her pack, walking around, on her way to talk to the locals.

Flanagan, the team leader, is quoted as saying he loathes the monkey for reasons that aren’t made clear. Most likely the beast offends his sensibilities as a tough (former) military guy, leading a team to battle (or other mission) downrange. It must be frustrating not to be able to yell and scream and beat the monkey into looking a little bit less soft, cushy and weak.

When I first noticed the monkey, I thought of a child wearing a zip up stuffed animal backpack. What, I wondered, could be sillier than a pistol packing HTT social scientist wearing an animal backpack stuffed with MRES (meals ready to eat).

Apparently, the young woman likes to wear the monkey outside the wire because she thinks it reduces the hostility of the locals by presenting a soft friendly fuzzy American face, offsetting the threat implicit in the weapon she wears on her hip.

However, the fact is that what I think, the young woman thinks, and Flanagan thinks is  irrelevant to the Human Terrain Team mission. What’s important is the meaning of the monkey to the people of Afghanistan, a significance that none of the team members appear to have researched before making the decision to carry the monkey on missions.

It’s my understanding – and correct me if I’m wrong – that there is a passage in the Koran that suggests that Mohammad created the Jewish people from monkey and pigs. While many Muslims would dismiss this passage in a similar manner as Christians might dismiss the myth of Adam and Eve, wearing a monkey on your back into an Afghan village whose members share Muslim beliefs and hold the Koran in esteem, is hardly a way to build cultural rapport !  Instead, it provides the insurgency ammunition to fuel animosity towards human terrain team systems and the military while revealing them both as cultural fools. Now just imagine an army of white police officers invading a black community in the U.S. during a time of urban turmoil with monkeys tied to the top of their squad cars, as a token of friendliness.  It’s fortunate for race relations in the U.S. that our police are culturally wiser than some of these HTTs.

Well. I managed to get through another episode of the T.V. series Bluebloods. I think it’s the last I’ll be able to tolerate. In episode two, the plot thickens into a pool of sticky blood in the New York subway number 2 train. The number 2 express goes from the Bronx through the west side of Manhattan and down into the gentrified and a little less gentrified urban jungles in Brooklyn.The plot appears to be a take off from a real incident that would greatly please the National Rifle Association.

Remember that lunatic Bernard Goetz who walked into the subway carrying an unlicensed pistol and headed towards a crowd of four young black men who were standing alone at one end and then tried to  rob him?  (Most New Yorkers walk away from a crowd of people who clearly need their space). Goetz responded by firing his weapon and killing and wounding the black guys, one of whom was carrying a screwdriver in his back pocket and may have used that in the robbery attempt.

Bluebloods presents the goody-two-shoes version of this event that makes the cops look good and the criminal justice system work in the interests of the poor. This time “Goetz” is a black man who has done time in prison but turned his life around and has a steady job. He’s carrying an illegal firearm because, like Goetz, he’s been robbed before.  Unlike Goetz, he sits quietly in the subway car watching the crew of black hoodlums and their handsome leader terrorize the passengers. He only takes action when he sees that the woman sitting next to him is going to get raped. At this point he takes out his weapon and fires a shot, critically wounding one of the suspects.  The wounded suspect is carried out of the subway by the other members of the crew and then left bleeding on a bench near some exit along the 2 line.

Guess what happens after that? Detective Bluebloods (the one who fought in Iraq) asks his sister, the district attorney, to so something to protect the black ex-con who’s heroically risked another prison sentence to save an innocent girl from rape. The D.A. says she can’t put in a fix and insists he wait for the wheels of justice to work their magic – a magic she believes protects the good against the bad including people with prison records who are poor.

Of course, she turns out to be right. The D.A. drops charges against our civilian hero and the nasty crew of hoodlums are apprehended and bought to justice through the clever work of the police (our Bloodbloods’ detective and his beautiful ethnic or racial minority partner) and the crime is solved and we can assume that the evil people get what they deserve.

Meanwhile, our Police Commissioner (Sellick) or whoever he is, continues the affair we learned about in episode 1 with the lady newscaster although a bit of spicy tension exists in view of their roles.

Yet another four star chief  appears in this episode, a black guy who I assume is supposed to be Chief of the Department although the Sellick character sometimes still appears in uniform wearing  four stars. The grandfather of the police family who last week appeared wearing a uniform with 4 stars, is seen at home wearing “civilian” clothes so maybe he is retired and, in episode 1, put on his uniform for old times sake.

All of the female police officers are still beautiful as is almost every woman in the show. Now we’ve added a politically correct African American Chief of the Department to augment the image of the NYPD as lacking a glass ceiling.

Just as ridiculous as the politics of beauty, race and ethnicity and fairness and equality for rich and poor in the criminal justice system, is the idea that the Police Commissioner would be meeting with the Chief of the Department (the black chief with four stars) and the woman reporter to bargain the timing of her story about the bloodshed in the subway – she’s in possession of a tape that the delinquents released only to her.

What happened to the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information? (In the real NYPD, his name is Paul Browne or Mr. Truth according to Lenny Levitt). He’s the “main man” in the NYPD in terms of handling the press. He should have met with our reporter rather than the P.C. In an extreme situation, maybe the P.C. would be in the relevant meeting but the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information would be there too.

Another bit of over the top drama that speaks to the poor technical advise provided the program is the fact that no one is playing the role of the Chief of Detectives and breathing down the neck of his or her officers to get the crime wave solved in order to keep the numbers down at CompStat! Indeed, CompStat doesn’t appear important in Bluebloods at all, although the police do use some fancy technology to help solve the crime.

The only thing remotely good about this episode is that it sort of admits that we are in the midst of a rise in crime in the subways, something the Department is doing it’s best to keep under wraps. Crime is also going up in Brooklyn, not that I blame the police.