THE US military, bracing for the first wartime presidential transition in 40 years, is preparing for potential crises during the vulnerable handover period, including possible attacks by al-Qaeda and destabilising developments in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to senior military officials.
"I think the enemy could well take advantage" of the transfer of power in Washington, said the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, who launched preparations for the transition months ago, and who will brief the president-elect, the defence secretary nominee and other incoming officials on crisis management and how to run the military.
Officials are working "to make sure we are postured the right way around the world militarily, that our intelligence is focused on this issue, and in day-to-day operations the military is making sure it does not happen," Mullen said in an interview.
"If it does happen, we need to be in a position to respond before and after the inauguration."
Mullen's transition team is made up of 14 senior officers from across the services.
The military's primary focus during the transition is twofold: to heighten preparations for a crisis requiring military force, and to anticipate and advise the incoming administration on likely new directions in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said. High-level briefings on the risks and benefits of new strategies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as longer-term issues such as military modernisation, are already being prepared for national security officials of the incoming administration, they said.
Historically, transition periods are times "of significant vulnerability . . . The number of major incidents is alarming," Mullen said.
In presentations he uses a chart that highlights pre- and post-inauguration crises from the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 to the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks. A second, classified chart shows the biggest threats today.
"I run out the worst-case scenarios," Mullen said.
A presidential transition in the midst of two major conflicts and the ongoing threat of terrorism raises the stakes even further, officials said. "It is particularly important now because we're turning over in wartime. . .The last time was in 1968, when we turned over from president Johnson to president Nixon," said a senior military official."
In recent days, commentaries on websites linked to al-Qaeda have suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the US presidential election in favour of Senator John McCain, leading to an expansion of US military commitments in the Islamic world and further "exhausting" the United States.
Senior military officials and national security experts say major threats before and after the elections include an al-Qaeda strike on the United States that would originate from Pakistan's tribal areas, as well as a terrorist attack involving nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
"With the election, the economic issues and what is going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan, all this converging at once, it makes a pretty enticing target for al-Qaeda to consider disrupting US national security interests in the short term," said John Rollins, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service.
Mullen has asked the transition team to anticipate and prepare for a number of changes - from whom the new administration will pick for its top defence officials to what new policies it may adopt, particularly for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mullen's team will carry out exercises to show new administration officials the mechanics of handling a crisis. "We will . . . show them how you actually operate the levers of the military power of the United States," said the official familiar with the team.
"You don't want to go cold in a crisis, without having established a common framework of understanding" and a rapport between the incoming Pentagon leadership and Mullen and other top military officers, he said. "Anything we can do to shorten the learning curve . . . will help." - (LA Times-Washington Post)