Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
And I thought that my comments were 'original" since they were based on experiences and observations as a soldier, a contractor, and a DOD civilian.
It is interesting that others made similar observations earlier. Since my education is sorely lacking in that I have never read Hammes and haven't gotten around to Rick's yet, would you be good enough to provide the full Hammes citation and the Ricks page citation?

Thanks

JohnT
I also quote T.X. on that point in my Rethinking Insurgency monograph. Guess you haven't gotten around to THAT either!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The passage is on pages 370-371 of Fiasco.

I have to pass on an anecdote about Fiasco though. On pp. 323-324 Ricks wrote, "'Rotating nearly the entire force at once degraded capability, [and that] may have contributed to loss of control over several cities in the Sunni Triangle,' wrote the Iraq Stabilization Study Team, a group at the [Army War] college's Strategic Studies Institute that has produced some of the military establishment's most insightful work on the Iraq war."

Let me tell you who was on said "team": me. We did a two part study in 2003. The main part dealt with the conventional ops. When the professor who prepared it briefed our Commandant, he was berated for putting the names of the analytical team on the first slide. He was told that you don't put individual names on tasked studies. Lesson learned. I ran up to the office and took my name off of the first slide of my briefing (which dealt with the "postconflict" period). I had to put something there, so I made up the name "Iraq Stabilization Study Team."

Actually, my briefing was never official released, so someone leaked it to Tom. But I need to fill him in on this next time I see him.