Toward Sustainable Security in Iraq and the Endgame

[Surferbeetle]

Rob,

I will send you an ako later today. During my tour my 'portfolio' was engineering & construction but I quickly learned that business (and there are many many facets to this simple word) makes the world go round in Iraq.

For the board, I would like to talk a little about supply chain management. In my opinion land and air bridges are vital to getting materials in and out of Iraq in order to facilitate commerce between the west and Iraq. Costs, tariffs, and regulatory hurdles are large and adapting to a just in time philosophy (inshallah meets fedex/ups/dhl) currently make this a 1000 meter target for most of Iraq. There is a potential to employ Knowledge Workers (Mosul University is strong but not really disposed to Americans) if someone who was interested would be able to navigate the telecommunications backbone and personal contacts issues and have the financial resources to absorb 'start up and maintenance fees' not normally encountered in the west.

Kurdistan is another subject entirely that I will cover in a later post.

Trade with Syria, Turkey, and Iran was robust in my area. Turkey was a powerhouse and from this one country Iraqi's faced significant competition in the arenas of agricultural products, day to day consumer products, and construction products.

Developing and maintaining a Common Operational Picture for a maneuver commander is tough, but there are some solutions that we (DOD & Interagency) can raid from the business world that we have not availed ourselves to...I use some of these unclassified COTS software products in my day job and I am simply stunned that we have not trained up our folks and made use of them in our day to day across the board operations. Credit card purchases, 30 day classes, and JRTC/NTC/Hoehnfels practice would get us further down the road and provide quantifiable results with these business tested products.

Long term, we need to help our young soldiers get associates degrees in business, geographic information systems, etc. The cost benefit ratio on this is definitely in our favor.

Regards,

Steve