The Lion speaks

Repatriation from Haiti

2010-01-19T20:35:00.003-05:00

Since the day after the Haiti earthquake January 12 I have pulled 10-12 hour shifts at Florida's State Emergency Operations Center. Why? First, its my job. Second, the state had a mission to support the repatriation of U.S. citizens from the disaster afflicted island.

Repatriation is a federal mission, initiated by the Department of State, and funded by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In the federal plan, which I read in haste for the first time last week, HHS establishes an agreement with a state agency designated by the Governor (in this case, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF)) to care for U.S. citizens returned to the United States due to war or natural disaster. When required, DCF loans these citizens the money to get some food, a hotel or an airplane ticket home.

At first, HHS told us that the State would not be required to perform this repatriation mission. That illusion ended last Thursday night when we received a phone call from HHS at 5 PM that a flight was due into Miami in 2 hours and we were needed to be on hand in case any citizens needed our help.

Since then, we have provided assistance to over a thousand citizens, and we expect to continue this mission for several more weeks.

Curtis Whiteford Sentencing

2009-12-29T19:32:00.013-05:00

- Debra Harrison and I -

- Curtis Whiteford, at his desk in his office in the Hotel Babylon, Al Hilla, Iraq -

"Curtis Whiteford, a former colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, was sentenced today to five years in prison for his participation in a wide-ranging bribery conspiracy in Al-Hillah, Iraq." I knew Curtis Whiteford and worked with him while I was in Iraq. I have written about this wide ranging and complex incident previously, in February 2007, August 2008 and June 2009.

"Whiteford, 53, of Deweyville, Utah, was charged in a 25-count indictment unsealed on Feb. 7, 2007, along with former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Debra M. Harrison, former U.S. Army Reserves Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, and civilians William Driver and Seymour Morris Jr., with various crimes related to a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority-South Central Region (CPA-SC) ... According to testimony at trial, Whiteford and Wheeler conspired from December 2003 to December 2005 with at least three others--Robert Stein, at the time the comptroller and funding officer for the CPA-SC; Philip H. Bloom, a U.S. citizen who owned and operated several companies in Iraq and Romania; and U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bruce D. Hopfengardner--to rig the bids on contracts being awarded by the CPA-SC so that more than 20 contracts were awarded to Bloom. "

I worked with Whiteford, Harrison, Hopfengardner and Wheeler at CPA-SC for five months, from October 2003 to February 2004. Debra Harrison worked for me during the period that I was there. To my knowledge, her crimes were committed after I left Hillah (she remained behind in Iraq until July 2004). I had no idea Debra or any of these other people were conspiring to defraud anyone.

Debra Harrison, federal register # 60327-050, is currently residing in a minimum security federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia. Her projected release date is November 17, 2011.

There was a lot of money, cash money, being passed out all over Iraq during this period. The banking system didn't work. No one accepted credit cards. Checks were out of the question. All of the reconstruction contracts were done as drug deals, with bags of cash (American dollars) handed over, moved about and stored. I read military situation reports about the movements of truckloads and planeloads of cash.

I wasn't in on the money side of the business. My good friend Leo Rivera passed out a lot of cash during the same period while he was in Tikrit with the 4th Division. There was cash around, but I didn't see it, touch it feel it or smell it. And I didn't want to.

Had I known that there was any criminal activity I would have reported it immediately. But I didn't know about it. By virtue of the rank Curtis Whiteford held, the oath that he took and the daily interactions that I had with him over a five month period, I had faith and confidence that Curt was executing his job as Chief of Staff properly.

Boy was I wrong.

(Debra Harrison giving bottled water to some Iraqi children)

Babylon stories

2009-11-15T14:28:00.008-05:00

I spent ten months of my life living on or adjacent to the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, so when an editorial on that topic appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, I took an interest. Entitled Myths of Babylon, by Melik Kaylan, the article made the case that the American and Coalition forces had not damaged the ruins of the ancient city, as had been widely reported in the media.

I remember reading these newspaper accounts when they appeared. I thought that these media reports were inconsistent with my own observations at the time. I went to the area in and around the ruins many times, and I don't recall that they looked any different when I left than when I had arrived. In fact, as the article points out, upon arriving in Babylon in April 2003, the Marines extended their perimeter in order to protect the ruins from looters, who were hauling donkey cart loads of artifacts away daily.

The man most instrumental in encouraging the Marine Commander to preserve the ruins from the looters was Emilio Marrero, a Navy Captain and the Chaplain for the First Marine Expeditionary Force. Chaplain Marero recounts these events in his memoir, A Quiet Reality, which was just published last April. Drawing on the Chaplain's book, and an interview with the author, Mr Kaylan casts doubt on the media accusations that the U.S. and Coalition forces had damaged the site.

I remember the Chaplain very well. He hosted a very moving Memorial Day ceremony in our mess hall on the banks of the Shatt-al-Hillah canal, recounted in my own memoir of the events of that time, Messages from Babylon. A Marine helicopter had crashed into the canal a few days before, killing the crew. Worse, a Marine infantryman on guard duty nearby had jumped into the canal in an effort to save the crew, and drowned himself. It was probably one of the most moving ceremonies I had ever attended, and Chaplain Marrero deserves some of the credit for that.

I intend to put the Chaplain's book on my Xmas list.

International Association of Emergency Managers

2009-10-30T20:56:00.004-04:00

On Monday I will be attending and speaking at the International Association of Emergency Managers 57th Annual Conference, held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. I will be presenting with a friend from the Salvation Army, Jeff Jellets. The title of the program is "Introducing the New Road Map for mass feeding operations."

Sound exciting? It is. What has happened is almost a revolutionary change in the area of emergency management that I work in, and I am proud to have played a part in making it happen.

One would think that the responsibility for feeding and sheltering (mass care) the survivors of a disaster would be a top priority for emergency managers. It isn't. At the local level, the city and county government level, this task is handed over to voluntary agencies like the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross. At the state level, little emphasis is given is given to mass care coordination.

And as long as the disasters aren't big, this way of doing business doesn't cause any obvious problems. Not knowing anything different, no one complains. But when the disaster gets big, this way of doing business breaks down, and the problems float into public view, like something old and rotten dislodged from the bottom of the lake.

The best example of this was Katrina. Yes, I know, the media have continually told us that it was all Bush's fault. Multiple volumes have been published detailing the mistakes that were made. I know, I read them all. But an important systemic problem that was revealed by Katrina, but one that was little discussed in the aftermath, was the lack of adequate coordination at the state level between the government and the mass care voluntary agencies.

The Red Cross and Salvation Army deal with hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny disasters nationwide every day. Unless you were affected by the disaster, you don't notice that these agencies are even there. Untill your apartment complex catches on fire, and you find yourself standing in the parking lot in your pajamas, a blanket around your shivering shoulders. If you have family to call to help you out you're okay. If you don't, you must rely on the Red Cross, who arrive with hot coffee, some toiletries, a change of clothes, and a voucher for a hotel.

In a flood, a tornado, or even a wildfire, things get more complicated, but the voluntary agencies have the organizational skills and experience (you should talk to some of these people; you would be amazed at what they can do) to pull in resources from out-of-state or across the country. But what happens if the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and the Southern Baptists and the Adventists send everything they have and it's still not enough? Then you have what happened in Katrina. And the Red Cross got blamed because they didn't send enough, even though it wasn't their fault.

Who's fault was it? I happen to believe that not everything that happens in this world is some body's "fault." What bothers me is that I saw this mass care coordination problem before Katrina, I saw it from the inside of the disaster during Katrina, and I am distressed to say that the problem still has not been totally resolved nationwide since Katrina.

On Monday, Jeff Jellets and I will explain to whoever wants to listen a first big, and important step that has been made to resolving this coordination problem. Hopefully, somebody will be there to listen.

Afghanistan is now Obama's war

2009-09-27T14:24:00.023-04:00

"Mr. Obama owns the war in Afghanistan. He bought it, on credit," says Kori Schake, an associate professor at the United States Military Academy, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. During his campaign for office, the President said that Afghanistan, and not Iraq is where we should be fighting. Now, with bad military and political news coming in from the Afghan front, the President is hearing advice that says that he shouldn't have to pay the bill.

According to the New York Times, Obama is listening to suggestions of a new strategy in Afghanistan promoted by that great military strategist, Vice-President Joe Biden. Biden's strategy for Afghanistan, like his previous strategy for Iraq, is nothing but retreat by another name. Biden wants to pull back from the counterinsurgency strategy that succeeded in Iraq and focus a much reduced U.S. military and political effort on attacking Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Biden's strategy is the wrong one not only because it is based on a flawed set of assumptions (which it is) but because it signals a lack of will on the part of the West to fight The Long War. Regardless of how such a new strategy would be sold to a dissatisfied, war-weary American public, a fanatical, nihilistic enemy, sworn to our utter destruction, would view it and promote it to their followers as a (another) great victory for their cause.

Eventually, this victory and our utter defeat in Afghanistan will become obvious to the World. Responsibility for this defeat will lie solely with the man who made the decision, President Barack Obama.

Victims or survivors?

2009-08-23T14:18:00.005-04:00

Sometime in the last two years (I can't remember exactly when) Craig Fugate, the current Administrator of FEMA and the former Florida Director of Emergency Management, had an epiphany. I never asked him where his blinding flash of the obvious came from, but I suspect that examining the preliminary results of our catastrophic planning project had something to do with it.

Florida's catastrophic planning project, some of the best money that FEMA has ever spent on disaster preparedness, forced everyone in the emergency management community in Florida to look at how we would deal with a truly catastrophic emergency. The planning project was scenario based, and the scenario they picked was truly terrifying: an enormous Category Five hurricane impact in southeast Florida. They called the storm Hurricane Ono, as in Oh, No!

We quickly realized that as good as we are (and we're pretty good) this scenario would leave us beyond overwhelmed. The bottom line is that there are too many people (6.5 million) sandwiched into a narrow strip of land between the Everglades and the Atlantic Ocean. From the first time that I received a briefing on this scenario I realized that there was no way that we could feed and shelter all these people under the conditions specified in this scenario. Almost immediately I began a campaign, over the objections of a number of people, including Craig, that we had to evacuate a large number of these people because we couldn't take care of all of them where they were. After eighteen months I won the argument.

The big lesson from this argument, and from others in other emergency management disciplines, was that we couldn't overcome the multiple, complex problems that arise in a catastrophic event without the help of the public. That was when I started hearing people use the word survivor where they normally would say victim. I found out that Craig had banned the word victim from all written and oral communication in the Division of Emergency Management. I am sure that he did the same thing when he took over at FEMA.

The concept that Craig was trying to promote was simple and obvious. In this case, as in many others, words do matter. The word "victim" conjures up the image of someone beset by disaster, helpless to respond. The word "survivor" implies the person in question has been dealt a severe blow, but is doing his/her best to pick up their life, and maybe even help out a neighbor.

Craig has been been talking about survivors at every opportunity since he took over FEMA. The man knows what he is talking about. Don't talk about victims of a disaster unless they are deceased. If everyone else is not a survivor, they at least need to act like one. If the Big One ever comes to south Florida the emergency management community will need a lot of survivors to help us out. We can't do it all.

The Hurt Locker - a movie review

2009-07-27T21:18:00.004-04:00

The Hurt Locker is a movie about a team of soldiers in Iraq who disarm Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs. The movie took a while to drift from Opening Day to Tallahassee, so I had a lot of time to read rave reviews of the movie in the NYT and Wall Street Journal. I was really looking forward to seeing this flick but left profoundly disappointed on a number of levels.

Mark Boal, the screenwriter, evidently spent a few weeks with a bomb squad in Iraq in 2004 as a journalist and decided to turn the experience into a movie. Neither he, nor Kathryn Bigelow, the Director, knew much about the Army nor what it was like to spend a long tour in Iraq, based on the scenes that were portrayed in the movie.

If you don't care about any of that, then the movie has a lot of tense action sequences and tremendous explosions. They didn't quite meet the action-adventure movie standard, being a little short in car chases and scantily clad females, but the bomb squad trio did engage in plenty of arguing and fighting (mostly with each other).

I understand how difficult it can be to properly depict a different culture like the Army, but Ridley Scott did a fabulous job of it in "Black Hawk Down." Yes, yes, Ridley probably had a lot more money the Kathryn, but it wouldn't have taken much more to address the major errors that I found in the movie. First, and most importantly, our terrible trio spend entirely too much time wandering through Iraqi cities and deserts all by themselves, either in a single Hummer working its way through Iraqi traffic, or driving in spectacular, solitary, splendor across the desert landscape.

At this time and place in the war, nobody loved unless they were in convoys of at least four vehicles. Moving in a single vehicle through urban Iraq was at least as dangerous, if not more so, than disarming bombs. Plus, think about it: what if your Hummer broke down? Believe it or not, this single aspect of the script, repeated in numerous scenes, ruined the movie for me. Other parts of the movie, including the way the Iraqis were depicted, also bothered me.

Jeremy Renner, the actor who played the wild man Sergeant James, who led the team, did a fabulous job. I also enjoyed the performance of Anthony Mackie, who played Sergeant Sanborn, James' assistant. Both men kept me interested in the movie.

"The Hurt Locker" reminded me of the old TV series from the sixties, "Combat." It was a one hour show about an infantry squad in WW II, staring Vic Morrow. It gave me one of my favorites lines in early television ("Checkmate King Two, this is White Rook, over." says Vic Morrow as he calls his platoon leader on the radio). This squad wanders around through Europe, mostly six or eight or ten guys, all by themselves except for the occasional civilian or German soldier who happens along to provide drama for the show.

Don't get me wrong - this kind of thing happened in WW II. But not all the time. Every day. For days and days. In my opinion, Combat was as much like WW II, and The Hurt Locker was as much like Iraq, as MASH was like the Korean War.

A pistol in my hand

2009-06-29T09:20:00.007-04:00

I have never owned a rifle or a pistol. The Army taught me how to use a rifle and a pistol and even lent me one or the other to use occasionally. I never carried a loaded weapon anywhere other than an Army firing range until I got to Iraq.

When I was a young Lieutenant an older officer gave me some advice that stayed with me throughout my career, "You can tell the Army is serious when they give you a flak vest and live ammunition." In March 2003 I was sitting on a cot in a hangar in Kuwait, waiting for the Word to go forward into Iraq, when the company supply sergeant issued me fifty rounds of 9 millimeter ammunition for the pistol I carried in a holster on my hip. I had already received my body armor in Ft Bragg, and it was lying on the cot beside me. As I loaded those rounds into a magazine I thought about the officer's advice and about how right he had been,

For the next 340 days I rarely, if ever, went anywhere without my pistol, usually unloaded. Whenever we went out to visit the local populace I locked the slide to the rear, inserted the magazine and then released the slide so that the spring could slam the slide forward with a distinctive, metallic sound and insert a round into the chamber of the weapon. Often, the metallic sound of my pistol chambering a round was echoed by many soldiers around me as they loaded their own weapons. Later, as Iraq grew more dangerous, I began to carry a rifle with me, so I had two weapons to load and twice as much ammunition to carry.

When we returned to the relative security of our base we unloaded our weapons. The military was very serious about exact procedures for loading and clearing weapons. A sawed off 55 gallon drum, filled with sand, was placed at the entrance to every military post in Iraq for use as a clearing barrel. The idea was to unload your weapon, point into the clearing barrel and then fire. Hopefully there would be no sound and the weapon would be confirmed as unloaded. Sometimes, that was not the case.

A young, Air Force Lieutenant remembered the part about taking the round out of the chamber but forgot the part about removing the magazine. Fortunately, he remembered the part about aiming into the clearing barrel before pulling the trigger. The sound of a gun shot is always unwelcome in a combat zone, especially inside the perimeter. The Lieutenant, horrified at his mistake, compounded it by repeating the error. He hastily pulled the slide of the pistol back, removing the round from the chamber. But without removing the magazine all he did was add another live round to the chamber. Once again he pointed the pistol into the clearing barrel and once again he buried another round in the sand. The Lieutenant was saved from further embarrassment by an Army sergeant who took the pistol from his hand and removed the magazine.

I understand that the Air Force is a suitable substitute for military service. The senior sergeant at my location gave the Lieutenant his pistol back, with one bullet. We took to calling him Barney Fife.

I never fired my weapon in Iraq except on a practice range. A few times I felt compelled to draw my pistol, but I never pointed it at anyone. On several occasions I got out of my vehicle and with a drawn weapon led my convoy of vehicles through a crowd of people. I can still see the faces of the Iraqis as they saw me, pistol drawn and pointed at the ground. I could see a barely perceptible shudder run through the crowd as pressed back away from me, reacting to the man with the gun in his hand.

Fortunately, I carried no terrible memories home with me from Iraq. Yet, to this day, like a tiny film in my head running on a loop, I will be walking innocently and alone across a parking lot, and then I will feel the pistol in my hand, and sense the fear of the Iraqis around me. The feeling that comes over me is always the same, like I have suddenly been possessed with a great and terrible power.

I have not had a pistol in my hand, loaded or otherwise, since February 28, 2004, when I returned to Kuwait from Iraq. I gave my pistol back to the Army and never saw it again. Sometimes, during those chance moments, I can still feel it in my hand again. I actually look at my hand to see if it is there. It never is.

Debra Harrison sentenced to 30 months in prison

2009-06-14T09:26:00.004-04:00

I first met Debra Harrison in November 2002 in Norristown, PA where I was working with the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade to get them ready to go to Iraq. In March 2003 we deployed together with the unit to Kuwait, and then on to Iraq in April. A non-combat injury kept Debra in Kuwait for most of the summer, so I didn't get to see her very much.

In September 2003 General Sanchez decided that all Reservists were going to stay the full 365 days in Iraq, instead of heading home early like some of us were hoping. Our original mission with the Marines had ended (the Marines were sent home) and some of us assumed, incorrectly, that we were going to go home, too. Instead, the unit was split between Tikrit, Kuwait, Baghdad, southern Iraq and Al-Hilla, where we had been living the past five months.

I was assigned to Hilla with the mission to be the civil affairs liaison from the Baghdad Headquarters to the Multi-National Division in south central Iraq. To perform this critical function for the war effort I was given Major Debra Harrison, Lieutenant Tamara Montgomery, Lieutenant Alicia Galvany and Specialist Mike Green. Not much of an Army, but deemed adequate for the mission by our Commander, Colonel Rob Stall.

The five of us stayed in Al-Hilla from October 1, 2003 to February 28, 2004. Debra and Tamara volunteered to remain in Iraq so they returned to Hilal in March. Tamara's stay was short, as she was wounded in an ambush in Baghdad in April and medically evacuated home.

Sometime in the first three months of 2004 Debra Harrison became involved in a criminal enterprise operating in the Coalition Provisional Authority Headquarters there in Al Hilla. The conspirators, all of whom I knew very well, one of whom was the Chief of Staff and four of whom were field grade Army Reserve officer, were taking bribes from an American contractor in exchange for funneling lucrative projects to the contractor's company.

They weren't very good criminals, or Army officers for that matter, since they left a treasure trove of evidence for investigators in the CPA email system. Debra got a new car and three hundred thousand dollars in cash which she poured into improvements in her house. She was recently sentenced in federal court to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $366,000 in restitution.

I haven't seen or talked to Debra since she said good-bye to me in Kuwait in March 2003 and then caught a ride with Tamara back to Hilla and Iraq. I was contacted by the lawyers, both prosecution and defense, about the case but I didn't have any information about whether Debra was guilty or innocent. The buds of the conspiracy sprouted when I was there but most of the criminal activity happened after I left.

I keep coming back to this sordid episode in my posts as new developments occur, vainly looking for a moral to the story. I am sure that emotions often cloud my vision of what happened. I am curious what rationalizations or self delusions went through Debra's and the other defendants minds as they rubbed their hands together and plotted to betray me and everyone else who served there during that period for something as base and meaningless as money.

I am sure that they, their family and friends have eloquent and long winded excuses for the actions that they took. The comments that Debra's family has posted to my blog are good examples of this. I never took sides for or against Debra in this episode until she was convicted by a court of law, even though I read the indictment and knew that she was in all probability guilty. All the prosecutors had to do was to read her emails.

Two more of the conspirators have yet to be sentenced, Colonel Curtis Whiteford and Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Wheeler. The final chapters of this story have yet to be written.

2009 Governor's Hurricane Conference

2009-05-15T21:06:00.004-04:00

The 2009 Governor's Hurricane Conference ended today, Friday, May 15, 2009. I flew to Ft Lauderdale from Tallahassee for the Conference on Wednesday and returned today. The depressed economy and equally depressed tax receipts cut down on the number of exhibitors by about a third and by the number of attendees by about half. I usually come for the entire week but this year I cut it short.

Nevertheless I found the Conference to be very educational and useful. I enjoy hearing from the counties and the very real emergency management problems that they have to deal with. Lee County gave a very good presentation on the flooding they endured from Tropical Storm Fay, and the 500 migrant workers and their families that they had to shelter for over seven weeks. Their response to the situation was a textbook operational displaying all the right cooperation and coordination that so often does not happen.

The big news for the week, and much discussed at the Conference, was Craig Fugate's confirmation as the FEMA Administrator and Ruben Almaguer's appointment as the Interim Director of Emergency Management for the state. In the General Session on Wednesday afternoon Joe Becker, Vice-President for the American Red Cross, said the Washington, D.C. was about to experience Hurricane Craig. I said, and still believe, that Craig is going to change FEMA or get fired.

I met an interesting gentleman, Keith Loeb, who was a former Special Forces Master Sergeant. He had owned a company that established kitchen sites in disasters, primarily for responders and firefighters. I discovered that Keith helped established the base camp for 1,000 persons in Hancock County, Mississippi in September 2005 after the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

"I stayed in that base camp," I told him.

We both marveled that we had spent that much time there and didn't remember seeing each other. To be honest, it was three and a half years ago and there were a lot of people there.

We also discovered that we were both in the Baton Rouge Emergency Operations Center last September during Hurricane Gustav. We didn't remember seeing each other there either. Maybe we're both not very observant people.

I do remember that he is a very big man and that I wouldn't want to get into an a heated argument with him.

The five stages of catastrophic planning

2009-04-19T20:58:00.003-04:00

It's called scenario based catastrophic planning. Pick a suitably awful disaster and write a plan to meet that specific disaster. What everyone learns from the planning process and the disaster plan developed by that process will be useful in all future disasters. After two years of work on our catastrophic plan I can say that scenario based planning works.

As a result of the lessons learned from Katrina FEMA began funding catastrophic planning with specified state and local jurisdictions. There was a hurricane plan for Hawaii, two earthquake plans for California (one North and one South), the New Madrid Earthquake plan for Missouri, Arkanasas, Tennessee and surrounding states and a hurricane plan for Florida. I think that this is the best money that FEMA has spent in the last two years.

The scenario for Florida is particularly horrific: a Category 5 hurricane that hits Broward County (Ft Lauderdale) head on, devastates much of Dade and Palm Beach counties, then crosses the state and exits Tampa Bay as a Category 2 storm. The consequences are much worse than anything we experienced in Katrina.

Working on this project has been the equivalent of studying for a graduate degree in emergency management. The project was organized into workgroups: debris, search * rescue, medical, animal issues, education, community stabilization, disaster housing, environmental protection, law enforcement, fuel, health & welfare, host communities, infrastructure, logistics, public information, volunteers & donations. I was made chairman of the mass care feeding and sheltering workgroup, along with my good friend from FEMA Region IV, John Daly.

Many of the problems that we addressed were interrelated with the other workgroups, requiring us to rapidly become familiar with the basics of each discipline. Many of the problems that we dealt with had never been encountered before in the United States, or if they had been encountered then on a much smaller scale.

Over the course of the two years we had to absorb new members to the workgroups. The learning curve for new members was steep. The consequences document, which explained the impact of this single storm on the state, was one hundred pages long. The complexity and scale of the problems required us to invent new ways of doing business in emergency management. It has been a very interesting and exciting ride.

As the new members join or are introduced to the project I have observed that they pass through five very well defined stages. The first stage is disbelief. The catastrophe is so big that they can't conceive of a solution. "We can't do this," they say.

In the second stage they challenge the assumptions. To generate a one hundred page consequence document for an imaginary hurricane, certain assumptions must be made (the hurricane was real, and passed along the identical track in 1926, only a lot fewer people lived there than do now). In this stage the newbies start reading the fine print of the consequences document and declaring that the assumptions are wrong. One group of federales, when told the scale of the response required, responded that the scenario needed to be changed. Comments in this stage are along the lines of, "That can't be 1.8 million people, it most likely is 1.1 million." The answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter if it is 1.8 or 1.1 million, that's still a lot of people. Some people wallowed in this stage for month, arguing over angels dancing on the head of the pin.

The third stage is resignation. Exhausted from fighting the assumptions, they stare at the numbers and shake their heads. They know that they have to write a plan but they are clueless. The common refrain at this stage is, "I have no idea how we're going to do this."

In the fourth stage they awaken from their lethargy and with a burst of energy focus on the small and extraneous. They are going to reach the big solution by developing a bunch of little ones. Or they want to bite off a small bit of the problem and solve that. An example of the kind of thinking that arises at this stage is, "Let's make sure every survivor has a toothbrush!" We can spend many an hour chasing our tail on that one!

Actual productive planning doesn't arrive until the fifth stage. "I've got a good idea!" The best work happens when we have a room full of people operating at the fifth stage. For the willing, moving through the five stages can take a matter of days. For the unwilling, the process can last months.

Unfortunately, we weren't always operating on all cylinders, with everyone working optimally at stage five. Frequently, we would have a room full of people operating in all five stages. It those situations we would get questions like:

"Did you think of...?"

"What about..."

"You really should try..."

We would sit there and nod our heads. Yes, we thought of that. Yes, we tried that. Yes, what you are saying is correct but it's not the solution - there is no silver bullet.

Yet, after two years we have gone where no emergency managers have gone before. We have written a plan. I know that we have a pretty good mass care feeding and sheltering plan. The first week of June the state of Florida will be holding a hurricane exercise to test this catastrophic plan. FEMA will be there in abundance. I believe that in my my area, feeding and sheltering, this will be the largest and most complex exercise ever conducted in the nation.

When I get the chance, I'll tell you how it turns out.

2009 National Hurricane Conference

2009-04-10T10:05:00.004-04:00

I spent this week at the 2009 National Hurricane Conference in Austin, Texas, a city that I have never visited before. For some reason there were a lot more Texans at this conference than at previous ones I have attended. This was a good development because Texas has the most recent experience in hurricanes, having weathered a major impact from Ike last year.

Our friends from Louisiana were also in attendance and shared their experiences from their encounter with hurricane Gustav. The consensus from the people I spoke to, federal, state and private sector, is that Louisiana's emergency management prowess is not there yet but that they are much improved. Of particular note was that they managed to evacuate New Orleans in advance of Gustav without major incident.

The two most frequent questions that I received at the conference were : 1) Are you going to Washington with Craig Fugate when he takes over as the new administrator at FEMA? and 2) Who will replace Craig at Florida? My answer to the first question was "No!" and my answer to the second question was "I have no idea."

And I don't. But I heard more rumors about the second question in two days at the conference that I had in a month while in Tallahassee. I will trust in the Governor to make the right choice.

The Femites that I spoke to from around the country are understandably curious and/or concerned about the arrival of a new boss of Craig Fugate's reputation. What I know about Craig from working with and listening to him for ten years is that he is not a micromanager, that FEMA is not a first responder, that the states and localities must do more and develop more capability, and that private citizens must be survivors and not victims after a disaster.

Craig's emphasis on not using the term victim but rather survivor is not some offshoot of political correctness. A victim is someone who is hit by a disaster and then waits for the government to come and save them. A survivor is someone who takes an active role in helping themselves and others. Emergency managers can't do it all. We need some help from the citizenry.

Craig Fugate is the new head of FEMA

2009-03-05T20:14:00.003-05:00

The President announced yesterday that he was nominating Craig Fugate, the Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, to be the Administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. I have known and worked with Craig for over ten years. His appointment to FEMA is a great loss to Florida but a gain for the country.

We received an email yesterday morning stating that Craig had called an "all hands" meeting at the State Emergency Operations Center at 1 P.M. We had heard the rumors that he was up for the job and assumed that this was the big announcement. Over lunch the secret leaked into the media and by the time Craig arrived at the EOC the room was full and expectant.

There were still a number of us in that room who had endured that grueling six weeks in 2004 when the state was hit by four straight hurricanes. The following year we were hit by another four hurricanes, plus the large deployment of Floridians to southern Mississippi after Katrina. But there were a lot of new, young faces in that room, and the hurricanes are still just as big and dangerous, but Craig won't be there with us this summer if the storms come back.

Craig doesn't make long speeches, whether he is praising us or yelling at us. He was full of praise for all of us and for the rest of the State Emergency Response Team. We are recognized around the country as the Super Bowl Champs of state emergency management. There were some old hands, no longer with us, that I wish could have been in that room to hear that speech.

All too quickly Craig was finished and walking out of the room, to a standing ovation from everyone present. I am sad to see him go. When he walked through the door I could feel a part of the burden that he carried shift on to my shoulders. Even Super Bowl Champs are only as good as their last game.

The Lion of Babylon - the Novel

2009-03-03T21:22:00.002-05:00

After four years of work, multiple drafts and rewrites, I have judged my novel, the Lion of Babylon, ready to face the public. All I need now is an agent, publisher and contract. If it only worked that way.

In case anyone has checked the bestseller list lately, there isn't a lot of Iraqi war fiction on there. There isn't much Afghanistan war fiction either. Evidently, the American public is not interested in those kinds of stories. That's all right. Someday they will be. In the meantime I have entered my novel in four contest. Contests are good in that if you win you can add the credit to your query letter to an agent. Contests are bad in that you might lose, because there are a lot of good writers out there. That's okay. I'm a good writer, too.

In February I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel, sponsored by Amazon.com. The top 500 entrants will be announced on March 16th, and an excerpt from their novel posted on the Amazon web site. By April 16 the 500 will be cut to 100 and by May 16 the 100 will be cut to three. The following week the grand finalist is named, and that person gets a publishing contract with Penguin. Such a deal.

To enter the ABNA contest I had to submit a 300 word "pitch" on my novel. All of the initial entrants are narrowed down to two thousand based on this pitch. They read an excerpt of the first 5,000 words of the novel for these two thousand and select the 500 based on the excerpt. So the pitch is important, only until you make the two thousand, when the excerpt becomes important.

If I make the top 500 on March 16, you will be able to read my excerpt. In the meantime, here is my Pitch:

"The Lion of Babylon", an 83,000-word novel, is a fable of men and women, Muslims and Christians, Americans and Iraqis, who look into their futures during a time of war to decide what will become of their lives. Haider, an Iraqi boy who can see the future, foretells the coming of the American Army and of a man who will help him complete his lifelong dream. The Lion of Babylon, a statue in the ruins of the Biblical city, is the source of Haider's power and the key to unlocking the secret of his past.

Haider meets Dan Murphy, a soldier with a personal mission to win the war, but can't tell if he is the man foretold by the Lion. In desperation, Haider teaches Dan to see the future, but the man and the boy envision two different versions of life and death for Murphy and his fellow soldiers. Haidar's quest has its parallel in the wartime struggles of an ensemble of characters that includes an indecisive Army colonel, a young lieutenant out of her element, and a religious soldier with a crisis of faith. As they navigate both personal and military battles in a war zone, they discover the humanity that lies within the Iraqi people and their own reserves of strength. The Lion of Babylon touches their lives and grants Haidar the answer to his past and his future.

This novel will resonate with readers of "The Kite Runner". My inspiration for this story came from the ten months that I served as an Army officer near the ruins of the city of Babylon. My essay on the Iraq war was selected and recorded by the "This I Believe" Project, and was featured on National Public Radio's web site during Veteran's Day in 2007 and 2008.

Suicide in the Army

2009-02-08T14:54:00.002-05:00

The Army Times and National Public Radio recently reported on the growing suicide rate in the Army. The number of suicides has increased every year, growing from 87 in 2005 to 143 in 2008. The Army is aggressively trying to address the issue, but has been unable to find a specific cause of this increase.

The question arises as to whether the increase in suicides is directly related to the increase in combat deployments and "stress on the force" that comes from fighting two wars with a much smaller Army than existed in the Cold War era. While 35% of the suicides from this period were soldiers who had not deployed, 78% of those who committed suicide while deployed were on their first tour.

The immediate response by the Army is to require 2 - 4 hours of training on suicide prevention and identification across the force. This training will be conducted between February 15 and March 15.

In the summer of 2003, while I was in Iraq, the number of suicides increased dramatically for units deployed in that country. I vividly remember the suicide of a civil affairs captain that occurred at Camp Babylon while I was there. The man had a wife and children. The Army leadership responded in the same manner by requiring suicide prevention and identification classes for all of us.

I do not know enough about suicides or their causes to be able to say that the strain on the Army from multiple long deployments in a combat zone would be a source of increased suicides. Ultimately, the Army is made up of people, and the many complexities of the motivations and situations of the soldiers in the force should preclude any sweeping generalizations. The trend, however, is disturbing.

On Blackwater, and life and death decisions

2009-01-17T22:20:00.006-05:00

Out of the blue I received an email from a member of Ambassador Bremer's Blackwater Personal Security Detail (PSD). He had visited my web site and seen the pictures that I had taken of Bremer's visit to Karbala in February 2004. The emailer accompanied Mr. Bremer as a part of his PSD during that visit. I also wrote about the visit in my book "Messages from Babylon." The man asked that I keep his name confidential and I will honor his request. He explained that anonymity was important for those in that line of work, and I imagine he wanted to continue working in that area.

Evidently, current and former members of Blackwater are a tight fraternity and they stay in contact with each other. Thus, I learned from this gentleman's email that three Blackwater employees who were in Karbala with us that day would later die in violent deaths. Two of the men's deaths came shortly after the visit. One of the three was Jerry Zovko, a Croatian-American, former Army Ranger, and one of the four Blackwater employees who were ambushed and killed in Fallujah on March 31, 2004.

Much has been written about Blackwater and their activities in Iraq and other places. The name Blackwater has almost become synonymous with controversy. I don't have a lot of first hand knowledge about the controversies and didn't take the time to read all the books and articles about what the firm's employees did or did not do.

I can comment on what I know. Iraq was a tough place to try to make good, informed judgements and decisions. Everything was so strange and alien that situations were difficult to place into some kind of context. And context was everything. In order to compare the different possibilities, or courses of action, one had to evaluate these possibilities against your base of knowledge or known experiences. And to be honest with you, sometimes as I searched for an answer I realized that even though I was fifty years old and had been in the military 28 years I didn't have the knowledge or life experience to make an informed decision. But the decision was mine to make and no one else's. The toughest part was that my decision might mean life or death to someone, possibly me, or even worse, someone else.

So many of the decisions would seem innocuous to the casual observer. Should we go this way or that way? That's not too difficult a decision in Tallahassee, but is one with wider ramifications in Baghdad. Should we go today or tomorrow? Sometimes today looked a little too dangerous, so I went the next day. Thank God I didn't make any decisions that got anyone killed. That's why I hesitate to criticize decisions made in a combat zone.

"Why, that was obviously a stupid decision," you might say.

Very little was obvious in Iraq, or that clear, or defined, or crystalline. The men in the Blackwater PSD that I saw in Karbala on that February day in 2004 looked like they were trying very hard to do a very difficult job as professionally as they could. I could see that they were under a lot of stress. I can't speak to what the rest of the Blackwater people did or didn't do. I wasn't there. I didn't know what they new at the time of the decision.

And even if I did, I wouldn't be quick to criticize.

Christmas 2003

2008-12-15T10:24:00.003-05:00

Instead of spending Christmas in a combat zone thinking about home, I spent Christmas 2003 at home, thinking about Iraq and my imminent return. Along with tens of thousands of others, I was allowed two weeks of leave from Iraq. Some took advantage of the opportunity and went home. One fellow officer met his wife in Germany. Others, and there were more than a few, decided to save that leave (and the extra money it represented) and remain in Iraq.

I wasn't interested in the money - I wanted to be with my family. I had not seen them in over ten months. Although the pain of returning to Iraq would be great, the memories from those two weeks would be priceless. The sharp ache of a temporary loss of a loved one dulls with time. After a while I got used to living without my family. The quality of my life wasn't as good but I was able to focus on the task at hand. Coming home would open that wound and renew that ache, but I didn't care.

I was fortunate in that I was able to get two weeks of leave that encompassed Christmas and New Year's. So it was that on December 21, 2003, nine months to the day after I left the United State for the Middle East, I returned home. That day turned out to be the longest day of my life, and not just because I had a series of long plane flights to endure on the way to see my family after a long absence. The day was, literally, the longest day of my life. I departed a U.S. Air Force base in the country of Qatar at 12:30 A.M. on December 21 for Germany, then Baltimore, then Atlanta, and finally arrived at Tallahassee at 9:30 P.M. on the same day, 32 hours later.

Christmas 2003 was a wonderful experience for me, and filled with remarkable contrasts to the life that I had so recently been living. Yet, my mind was detached in many ways from the events around me. I felt guilty that I was at home for the holidays while so many of my comrades were still in Iraq. And the biggest feeling that stayed with me, one that I carried around like a heavily weighted rucksack, was the knowledge that I had to return to Iraq on January 5, 2004.

Yes, I know, one is supposed to live in the moment, but it was hard.

As Christmas 2008 approaches I think about all the service men and woman in harm's way around the world, away from home on the holidays. And I still feel a trace of guilt. I am at home with my family, and they aren't. Yes, I know, the guilt is not logical, but it's hard for me not to feel it. I have something in common with them, something that we shared and continue to share.

And right now, five years later, I still feel that bond with them. I truly hope that it never goes away. To all of you out there in uniform, doing a nasty, rotten job away from home and family during the holidays, I send you my very best wishes, and sincere hope that you will return home safe. God speed and God bless.

The Wall of Shame

2008-12-01T22:24:00.004-05:00

For a number of reasons no one from the the unit I served with in Iraq, the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade, out of Norristown, Pennsylvania, will contact me anytime soon about attending any reunion for the veterans who participated in their deployment to Kuwait and Iraq in 2003 and 2004. We weren't exactly the Band of Brothers.

And I don't mean that in a disparaging way. There were a lot of obstacles that stood in the way of our being a close knit unit. First, there was the rank structure. Of the 150 persons in the unit 12 were colonels, 28 were lieutenant colonels and 34 were majors. There were only a handful of of lieutenants and captains. The great majority of the rest of the unit were lower ranking sergeants and enlisted persons.

Secondly, the Norristown unit was filled to full strength by replacements brought in from other units in Pensacola, Florida and Lubbock, Texas. I was one of the officers brought in from Pensacola. Ultimately, less than half of those that deployed to the Middle East were originally from the Norristown unit.

How did this happen, you ask? The answer is controversial, complex, and was a source of conflict within the unit for the entire tour. As hard as it may be for everyone to believe, not everyone was thrilled at the prospect of being torn from home, job and family and thrown into a year (or longer) deployment to a real shooting war (unlike some of the previous peacekeeping missions some of us had participated in) to the Middle East. And despite all the secrecy involved in our ultimate destination, we could all read the papers and we knew that we were heading for Iraq.

Some of the people in the Norristown unit made a concerted effort to get out of the deployment and some succeeded in doing so. Some had good reasons for not wanting to go and others didn't. Unfortunately, personal hardship wasn't a good reason. The Army had spent a lot of money in training and salary for these people, in some cases for many years, and now was the time for the Army to collect on this investment.

Every person in the Norristown unit that was able to get out of the deployment (and like I said, almost half were able to do so) caused a double blow on the morale of the others. The original members of the unit saw their former comrades dropping, one by one, from the deployment roster. Some were jealous, while others were disappointed.

Every person that was dropped from the deployment roster had to be replaced, primarily with individuals from the Lubbock and Pensacola units. Most of these people didn't want their lives screwed up either. But they were soldiers and they did their duty. Still, they weren't happy at having to take up someone else's slack.

The net result was that we had a conglomeration of people from different units, from different parts of the country, and with different attitudes about why and how they were being sent into combat. When this amalgam of factions was placed into the crucible of the Iraqi desert heat, under way less than ideal living conditions, attached to a Marine unit that really (at first) didn't know what to do with us, the results were predictable.

More people tried to get sent home. Some succeeded. That's when things got ugly. The Operations Officer of the unit had to move out of the communal living quarters when a malcontent urinated in his sleeping bag. There were a lot of unhappy people there.

That is how, on the whitewashed wall of an office in a building on Camp Babylon, Iraq, the Wall of Shame was created. I will not glorify (or condemn, depending on your point of view) the perpetrators of this act by providing their names. Those of us who were there know who they are. Maybe if there was more work for these discontents to do then they would not have had the time or the energy to compile the list of names that made up the Wall. But there wasn't enough work for everyone, and that's a entire other story that I won't go into right now.

The list of names grew before my eyes. I outranked them all and could have stopped them if I wanted to (there were a number of senior officers who could have stopped them but didn't). At the time I remember feeling a strange sort of justice in the list. I knew all the names that were on there. The names were from all ranks, ages, races and religions. There was no discrimination and really only one criteria for having their name scrawled on the whitewash: they had either been in the original Norristown unit and not deployed, or deployed and been sent back home.

Some names generated heated discussions as to whether they should be added to the Wall. The basic defense argument was that the person didn't try to get out of going: they had no choice in their removal, or the reason for their return was reasonable. But no matter how spirited the defense, the facts remained that they were back home in the World and we were (still) stuck at the end of the world carrying loaded weapons because people there were trying to kill us.

As well as I remember, when we left Camp Babylon in September 2003, to be replaced by the 29 nation Multinational Division, the names were still intact on the Wall of Shame. I imagine some Poles or Hungarians entered the office and stared briefly at the scrawling on the wall. They probably ordered some private to paint over it. They didn't know what it was and didn't care.

I don't know if the Wall of Shame is still there, or even if the building is intact. When we got there, the Iraqis had been very busy trying to tear down as much of Saddam's palace complex as possible. But if that wall was still there, I would nominate another name to go on the list - at the very top. And no one would argue with me.

Former member of the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade, former Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, convicted felon, for betraying her oath and her trust, for stealing from the Iraqi people and lying about it. I nominate Debra Harrison to the Wall of Shame.

Maybe someday this Band of Misfits may want to get together for a reunion. There are a number of them that I admired and would want to see again. A few of them are still my very good friends. Maybe time will heal the raw emotions. I sure hope so.

The collective good judgment

2008-11-07T19:57:00.003-05:00

All of my life I have believed in the collective good judgment of the American people. One cannot believe in democracy without accepting this tenet. The original framers of the United States Constitution had some doubts about "mob rule" and therefore embedded in the endoskeleton of the document numerous impediments to rapid political change. The United States Senate is a prime example.

This is not to say that there are not numerous ignorant and stupid people in this country. The supply of the former is constantly changing, because that particular affliction can be cured, whereas the numbers of the latter are constant and and a drain on us all. Good judgment requires neither intelligence nor education. When the collective good judgment of the many, or in the case of November 4, 2008, the millions, are combined into one big decision, then the ignorance and stupidity and intellgence and education are balanced out. And there is no moral ambiguity here. The decision, whatever the outcome, is the right one. If one cannot accept that, then there is no belief in democracy.

Sadly, none of the people I voted for on the Big Election Day won, from the County Commisioner to the President. Fortunately, I was extremely disappointed in the outcomes. We are all fortunate in my disappointment, because I intensely cared who won. Imagine if I had not cared, or worse, not voted at all.

This is an important point. Because I voted, I participated in the decision, and thus must accept the outcome. Many people who had never voted before were drawn into the process. Regardless of who they voted for, we are all better off for their actions.

A clear majority of the country and a good portion of the people of the rest of the world approved of the selection of the new leader of the free world. In two months he will be our President. Regardless of whether we voted for him or not, he will still be our President. The collective good judgment of the American people have made it so.

On politics and political debates

2008-10-20T20:38:00.006-04:00

I have been trying to ignore this election but I am surrounded and besieged by electronic devices and carbon based life forms that are vainly trying to influence a decision that I made eight months ago. I have not watched television news for years, and I had no interest in watching the spectacle of the debates. From my point of view, for the last year, the Presidential campaign has been a giant reality show. Obviously, many people like reality shows. I do not.

I am not condemning, or looking down upon, the political process. In a democracy, the public must be informed so that they can make proper choices. I do my best ti inform myself so that I can make the proper decisions. I get my information by reading the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker and the New York Times. I listen to National Public Radio. On a daily basis I collect, absorb, dissect and discard large amounts of information on a wide variety of current events topics. Thus, by this rational process, I was able to make my voting decision for the Presidential election eight months ago.

The millions of dollars raised and expended by both candidates to influence my vote were wasted on me. But I was never a target of their marketing campaigns. They focused their efforts on the elusive undecided voter. As always, the undecided voter will make the final decision.

The thought of the approaching election, for the first time in my life, fills me with resignation rather than excitement. I know that I will not be pleased with the result, regardless of the outcome. The question for me will be whether I am more unhappy or less with the new government.

The very real possibility that the Democratic Party will take control of the Presidency and the national Legislature by a decisive margin leads me to believe that I will have to give up reading or listening to any news, from whatever source, for the foreseeable future. At times, I close my eyes and see and hear unwanted, painful memories of the Carter Administration.

But the Republican Party has forfeited any right to manage the affairs of the country until they have served an appropriate probation. The length of the probation will depend on the actions of the Democratic Party and their elected leaders. Based on their performance the last two years, I do not expect the probation to be that long.

The only reason that John McCain still has a chance to win is that he is now and has not ever been a "true" Republican. Then again, I haven't seen many "true" Republicans anywhere lately. I wonder where they all went?

Thankfully, regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, the Republic will survive.

In Louisiana for Gustav and Ike

2008-10-05T17:13:00.004-04:00

On Tuesday, September 9, I drove from Tallahassee to Baton Rouge to assist the state of Louisiana with their response to Hurricane Gustav. I deployed in response to a state-to-state request for assistance by Louisiana for persons with mass care expertise. Since so many people from so many states volunteered to come to Florida's assistance in 2004 and 2005, I decided to repay the favor.

I did not have a lot of fun in Louisiana but I learned a lot. When I arrived in Baton Rouge I immediately saw the tell tale signs of a recent hurricane: debris lying in great piles on the side of the road; traffic lights askew and inoperable; and fallen trees leaning against houses, their exposed roots looking like so many gnarled hands.

The trip wasn't fun because the Louisiana Department of Social Services (DSS), which had submitted the request for assistance, did not really have a job for me when I arrived. In fact, when I got at the Louisiana State Emergency Operations Center (EOC), I couldn't get anyone in DSS to talk to me. As I found out later, DSS was immersed in a crisis that would ultimately result, a few days later, in the Governor removing the head of the Department.

The crisis was all about food stamps. Rather, the inability of the public to access their disaster food stamps, as promised. I heard about the problem on the radio as I was driving in. The ever helpful media found the obligatory little-old-lady-being-mistreated-in-a-disaster story. I heard the woman say, "They told me that I could get food stamps here today, and I stood in line for hours, but they said that they had no food stamps."

No Governor responds well to this kind of media coverage, but this was already strike two for DSS during the Gustav response. The week before DSS was late in getting showers into evacuation shelters in the northern part of the state. The Governor, handling his first disaster, had a low tolerance for mistakes and a great desire to show that his administration was accountable.

The morning after I arrived, and I had a chance to explain to DSS why I was there, they thanked me by throwing me into the middle of the food stamp crisis. I threw myself into the problem with my customary zeal, calling upon all my considerable emergency management experience. It didn't do any good. Whether it was to save me or them from embarrassment (I never did find out why, and I didn't ask) they politely asked me to work in another area the following day. Naturally, I said yes.

With that, I could have gone home but Ike was heading for Texas and there was a real possibility that it might curve and slam into Louisiana. I worked with my friend Eric Jones, who was the Red Cross State Liaison at the Louisiana EOC. We tried to help Texas by phone, passing along advice that may or may not have been used. By Sunday morning, after Ike had hit Texas, I listened to the morning conference calls with the southern parishes and realized that Ike's impact on Louisiana had not been that bad. I said good bye to Eric and my DSS hosts and headed for home.

What did I learn? The workers in Louisiana are just as smart as we are in Florida and work just as hard. The emergency management system and processes they use, however, require them to work twice as hard as we do in Florida to get the same level of results. Information, for example, is very hard to acquire in the Louisiana EOC. I saw no evidence of situation reports or Incident Action Plans, as required in the National Incident Management System. As a result, a lot of activity by the state in response to the two hurricanes was not coordinated or even visible within the EOC.

I was also fortunate in that I was able to visit the Joint Field Office in Baton Rouge, the state/federal headquarters that has been in existence and coordinating the recovery efforts in Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina. I was also able to visit the Red Cross Disaster Relief Organization in Baton Rouge. The Red Cross was doing their usual capable job of organizing large numbers of volunteers into productive activities.

The people of Louisiana were very courteous to me under difficult circumstances. And the food was good.

On writing a war novel - Part 2

2008-09-15T17:30:00.000-04:00

After laboring for a year and a half on a novel about the war in Iraq I discovered that neither I nor anyone else could really capture in words what the experience was like. The problem, simply, is that for the reader to understand even the most common conversations that we had would require untold pages of explanation. Let me give some examples.

A lot of this was revealed to me when my friend edited the first draft of my novel. She had no experience with the military (which was good - I was writing for a general and not a military audience). The military is obviously a very hierarchical organization and for those familiar with military rank a colonel means something completely different than a sergeant in that a colonel is older, better paid and most likely better educated (although in the Reserves there are many more exceptions to the educational difference.) My editor friend missed this, plus the nuances that a captain outranked a lieutenant but not a major.

The military is a separate culture from the civilian world but not everyone knows the tremendous cultural differences that exist between the Army and the Marines, or that the Army has a subculture called the Reserves that is a strange amalgam of civilian soldiers. Take this sociological soup and drop us into the Middle East as an Army unit attached to a Marine organization and the fun begins.

The Marines had their own jargon and ways of doing business that was different from what we were accustomed. The U.S. military in Iraq invented new acronyms and code words that were critical to understanding everyday conversations. The reports we read were filled with confusing Iraqi geography, providing descriptions of events in a multitude of cities when our knowledge extended to a vague idea of the location of Baghdad and Basra.

Thus, our everyday work conversation was filled with terms and concepts that are alien to the average citizen. These alien terms had and still have an emotional impact for me whenever I hear them: Tampa, Anaconda, Cedar, Nasiriyah, and Highway 8. If I were to spend all my time explaining, the reader would lose interest.

The task that I set for myself in writing a novel about the war is translating the entire experience into English. As always in such cases, something is lost in the translatiion.

On writing a war novel - part 1

2008-08-27T09:00:00.002-04:00

A lot of novels have been written about war and I have read a lot of those novels. My entire life I have had the desire to write a novel and in 1994-95 I wrote a 100,000 word novel called "Every Man was Free". As many of you know, writing a novel and getting it published are two completely separate tasks. The third part of this trilogy, promoting a book once it is published, is another task requiring knowledge and skills completly separate from the first two. Although I did not get that first novel published, I did learn a lot about what it takes to develop a story and then pound out the words until the manuscript was completed.

Spending a year in a combat zone was a very intense experience and the entire time that I was there I told myself and some close friends that I would write a novel about the experience. I returned home to Tallahassee in the Spring of 2004 and in June I started an electronic journal in a Word document. In this journal I wrote down my thoughts about what my novel would be about: the story, the characters, and the themes that I wanted to explore in the book. I found that this was a very effective way the "think out loud", ask myself questions and then try to answer them.

One mistake that I did not want to make, and that I had made in writing my first novel, was to labor two thirds of the way through the manuscript and realize that I had no idea how the novel was going to end. "Literary fiction" was once defined to me as starting a manuscript with a germ of an idea and then seeing where the characters and events lead. I yearned for more structure in my writing endeavors.

I found that structure in a technique called the Snowflake Method. Using that technique, I was able to complete a 90,000 word first draft of my novel, "The Lion of Babylon." I paid a friend to edit the mansuscript, and this gtave me plenty of suggestions to work on as I began a second draft. The most significant thing that I learned from her editing was that, no matter how well I wrote or how many words I produced, I could never really recreate the war or the Iraq that I had experienced for a year.

In my next post I will tell you why.

On understanding the war - Part 3

2008-08-10T10:15:00.019-04:00

Doug Feith, in his new book, "War and Decision," gives the best explanation that I have seen to date as to why the post invasion occupation of Iraq unfolded as it did. Feith, the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under Donald Rumsfeld, doesn't provide all the answers in his book. Nor does he, as my friend Bill McCusker asserted, blame everyone else for the problems. He does lay some blame on Colin Powell and Richard Armitage at the Department of State, on George Tenet and Company at the CIA, and finally, on the President himself. Nor does he leave the Defense Department and the American military blameless. Feith lays out the justification and rationale for some of his own decisions and lets history and the reader be their own judge as to how right, or wrong, those decisions were.

Most importantly, Feith asserts that many of the damming accusations made against the Bush Administration by the media were incorrect. Let me be clear here - he DID NOT say the the Bush Administration did not make any mistakes. They did, and he points out those mistakes. He does present compelling evidence, to include declassified U.S. government documents, that the following accusations made against Bush and his advisers were INCORRECT:

- "U.S. officials manipulated intelligence to induce the President to overthrow Saddam, and to persuade the public to support the war."

- "... that officials who made the case for regime change in Iraq did so for ideological or improper reasons - to spread democracy by the sword, or to serve Israel's interests rather than America's."

- "That President Bush and his hawkish advisers came into office intent on launching a war in Iraq and gave no serious consideration to means short of war to deal with the Iraqi problem."

- "That 'neocon' officials failed to plan for postwar Iraq, believing that both the war itself and the postwar transition to democracy would be easy."

- "That Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department planned to 'anoint' Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile, as the leader of liberated Iraq."

- "That the State Department had a plan for post-war Iraq, and that Defense officials ignored or discarded the plan."

Mr Feith's efforts to counter these media assertions are extremely well documented. In fact, he has set up a web site that presents the web links to the documents, some of which were formerly classified, that he uses as a basis to substantiate his arguments. One may not agree with all of his conclusions, and I don't, but at least we are forming our judgments from the set of facts.

A discussion of charges and counter-charges against the Bush administration would fill volumes and already has. More volumes are waiting to be filled and I suspect that these arguments will be picked up by historians and continued for the next century. As always, every thing's about me, so let's get this discussion back to my big issue: During the preparations for the war, why wasn't there more and better post-invasion planning?

This is a good and solid question, one that I have been asking without an adequate answer for over five years. In fact, Feith lays out the "sensible questions [one might] raise about the Administration's pre-war work." These questions are:

- "In all the planning efforts, did the government fail to anticipate major problems that would emerge?"
- "Did it have good plans for the problems that it anticipated and encountered?"
- "Did it implement its plans well?"

For five years the Bush administration's critics have been saying that the answer to these questions are Yes, No and No. Feith contends, "The answers are not simple." As always in life reality is seldom black and white, and more often shades of gray.

In my next post I will talk about just how gray that I think the answers to these questions are.

Debra Harrison pleads guilty

2008-08-01T19:29:00.006-04:00

Before I went to Iraq I never knew anyone who had been indicted in federal court, much less plead guilty. Debra Harrison, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, 50 years old and a resident of Trenton, New Jersey, plead guilty this week to "wire fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority - South Central Region (CPA-SC) in Al-Hillah, Iraq." She will be sentenced in November and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Not only do I know Debra Harrison but she worked for me during the five months that we were at the Coalition Provisional Authority South Central Office in Al-Hilla, Iraq. I was her direct supervisor. I wrote about this before in February 2007 when Debra was indicted ( see "A federal indictment hits home" and "Robert Stein goes to jail" in a previous post the same month). How very sad.

The really sad part about it was that she wasn't the only one. Fellow Army Reservists (although not from my unit) Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Hopfengardner, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Wheeler and Colonel Curt Whiteford were also indicted. Hopfengardner was sentenced to 21 months in prison in June 2007. Whiteford and Wheeler stand trial this September.

Curt Whiteford was the Chief of Staff to the Regional Coordinator, a Department of State Civilian named Mike Gfellor. Mike was a good man and a hard worker and I am sure that he is extremely disappointed that so many people under his authority turned out to be crooks. Mike spoke fluent Arabic and was instrumental in implementing a tribal policy four years before the U.S. Army figured out that this might be the best way to control the populace. When I last checked Mike was holding a senior position at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia. I would sure love to have another conversation with him.

I do not want to speak ill of Curt Whiteford because he has not been convicted of any crime. Nevertheless, even if he is not found guilty of the crimes to which he has been accused he is guilty of negligence in allowing so much criminal behavior on his watch. I liked Curt. He is a Mormon from Utah with a large family (the picture was on his desk in Hilla). During the five months that I spent in Hillah I met with him almost every day. When I left Iraq I thought Curt had done a good job in a difficult situation. And now this.

Bruce Hopfengardner and Mike Wheeler were a different story. When I first arrived at the CPA headquarters I had a Civil Affairs Team of five persons: (then) Major Debra Harrison, Lieutenant Alicia Galvany, Lieutenant Tamara Montgomery and Specialist (later Sergeant) Mike Green. Not much of an Army, but it was all I had. At first, Curt Whiteford assigned Hopfengardner to work for me. This lasted maybe two weeks and then Curt informed me that Bruce would be doing "special projects" for him relating to the Hilla police academy.

Then Mike Wheeler arrived under what I would consider suspicious circumstances. His civil affairs battalion was reassigned from Hilla to Al Anbar province to support the 82nd Airborne Division. Mike arranged with his battalion commander to be left behind at the CPA office in Hilla.

When Mike arrived Curt assigned him to work with me. After a few weeks, Curt told me that Mike was now working for Bruce on "special projects."

I didn't take offense at any of this. In fact, I was so damn glad to be sleeping alone in a room on a bed with a flush toilet that I said nary a word. I was quick to note, however, that Bruce and Mike left shortly after I gave them a speech on my expectations of their performance. If they were working for me then I was to write their officer efficiency report (which, for these two characters, would have been irrelevant anyhow). My main expectation of them was to supervise the other three officers and Specialist Green so that I wouldn't have to bother with it. I was a Colonel and I used my rank to delegate the more tiresome aspects of my wartime duties. When Bruce and Mike left I pushed the supervision task down to Debra and she did a good job of it.

Given the facts as stated above I don't have to stretch my imagination very far to imagine why these two officers left my supervision or how they did it. I am sure that they pleaded their case with Whiteford and he felt their pain. Later on I saw them both hanging out together like two soul mates, dressed like Delta Force operators, loaded down with grenades, a rifle, a pistol and plenty of ammunition for both weapons. The wanted to play Army in the war without having to worry about supervising three female officers and Specialist Green.

Obviously, I was unaware of any criminal wrongdoing during the time that I served with CPA in Hilla. Colonel Andy Fishman, from my unit, and Colonel Bede Strong, of Her Majesty's Royal Tank Regiment, were there with me at the same time and they didn't see any of this either. I saved all my emails from the time and after the indictments came out I reviewed them for possible clues. I found one that gives a hint of trouble, but I saw it just two weeks before I left, and Curt Whiteford reassures Mr. Gefflor that he's "all over this." For the record, here is the email.

At the bottom of the thread Peter Wilkinson, an Australian Air Force Colonel who was supervising the contract spending, receives an email from Major Robert Shelton, a contracting officer at Hilla. Maj Shelton raises a concern about Mr Bloom (a civilian, convicted conspirator, and source of all the dirty money) and how he seems to be getting an inordinate number of contracts. In the next part of the thread, Colonel Wilkinson raises his concerns to Curt and Mr Gefellor. The beginning of the thread, starting with "Boss" is Curt Whiteford reassuring Mr. Gfellor that he has it all under control. The story in a nutshell.

When the federal prosecutor called me earlier this year to discuss the case I passed this email to her, although I was sure she already it. Here is the text of the email:

[From Curt Whiteford (I was copied on this email)]

Boss,

We are all over this. I met with Eric yesterday regarding this specific topic and will meet with the primary players after tonight’s staff meeting. With minimal effort, we should make short work of the ratification/paperwork for the subject projects. If you wish, I will get you a listing from Peter of all the projects currently open.

Thanks,

Curt
Colonel Curtis G. Whiteford
Deputy Regional Coordinator/Chief of Staff
CPA South Central Region

-----Original Message-----

From: mgtgv1984@yahoo.com [mailto:mgtgv1984@yahoo.com]

Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 4:14 PM

To: Wilkinson, Peter (AUS); Whiteford, Curt (USA)

Cc: Shelton, Robert (USA)

Subject: Laying Down the Law on Unauthorized Commitments

Peter and Curt,

I agree fully with your points. This dangerous situation must be corrected immediately.

For the record, while I appreciate Phil Blum's work, that does not mean I wish to exempt him from our rules. I personally have never ordered him to do any work without it being properly bid. I would be happy to see him bid on future projects, such as the new building at Hilla University and the Karbala' Library, but I have not and will not grant him a contract without proper competition of the job. I do not want to play favorites.

I have also repeatedly told all of our colleagues in the West Wing that all contracts must be properly bid. I am astonished to learn that over 20 (!) requests for work have been made to Mr. Blum, without proper procedures being followed. This needs to stop, as you said.

Therefore, I ask that Curt please instruct all of our staff to cease and desist forthwith from these sloppy practices. Every major project must be properly bid. We must follow all the relevant regulations strictly. If one or more staff members cannot operate with that elementary discipline, then I will fire them.

I also ask that you and your staff refuse to pay out any unauthorized expenses.

Finally, please keep me fully informed of infractions, including the names of the malefactors.

Thanks, MG [Mike Gfellor].

"Wilkinson, Peter (AUS)" wrote:

Mike,
We have a serious problem looming on the near horizon as explained in the email below. The number of ratifications required from unauthorised commitments is now over 20 projects that we know of, almost all of them involving Phil Bloom. Phil, however, is not the problem. We all know he does good quality, timely work albeit for a premium price.

The problem is CPA personnel telling Phil to do work without the authority to do so. We have spoken about this before but the problem continues. Bob Shelton is rightfully concerned that the effort needed to correct all of these unauthorised commitments actually jeopardises our ability to spend CPA-SC's current funding allocation.

With the $41m we have spent in the past, I deliberately left the contracting folks at the end of the whole process so that they could concentrate on writing the enormous number of contracts required. They achieved this with a minimum of fuss and a great deal of flexibility. However, the large scale projects we have been undertaking have been going off the rails from a contracting perspective which is one sure way of attracting unwanted attention from Baghdad auditors and others who may not want our programs to succeed.

We have proudly stated to Bremer in the past that we like the CPA rules and we can work easily within those rules. Well, we're breaking those rules now.

I can not stress enough that Bob Shelton and Eric are totally on board with the CPA-SC programme. Indeed they deserve a substantial amount of the credit for our success in achieving spending targets. I will continue to work with the West Wing group to bring them around and would appreciate it if you could impress the thrust of this email upon them when the pester you!

Regards,
Peter Wilkinson
Group Captain
Director of Operations
Coalition Provisional Authority - South Central
Unclass: +1-703-343-9624
Pager: http://messaging.iridium.com/ Pager # is 8816-314-72349

-----Original Message-----

From: Shelton,Robert (USA)

Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 11:17 AM

To: Wilkinson, Peter (AUS)Subject: Program Plans

Sir,
Eric [a fellow contracting officer with Bob Shelton - I cannot remember Eric's last name] and I met with Phil Bloom and Fadi yesterday. Eric also met with Fern [Holland, a lawyer working for CPA who was killed in an Iraqi ambush a few weeks later, along with her interpretor, Salwa Oumashi, and Bob Zangas] just before her departure. On the positive side we now have a better picture of what is going on in the region regarding program plans (or lack of). I believe we have a mutual understanding with Phil that he is to not proceed with any work without a signed contract by Eric or myself. He understands that Mr. G or any of the program managers cannot obligate the CPA-SC. The downside is that there appears to be more unauthorized work performed by Phil and others that was directed by Mr. G, LTC Hopfengardner, Fadi, and Fern. Phil agreed to list out every job he is working. It’s unfortunate that we cannot get this information from our own people. Hopefully we can sort through the current mess and move on.

We have a potential problem in that Mr. G wants the dormitory [at the Religious University in Al Hilla} done by 30 May. I am also hearing from our folks that he wants Phil to do the job. That’s fine, but Phil will have to compete just like everyone else. Eric and I will seek sources for this project. If this project goes above $500K then we need to get Jesse Pruitt involved and get the PRB [project document] approved. We have a good working relationship with him which should help expedite the approval. Unfortunately we don’t have a SOW [Statement of Work], drawings, cost estimate or any other specifications. The method that was discussed behind closed doors to phase this project is unacceptable. Had Eric and myself been consulted earlier in the process the potential for success would have been greater. Part of my concern is that Mr. G wants a multi-million dollar facility designed and built within the next 90 days. According to Phil, he can’t even meet that timeframe without using pre-fabricated buildings.

The region currently has approx. 20 known unauthorized commitments that need to be ratified. I’ll have a better picture of all of the UAs when Phil provides me his list of jobs and who directed the work. Eric and I have reached a saturation point where we spend too much time cleaning up messes caused by several CPA-SC members taking shortcuts or bypassing the existing contracting process. We have $40 million to spend in the next two months, but current practices by Mr. G and the program managers will prevent the region from successfully executing this program budget. We are working with Fadi to develop his program plan. However, we need see the region’s overall plan. At this time no region plan exists. Need to know what other large-scale projects are in the works. I know there a several great ideas brewing, but we have to be realistic.

In order to best execute our budget and prepare the region for future success it is imperative that we have a meeting of the minds. Those minds include Mr. G, COL Whiteford, Group Captain Wilkinson, LTC Hopfengardner, Fadi, Fern, Adley, Bob Z. [Zangas, killed with Fern in an ambush several weeks later], LTC Wheeler, Bob Stein [the civilian finance officer for CPA and the first one of the bunch to go to jail] and the contracting team. Eric has briefly mentioned this to the chief. It is also important to know that we have entertained a few investigators regarding reports of wrongdoing or misconduct. I anticipate more to follow. Finally, we should not forget the future visits by the GAO, Army Audit Agency (AAA), and other audit teams. In our haste to execute our generous budget we could potentially take unnecessary shortcuts which could come with negative results.

As always, Eric and I are in full support of the region’s efforts. Our decisions to extend our tours hinge on whether we are actually supporting these efforts while in keeping with the prescribed rules established by Ambassador Bremer and the Head Contracting Authority. We hope to continue to provide value to this organization which has done so much in so little time.

Regards,
Bob

[End of email]

I was sure that the prosecutor already had a copy of this email because much of her case was built on emails. Yes, these fools left a paper trail in the CPA servers a mile long.

In January 2004 Debra Harrison decided to extend her tour in Iraq and stay at CPA in Hilla until the Coalition Provisional Authority was dissolved in June 2004. She talked Tamara Montgomery, her roommate, into staying with her. Within six weeks of my departure at the end of February 2004 Tami Montogomery was wounded in a firefight in Baghdad, leaving Debra alone. I don't know if Debra knew about the money being handed out when she decided to stay. I have often wondered about that - if her decision was based on the opportunity to reap ill-gotten gains. Or did she slide down the slippery slope after I left? I don't know. I doubt that I'll get the opportunity to talk to Debra again to find out.