Pretty amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in eight years

"As the combat mission in Iraq officially ended in August and U.S. forces reduced their footprint to about 50,000 troops, President Barack Obama heralded "one of the largest logistical operations we've seen in decades" with the exodus of millions of pieces of military equipment, property and supplies. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Corson, commander of the Army Reserve's 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command that has overseen that mission, equated it to moving the entire city of St. Joseph, Mo., with all its people, vehicles, equipment and property, to "the other side of the planet." (…) Now, with about two months left in their deployment, Corson's troops are continuing the logistical drawdown while laying critical groundwork for its follow-on unit to reduce the U.S. footprint in Iraq to zero by the year's end." (Army.mil)

I left Iraq last time in October of 2009, and while Liberty has cleared out a good bit, there are still TONS of stuff still here. My recent observation is that everybody wants to leave, everyone is personally individually ready to leave, but no one wants to do without all the nice things they have, start shutting things down, and actually pack up all the stuff that has accumulated over eight years and go.

I attended a really big conference this week on the drawdown and the plan for bringing US forces and material home. It is very complicated. For one, the headquarters is still in the very opulent Al Faw Palace. It is surrounded by lakes, palm trees, wildlife, and lots of nice smaller palaces on the lake that all of the generals live in. Nobody wants to vacate these until the last minute, for obvious reasons. But they have to leave, so we can restore them to the condition they were in when we got them. This means we have to pull out all of the CAT V cable (miles of it), take down all the wire and sandbags, and move all the T walls out. They estimate it will take FOUR months to do the palace alone. But no one can start until the headquarters moves.

The conference was all about identifying how big of a problem it is-- we all finally acknowledged that there is a 5 billion pound elephant in the room. Eight years ago it was a cute Dumbo looking thing, but it grew up.

Now we have to figure out how to get it out.

I have some pictures, I'll get them on here soon.

Ron