Somebody figured it out

The past two weeks have been interesting in that we saw the end state of negotiations between the US Government and Iraq over an extended US Troop presence. The sticking point, as you may recall, was immunity for US Forces left, which Maliki balked at.


I don't blame him. He actually comes out looking pretty good here. He stood up to The Infidel by drawing his line in the sand, which made the Shiites in the south happy (and also Iran). Then he rounded up a whole bunch of former Sunni Ba'athists (Saddam's old party) and he continues to hold them on grounds that they were plotting to overthrow the government. Now the Sunnis out in Anbar are threatening to overthrow the government, or at least secede. I don't have a lot of visibility over what's happening in the north, but the Kurds are angry, and the Turkish Army occasionally raids into Iraq to clean up a Turks vs. Kurdish mess from time to time.


I love this country.




The messed up part is all along our higher headquarters seemed to think the Iraqis would ask us to stay, and all would be right with the world. Now that the Iraqi Government served up some humble pie and eviction orders, our higher headquarters is scrambling a bit, as they planned the easy course of action (stay) as opposed to the hard course of action (pack it up).


So how do you get eight years of stuff (MAN, we spent a lot of money here) out of a country really fast, and how do you cajole a contracting support element consisting of an almost 1:1 Soldier to contractor ratio to get out? Essentially we have to figure out how to get 12,000 people off of the base in 30 days. The Soldiers are the easy part-- cut some redeployment orders, order up a plane, and send them on the way. Not many complain. But lots of our civilian contractor-folks are learning the hard way that the Uncle Sugar contracting gravy train is over, but they hang on to the end as long as possible, jumping from FOB to FOB, trying to stay until the last month and get the last check. Some of the people walking around our base haven't been home since 2003 (and some of them look it). I often wonder who they are hiding from, who they owe money to, or what their story is. So the challenge becomes how do we get them to leave?


Back in a previous post, I suggested closing the dining facilities, canceling Salsa Night, and shutting down the PX so Mr. KBR Swole dude who spends 3+ hours in the gym a day can't get his supplements. It's come to that-- 1 November brought about the close of the PX, the gym is now run by Soldiers, and soon the days of four hot meals will turn into all of the MREs you can eat. The chow part alone, we figure, should thin the herd. We already lost incoming mail (thanks to the USPS for cutting the APO off two weeks early), and I expect the internet to go in a couple of weeks (gotta figure out a new RonaldofArabia strategy...).

Some say Obama is responsible for this. The people who bring up the Obama credit theory don't seem to like the fact that the security agreement was negotiated in 2008 which noted all US forces had to be out of Iraq by December 31, 2011, by the Bush Administration.


I'm not complaining. While some of our higher leadership thinks we should stay, I believe we have to leave in order to let Iraq become whatever it will become. I see lots of parallels to the US revolution and its subsequent struggles with forming and operating a government, and it's time for Iraq to figure it out. I don't know what it will look like, but initially I predict a hot mess, but as long as the oil continues to flow and the economy gets going, it might be ok.

Stay tuned-- we're getting ready to re-enact an episode of The Clampetts...

RM