B36 News - 16 August 2006

The picture you see here is one that I took inside the building that will become our new tech control facility (TCF). A TCF is the brain of a network. When your watching TV and you see nerds frantically pulling cables and circuit cards from cabinets and racks or typing on a keyboard waiting for the blinking lights to change color, they're in their version of a TCF. Our version of a TCF comes complete with racks of expensive communications equipment and bullet holes.

Recruiting
One thing that was briefly held up as a sign that support for the war was dwindling was the recruiting statistics. The defeatists tried to show how declining enlistments showed that the American people opposed the war and wanted to "redeploy" our troops. When those numbers stopped lending themselves to their cause, the defeatists claimed that the standards had been dropped and that recruiters used morally questionable methods to entice new recruits.

And now for the facts on military rectuiting:

• For the last 14 months, recruiting for Active Duty (a.k.a. likely to be sent to Iraq) has met or exceeded goals. Brave young Americans are volunteering to go to Iraq despite what the media is beating into them. (link)
  
• Only 0.3% of all military recruiting efforts involve "wrongdoing". This means that 99.7% of all recruitments are on the level. (link)

Iraqi Army Trains US Army
I write a lot about how we're training up the Iraqi Security Forces, but that's not the only training that's going on over here. The level of proficiency in some ISF units has progressed to the point now where they're teaching us. Personally, I think a great way to learn about a foreign culture is to learn about it's weaponry. You can learn a lot about a group of people by the type of weapons they choose, how they use them, and how they care for them.

ISF Stops VBIED
Here's an example of the success of ISF operations in Baghdad. While Operation Together Forward continues to put the clamps on, the tactic of Clear, Hold, Build that was outlined in the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq can be seen. After Iraqi and Coalition forces cleared a particular section of Baghdad, Iraqi National Policemen were manning a checkpoint near a bridge when they noticed a dump truck being driven in an "odd manner". When the policemen stopped the truck to investigate, the driver ran away. Shortly after that, the truck exploded damaging several nearby vehicles and injuring 4 civilians.

There was a day when strategy was a closely guarded secret, when we wouldn't tell anyone that didn't need to know how we were going to win. So why do we publish our strategy now? Because the enemy can't defeat it, at least not with bullets or bombs. Our military strategy is solid, now we need a civilian strategy to support it.