THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Kory Turnbow, Captain, Bravo Company, 116 Engineers Battalion, Idaho National Guard, gives his personal take on Our Dear Embattled Leader's Glorious Little War in Iraqistan. It is not a comforting picture and it does nothing to alter the conclusion of the NIE released this week. It does give some insight into what the Bushoviks mean by "Stay the Course".

My other big cause for concern at my level was never, and I repeat never, receiving a coherent mission or intent statement for Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to all the doctrine that I had been taught beginning in ROTC and continuing throughout my military career, a soldier needs two things to be able to do his job effectively. The first is a mission statement. This should be a short statement consisting of who, what, when, where, and perhaps most importantly, why we are doing what we are doing. The second thing is the commander’s intent. Essentially, this boils down to what the commander would like to see happen, and tells us his intended result. This helps clear the fog of war; lower-level commanders and soldiers can make decisions that will help further the commander’s intent, even if the mission becomes unworkable.

Every mission and intent statement I ever saw on this deployment was a huge Power Point slide dissertation written by someone with too much time on his hands. Not one meant anything to me as a commander, and I always tried to create a clear, concise mission statement for my troops during the various operations I sent them on. I don’t fault my commanders, nor the Division Commanders, or even the Theater Commanders. I believe that this problem went all the way to the top, with perhaps our Commander in Chief making it the clearest: “Stay the Course.” In hindsight, perhaps that’s what those Power Point slides were supposed to mean after all — nothing.

Marking time and losing troops is pretty much all ODEL has in mind until he leaves office in 2009. That's a heckuva policy, Georgie.