Inside The Wire Intelligence
It was about a year ago I stood inside the MEF Operations system at Camp Fallujah, Iraq.
I had a few minute window to shoot some B-Roll while there was no sensitive information on the projection screen.
A sharp young Sergeant showed me a vauge overview of what an Operational Brief would look like.
A company grade officer asked me how long I had been in country.
I asked the Sergeant for the laser pointer, and on an unclassified map, gave them an briefing on all the operations I had been on with infantry units.
Nearly everyone in the room was agape.
Then it struck me–I was probably one of the only people in the room who had been outside the wire.
I definitely had spent more time outside the wire, seeing the war in person than anyone in the room that day.
So when I read in the WaPo about a MEF staff officer’s classified report on the situation in Al Anbar and the media’s spin on the report, I chuckled to myself–chuckled because the report was assembled not by a group of intelligence officers out in the dirt trying to flip informants, but the same types who were in the MEF operations center that day.
I have no doubt that the conclusions of the report as it relates to the political situation in Al Anbar.
In fact calling Al Anbar a lawless wasteland is a redundancy.
While I was at Camp Lejeune I spent hours in the library reading old reports on Iraq.
Anbar has always been a lawless wasteland and always will be.
Does that mean the Coalition should pack up and leave? No.
It simply means that the expectations should be realistic.
But the legacy media’s expectations, the imaginary way things “should” be rarely match reality.
So, when they get a report stating that Al Anbar is now, much like has been in the past–lawless, crime infested, povety ridden–it is news.
But, if you see as much of Anbar as I did, you realize it will never become Scottsdale, AZ, and put your goals in a more realistic vein.