The snake eater
I caught up with Daniel Henninger's Wall Street Journal Wonder Land column late this week and want to make sure you don't miss it. Among other things, Henninger's column -- "The snake eater" -- bears on the tribute to the American military by John Burns that Paul quoted yesterday:
[T]here’s an old saying that countries get the kind of governments they deserve. Well, I would say that may be true also of the military. And the United States military that we encounter are wonderful. They’re magnificent. They’re extremely brave, that goes without saying. They make an enormous effort to perform a civic as well as military duty in Iraq. They are people of honor, and they’re people of whom America can be proud. And I say that without...in an unhyphenated, unqualified way, and I hope that that finds its way into the columns of the New York Times, in the way that we report on this war. America has a fine military, a fine Army, a fine Marine Corps and Navy. . . .Henninger's column also illuminates the challenges facing our military in Iraq in a striking way. Among the challenges is a peacetime procurement system. Henninger brings to light the individuals who rise to one particular challenge and the organizations that made it possible:
*Major Owen West, who leads a team of nine soldiers operating around the town of Khalidiya, north of Baghdad, advising an Iraqi brigade. "This has been his second tour of duty in Iraq. When not fighting the Iraq war, he's an energy trader for Goldman Sachs in New York City."Henninger's column really should be read by everyone interested in our progress and success in the war.*Michele Redmond, of the civilian support group Spirit of America, who "asked Maj. West if there was any out-of-the-ordinary project they could help him with." Maj. West described the basic concept for a mobile, handheld fingerprinting device which Iraqi soldiers would use to assemble an insurgent database.
*Jim Hake, founder of Spirit of America. Hake said his organization would contribute $30,000 to build a prototype and get it to Khalidiya.
*Goldman Sachs, in New York, which contributed $14,000 to the project.
*Computer Deductions, Inc., a small company based in Santa Ana, California that makes electronic systems for law-enforcement agencies.
*Tom Calabro, a Computer Deductions vice president, who assembled a team of six technicians to create the device envisioned by Maj. West: "Its basic platform would be a handheld fingerprint workstation called the MV 100, made by Cross Match Technologies, a maker of biometric identity applications. The data collected by the MV 100 would be stored via Bluetooth in a hardened laptop made by GETAC, a California manufacturer. From Knowledge Computing Corp. of Arizona they used the COPLINK program, which creates a linked 'map' of events. The laptop would sit in the troops' Humvee and the data sent from there to a laptop at outpost headquarters."
*Bill Roggio, the ex-Army signalman and infantryman who now embeds with the troops and writes about it on his blog, the Fourth Rail. Roggio hand delivered the device to Maj. West to meet the 30-day timetable for its creation and delivery before Maj. West's rotation out of Iraq.
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