0606 - RealIntel

Today, a serious suggestion. Readers, and even the mass of American citizens, are beginning to realize that the mess – make that morass – in Iraq grows worse. Little help is available from what is called Counter "Intelligence" since the CIA, was, and we quote, "Dead wrong" in its pre-invasion assessment of Iraq. Military "Intelligence" has proved a similar oxymoron. The President's award of a medal to the former CIA chief has proved no help, nor have his expressions of faith in Rummy, the Defense Secretary who presides over the mess. So, we propose today what worked well in World War II.

Substantially older Readers may remember that in World War II the Government mobilized its brightest physicists, chemists, thinkers of all disciplines from industry and academia. The idea of using such smart people instead of the plainly failed current officeholders has great merit now. We need no special carefully-distorted reports from the battlefield to demonstrate what is needed.

Take first the problem of road insecurity. Roadside bombs blow up supply trains, and apparently it isn't even safe to drive a few miles from Baghdad to the airport. We suggest that U.S. railroads have a technique of potential great use. Freight cars have machine-readable bar code on them, just like items in Wal-Mart. These codes can be scanned as the cars move at high speed. The same technique could identify proper, friendly cars and trucks, either on the road or in the cities. All others could wait in line for searches. On the subject of searches, can't technology be found to sniff for explosives in Iraq, when every airport is now poking at passengers? Get some college professors on it. And while we're on this subject, what about RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification)? It works at Wal-Mart, it just might work in Iraq.

Simple but new thinking can help. You will have noted that many insurgent attacks are directed at crowds of applicants for jobs in the police force. Is it too much to ask that applicant sign-ins be held in a secure area, safe from marauding bomb-laden cars?

Then, we have in the States the world's greatest concentration of advertising talent, devoted to convincing the public that they want and need whatever they are not buying. This reservoir of talent should be directed to advising the Iraqi public of the murders of their children and other innocents. Meanwhile, we have long proposed the use of give-aways of shares in, say, Iraq oil companies, perhaps also electricity and water suppliers, all with the aim of creating some public desire not to see its stock interests blown up. Isn't that good capitalist doctrine?

Of course, any operation in a foreign country ought to have available those who speak the language and understand the culture, qualifications notably lacking in Rummy-land. Cannot we organize some suitably knowing people from, say, a handy university, or even the State Department? They might guide the searches, the publicity, the investments, and just might inject some better ideas.

Finally, we put forward the idea of the Big Final Push (BFP). It is plain that, Administration to the contrary, the original contingent of troops was inadequate to secure a big country. Why not send over whoever can be scraped up from the far-flung bases everywhere in the world, disperse them while the critical votes take place, man check-points everywhere, and make the BFP? Then, if the Iraqis insist on killing each other, it's their country and their problem – a doctrine that seems to be seeping out of the White House these days as their polls fall.

Next time: FoodFad (maybe not) [OO #607]

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Supplement to OO #606 (RealIntel)

Ahem! In paragraph 5 of RealIntel, OO #606, the suggestion was that the Iraqis be given shares in their oil producers, thus promoting peace, prosperity, and oil production. The same idea of course appeared a long way back in the series of OO columns appalled by the bungling in Iraq. Well, today on Wolf Blitzer’s Late Edition program, Senator George Allen of Virginia, a staunch Republican, floated the same idea. We are glad (1) that he is reading the OO, and (2) that he is thinking, as so many in Washington are not. Maybe he’d make a good replacement for Rummy.

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