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| Iraq |
| The Snake Eater: getting our troops the tools our cops have |
| 2007-02-08 |
| Problem: If a cop in Anytown, USA, pulls over a suspect, he checks the person's ID remotely from the squad car. He's linked to databases filled with Who's Who in the world of crime, killing and mayhem. In Iraq, there is nothing like that. When our troops and the Iraqi army enter a town, village or street, what they know about the local bad guys is pretty much in their heads, at best. Solution: Give our troops what our cops have. The Pentagon knows this. For reasons you can imagine, it hasn't happened. This is a story of can-do in a no-can-do world, a story of how a Marine officer in Iraq, a small network-design company in California, a nonprofit troop-support group, a blogger and other undeterrable folk designed a handheld insurgent-identification device, built it, shipped it and deployed it in Anbar province. They did this in 30 days, from Dec. 15 to Jan. 15. The reality: A program exists, the Automated Biometric Identification System: retina scans, facial matching and the like. This war is in year four, and the troops don't have it. Beyond Baghdad, the U.S. role has become less about killing insurgents than arresting the worst and isolating them from the population. Obviously it would help to have an electronic database of who the bad guys are, their friends, where they live, tribal affiliation--in short the insurgency's networks. The Marine and Army officers who patrol Iraq's dangerous places know they need an identification system similar to cops back home. The troops now write down suspects' names and addresses. Some, like Marine Maj. Owen West in Anbar, have created their own spreadsheets and PowerPoint programs, or use digital cameras to input the details of suspected insurgents. But no Iraq-wide software architecture exists. That doesn't seem right. They were using a wonderful program to find all the playing card guys after the invasion. I wonder what happened to it? Operating around the town of Khalidiya, north of Baghdad, Maj. West has been the leader of a team of nine U.S. soldiers 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. It had become clear to him last fall that the Iraqi soldiers were becoming the area's cops. And that they needed modern police surveillance tools. To help the Iraqi army in Khalidiya do its job right, Maj. West needed that technology yesterday: He was scheduled to rotate back stateside in February--this month. Since arriving in Iraq last year, Maj. West had worked with Spirit of America (SoA), the civilian troop-support group founded by Jim Hake. In early December, SoA's project director, Michele Redmond, asked Maj. West if there was any out-of-the-ordinary project they could help him with. And Maj. West described to them the basic concept for a mobile, handheld fingerprinting device which Iraqi soldiers would use to assemble an insurgent database. Mr. Hake said his organization would contribute $30,000 to build a prototype and get it to Khalidiya. In New York, Goldman Sachs contributed $14,000 to the project. Go to the link to read all the inspirational details. But a key point: And so, a month from inception, Bill Roggio handed the electronic identification kit to Maj. West. I really hope the manufacturer gets lots of business on the back of the this product. "It's one night old and the town is abuzz," Major West said. "I think we have a chance to tip this city over now." A rumor quickly spread that the Iraqi army was implanting GPS chips in insurgents' thumbs. Broadhead6, Besoeker, any other Rantburgers at or going to the tip of the spear, see if you can get your unit a couple of these. :-) |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 One of the basic problems is the quality of the data. Garbage in - Garbage out. For a long time they didn't record people's ages. Everyone born the same year was given the same birthdate. As I understand it, street names and street numbers do not exist in many areas. There has not been a census in Iraq in 20+ years. In America you have a well documented baseline to catch your out-liars. In Iraq you don't (except occasionally at the very local level). Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2007-02-08 20:03 |