Two Novice Gumshoes Charted The Capture Of Saddam Hussein

Wall Street Journal via Early Bird ^ | December 18,2003 | Farnaz Fassihi, Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal

[mercy]

Does it strike anyone as odd that this analysis was not begun twenty years ago .... reached the stage described here within one year of the start of hostilities in 1991 and this entire family structure thoroughly compromised by the start of hostilities this year?

Our intel sucks AND blows at the same time.

who the ____ is running this world anyway?

[Route66]

I certainly hope promotions are in the works for these two.

[Pagey]

A "This is what you'll never hear about on 60 Minutes"BUMP!!!

[68skylark]

This is a great story. Great post.

[68skylark]

Yeah, you're right. It's a real shame the big-city press is so anti-military. (Their anti-military stance is just a stand in for their anti-Americanism.) There are so many compelling stories from Iraq and elsewhere. Thank heaven we have the FR to help get the word out!

[Redleg Duke]

No, the wind howls over Ft. Sill because Texas sucks and Kansas blows! :-)

I guess you make do when you want to serve badly enough.

[El Gato]

A 31 year old, 11 year service lieutenant? A 36 year old E-4?

I'm sure the LT was prior enlisted, and the E-4 should by rights soon be an LT. Except I think maybe he's too old for OCS, not sure about that though.

[El Gato]

I have to wonder why we are paying billions upon billions for professional intelligence bureaucracies. Where were they?

Well the few indians were trying to their jobs, but the chiefs were playing bureaucractic power games. Same old, same old.

[El Gato]

The corporal joined after 9/11, so he has been in only two years. But why he didn't try for OCS (too old?) when he had a degree

Yep, from Army Officer Candidate Page OCS requirements tab.

At least 19 and not older than 29 at time of USAREC Selelction Board. (age waivers will be considered on a case by case basis for applicnats ages 29-34)

If he's 36 now, he was 33 or 34 upon enlistment, depending on how long after 9-11 he enlisted. An age waiver might have been possible then, but now he's too old for even that.

[El Gato]

Great article but "cpls" are not officers.

True, not even non-commisioned officers. However I wouldn't be too very suprised if the corporal was soon a Sgt, and they are NCOs. The LT will soon be a Captain too, just in the normal course of things if nothing else. (It's only 2-3 years from 1LT to Captain, IIRC, it was 2 years in my day, 18 months not long before that...but it took me more like 8 years. Long boring story)

[GunnyB]

You are exactly right. I attended demos of programs designed to do just this. One national agency I worked at for several years had an automated program that used programmable "filters" to construct possible nexuses (nexi ?) from various forms of communications. The results were displayed in "clusters" with weighted connections between the nodes. Supposedly, all one had to do was to feed this beast enough data and bingo - there's the person or people to target.

Your comment about disseminating tools like this down to the folks who could really use them is a critical issue within our intelligence services. Compartmentalization due to security requirements, while necessary for counterintelligence reasons, is really bad for spreading the wealth, so to speak.

[GunnyB]

Jarheads? Marines are some of the best counterinsurgency troops in the world. Not having the gear and firepower of the Army always has meant that we needed to be smarter & faster.

[GunnyB]

Wow - what a blast from the past... I too, was an 03 grunt (0341) and had a vision as well - in Lebanon in '76. I figured that I'd better get some better training than lobbing mortar rounds or I'd end up as a rent-a-cop or worse. I went counterintelligence (0211) and had a much better time!

I wanted to get back in (I did work ups for chasing Abu Nidal back when our "computer" was a grease pencil & a map), but the recruiter just laughed and gave me some bumper stickers....

[El Gato]

Is an E-4 an NCO, now? When I was in (the '71-'73 dark ages), I was an E4, but they didn't consider us NCOs.

Two kinds of E-4 in the Army, Corporals and Specialists. In those "dark ages", and until fairly recently, the AF also had dual E-4 ranks, Senior Airman and Sergeant. Now they only have Sr. Amn, and the E-5 is a staff sergeant. In fact that far back they may have only had the sergeant rank. Even though I go back that far, maybe because I go back that far, I can't remember. See: Enlisted Ranks and Officer Ranks

[rabidralph]

I wonder if Kevin Bacon's name was on that list?

[Ispy4u]

Corporals are non-comissioned officers.

The vast majority of E-4s in the Army are specialists, but there are a lot of CPLs and they are NCOs.

[Ispy4u]

What has he done lately?

[rabidralph]

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I was wondering if they managed to connect Saddam to Kevin Bacon during their analysis.

[gdc61]

counterinsurgency troops? we are talking M.I. , inscom, ect.
in a firefight i'd want a jarhead in the foxhole with me first. but charts and graphs ? i'll take my coke bottle glassed analyst buddies back in INSCOM. FSA 1st ops bn. woohoo!

[MindBender26]

Can always do the direct commission, on in the case of intel, direct warrant