On Point: the United States Army in Operation Iraqi ... - Boekje Pienter

AcknowledgementsHistorians prefer to write about people long dead for a number of reasons. For onething, the dead can’t criticize what is written. More important, it takes time for the recordof events to be completed, and generally it takes the perspective of time to cometo grips with what happened and what it meant. For all of these reasons, those of uswho wrote On Point depended upon help from many people to attempt to elucidate therecord and to make some sense of what happened.There are far too many to mention them all and we will certainly have left out somekey folks, but we need to take a moment to acknowledge a few of the many personswho supported us.First and foremost, we are grateful to the chief of staff of the Army, General EricShinseki, and his successor, General Peter Schoomaker, for mandating and sustainingthis effort. We are also grateful to them for looking after the effort without lookingover our shoulders. General Kevin Byrnes, commanding general of US Army Trainingand Doctrine Command, made sure we got the proper resources, in particular, theright people to get the job done. Brigadier General Mark O’Neill, deputy director ofStrategy, Plans, and Policy, Army G3, and Colonel Jim Greer, director of the Schoolof Advanced Military Studies, led the team in Iraq and provided us with their own insightsand assisted when there were rough spots. Colonel Chuck Taylor, chief of staff,Initiatives Group, supported the team and made sure the Army staffers who needed accessto determine policy insights got what they needed without turning the collectioneffort into a “staff study.”Lieutenant General Jim Riley, commanding general of the Combined Arms Center,Brigadier General Tim Livsey, Combined Arms Center-Training, and Brigadier GeneralJim Hirai, deputy commandant of the Command and General Staff College, providedsuperb support to the team. Reasoning they could learn by doing, General Hiraireleased several Command and General Staff Officer Course (CGSOC) and School ofAdvanced Military Studies students early so they could join the team. He was right—and they did. He also gave us his aide de camp, Major Travis Rooms, without whomthe team would have never gotten off the ground.Colonels Dave Buckley, Combined Arms Center chief of staff, Greg Lynch, deanof the Command and General Staff College, and Steve Spataro, deputy chief of staff,Resource Management pulled together the team, provided space and information technologysupport and supported budgets, travel, and contracting to get the team housed,equipped, transported, and sustained. Without them we could not have gotten off post,let alone to Iraq.Ruth Eckert, Fort Leavenworth Resource Management, helped us prepare abudget on the fly and then accounted for what we spent and ensured we stayed withinbudget. She did all of that and managed to smile throughout. She also helped producethe mountains of orders and documents we needed to travel. Candi Hamm, secretaryat the School of Advanced Military Studies, and Rose Cantrell, Fort LeavenworthTransportation Office, did the work of several folks helping us get orders processedv