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JEFF STEIN, CQ - Anyone who's spent time in uniform will recognize the
stories that A.J. Rossmiller tells in "Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside
Account of Intelligence Failures, From Baghdad to the Pentagon." Like
the Army field hospital so authentically portrayed in M*A*S*H,
Rossmiller's memoir of two years as a Defense Intelligence Agency Iraq
analyst is darkly funny, with its own versions of Hawkeye, B.J., Colonel
Potter, and of course, Frank Burns. . .
The training at Fort Benning, Ga., "was mostly tedious but occasionally
entertaining," he says. "The sections on the region were like Middle
East for morons." The one-page summary of the "Culture Guide to Iraq,"
for example, included such gems as "Arabs are an emotional people who
use the power of emotion in forceful and appealing rhetoric that tends
toward exaggeration" - a description that just as well fits Bush
officials railing about "mushroom clouds" to build support for invading
Iraq.
But it's his six-month tour at the Combined Intelligence Operations
Center, or CIOC, situated at the Baghdad airport, where the M*A*S*H
analogy really seems apt. . .
The captain commanding the unit was infuriated by the analysts' practice
of rolling over to each others' desk on their chairs. They ignored his
requests to stop it. One day he bellowed, "I order you to get up out of
your chair when you want to talk to somebody!" "The entire aisle erupted
in laughter," Rossmiller writes. . .
After six months, Rossmiller left Baghdad with an assignment to the
Pentagon to analyze intelligence and prognosticate on the chaotic Iraqi
government. . . Unfortunately, one of his worst Baghdad bosses landed
there, too, a right-wing war booster who was "running around the office
and asking people what they were working on so he could add his opinion
(that is, inject his ideology)" into their intelligence reports. . .
On another occasion the boss sauntered up to a U.S.-born Hispanic on the
team and asked, "So, Jose, what do you think of these immigration
protesters?" He clearly disapproved.
Jose, of Puerto Rican heritage, demurred.
"Look at you," the boss added, "You've clearly adapted and assimilated.
. . . And you speak English so well!". . .
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002668466
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JEFF STEIN, CQ - Anyone who's spent time in uniform will recognize the
stories that A.J. Rossmiller tells in "Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside
Account of Intelligence Failures, From Baghdad to the Pentagon." Like
the Army field hospital so authentically portrayed in M*A*S*H,
Rossmiller's memoir of two years as a Defense Intelligence Agency Iraq
analyst is darkly funny, with its own versions of Hawkeye, B.J., Colonel
Potter, and of course, Frank Burns. . .
The training at Fort Benning, Ga., "was mostly tedious but occasionally
entertaining," he says. "The sections on the region were like Middle
East for morons." The one-page summary of the "Culture Guide to Iraq,"
for example, included such gems as "Arabs are an emotional people who
use the power of emotion in forceful and appealing rhetoric that tends
toward exaggeration" - a description that just as well fits Bush
officials railing about "mushroom clouds" to build support for invading
Iraq.
But it's his six-month tour at the Combined Intelligence Operations
Center, or CIOC, situated at the Baghdad airport, where the M*A*S*H
analogy really seems apt. . .
The captain commanding the unit was infuriated by the analysts' practice
of rolling over to each others' desk on their chairs. They ignored his
requests to stop it. One day he bellowed, "I order you to get up out of
your chair when you want to talk to somebody!" "The entire aisle erupted
in laughter," Rossmiller writes. . .
After six months, Rossmiller left Baghdad with an assignment to the
Pentagon to analyze intelligence and prognosticate on the chaotic Iraqi
government. . . Unfortunately, one of his worst Baghdad bosses landed
there, too, a right-wing war booster who was "running around the office
and asking people what they were working on so he could add his opinion
(that is, inject his ideology)" into their intelligence reports. . .
On another occasion the boss sauntered up to a U.S.-born Hispanic on the
team and asked, "So, Jose, what do you think of these immigration
protesters?" He clearly disapproved.
Jose, of Puerto Rican heritage, demurred.
"Look at you," the boss added, "You've clearly adapted and assimilated.
. . . And you speak English so well!". . .
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002668466
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