The SysAdmin gets serious in its training

■"U.S. to Intensify Its Training In Iraq to Battle Insurgents: A Week for Officers to Sharpen Strategy; Learning new lessons in urban warfare, and hoping to teach them to Iraqi forces, too," by Eric Schmitt, New York Times, 2 November 2005, p. A12.

■"Elite Marine Unit to Help Fight Terrorism: Force to Be Part of Special Ops," by Bradley Graham, Washington Post, 2 November 2005, p. A14.

Great NYT story on the continuing bottom-up reform movement within Army and the Marine Corps to sharpen the blade on counter-insurgency. In short, the warriors who've come home are now teaching the teachers.

Best possible signs? Lt. Gen. Jim Mattis running the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and Lt. Gen. Dave Petraeus taking over the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth (where I will address the student body sometime in the next couple of months).

But key point of article is that this bubble-up phenom is now reaching back to Iraq, where a new school is set up to train Iraqis too.

This is what I meant when I wrote in Blueprint for Action that no public institution responds better to failure than the U.S. military. The SysAdmin capacity is coming, my friends.