Good Ricks' piece on Leavenworth and Army learning lessons
Saturday, January 21, 2006 at 7:37AM ARTICLE: "Lessons Learned in Iraq Show Up in Army Classes: Culture Shifts to Counterinsurgency," by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post 21 January 2006; A01.
Yet another good piece that signals a growing media awareness of this under-covered story. Ricks spoke with a lot of the same guys I spoke with, but an amazingly smalll overlap with my upcoming Esquire piece. And yes, I look for my "crown jewels" when I see a piece like this and I'm not seeing them, so certain sigh of relief.
In the end, I'm actually glad to see a lot of these bits and pieces articles appearing; it says the market is really ready for the ambitious, overarching sort of stuff I always shoot for. I think our timing couldn't be better in this regard, especially since our piece narrativizes this whole change in a way that newspaper articles just can't capture because they're not working with 6,000 words.
Also makes me realize that here it is the 21st, and subscribers will be getting the mag in less than two weeks!
Here's the full article, which is worth reading: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001906.html.
Reader Comments (1)
Its great that they have modified the training to reflect the operating environment better, but the WP article is all about Army training. While it notes USMC and even Brit collaboration on a manual, the training service specific and the soldiers and marines who go into theater serve as a joint force. there should be more joint training and less service control of all training time and money. its a rice-bowl issue. SecDef Rumsfeld has seen fit to give joint commanders more say in the JCIDS/JROC process, who not let them influence training more directly than they do now. "train as you will fight" should be more than a bumper sticker.