DATELINE: St. Petersburg FL, 9 May 2006

Had hoped for F2F with General Abizaid himself at kick-off breakfast for this AFEI (Assoc for Enterprise Integration) warfighters' conference, but events pull him away.

So end up with his impressive and physically imposing chief of staff, MGEN Lloyd Austin, soon to get his third star and command 18th airborne.

Austin gives a very Abizaid-esque long war view of 4GW against AQAM (Al Qaeda & Associated Movements), saying it "takes a network to defeat a network," and that "in this struggle, military power is less than 10 percent of the solution."

Sounds like you need a SysAdmin force that somehow marries that 10 percent to that non-kinetic 90 percent.

Austin's Q&A was all about the staggering difficulty of interagency, which just gets me warmed up on the larger requirement (emerging) for a Department of Everything Else.

"This manhunt business is awfully tough," says Austin, so sharing actionable knowledge across databases and agencies is EVERYTHING. "That's how we're going to defeat this enemy."

Impatient man, this Austin. Good for him.