How to Spend $150M???

Yes you heard right, I am in the most enviable position I have ever been in, how do I spend a cool $150M of our taxpayer money on ASL (Authorized Stockage Listing) at the Taji National Maintenance Depot. A depot is not just bricks, mortar, equipment and Soldiers, if you don't have any parts in stock to install when rebuilding vehicles, engines, generator and small arms then you don;t have a depot. I knew this moment was quickly approaching, as I have lost some sleep and usually the first couple of miles on my runs the only thing I think about is the depot and what obstacle looms in the distance trying to slow me down. For the longest time it's been how do we go about ordering the necessary parts for the depot all the while ensuring they will be the right ones and will be used.

We started this process a couple of months ago when I gave the indictative list (list of vehicles and equipment that was in the Iraqi Army and MOI (Police) inventory to my Iraqi counterparts to highlight what MOD wanted to repair at the Depot. I got it back and they basically wanted to repair every damn thing they had in their inventory except the M35A2 US Army 2 & 1/2 Ton trucks (they hate those things). I told the General that no the Depot could not order enough parts to repair all those items, plus some of the density numbers were so low it didn't make sense to repair. Believe it or not they have 8 ambulances in their inventory and a couple I don't think you'd survive on a trip to the hospital if you were injured! He went ahead and reviewed it again, pared down the number I looked at it, added some of the American vehicles (the M35A2 and M Series 5 Tons). Added my comments and sent it to the J-4 maintenance folks who sat on it, were reminded to review it and finally reviewed it making some changes which made sense. I had one of our Marine Warrants check it out, since those guys are high speed and low drag. I gave it to the AMC rep Robert who looked at it prioritized which vehicles were to be repaired first based on our building and training schedule. We did the same for the weapons and generators.

Now came the fun part. Guys do you have part manuals for all the Russian, and other Warsaw pact equipment so we can order parts? I already knew what the Iraqi's were going to tell me it was nyet! We linked up with the guys who do third line maintenance and were able to get a decent portion of the part numbers but not all of them. You're probably asking how in the hell can you totally tear apart and rebuild a tank if you don't have all the necessary parts? That's a damn good question and one that my replacement have plenty of time to think about!! The American vehicles are not a problem since AMC has those part numbers and the number that are needed for every vehicle based on historical repair rate. But here in Iraq without a Support Command to manage this information they have no clue as to what the failure rate is on their parts and to top it off my Iraqi counterparts are no help at all.

With the AK47's, it's the same as with vehicles, unlike the M16 or M4 the AK has been built in 13 countries and not all the parts of a Romanian AK will work on a Chinese one. That's easy what is the breakdown of the AK's in the current system? Well we know there are XXXX in the system but no one has a clue as to the country of manufacture. We had end user certificate paperwork but that only means what country they came from, ie a Romanian contractor shipped up 10K AK's but maybe they were built in Montenegro! Okay how do I know what part number to order if I don't know which contractor we are going to order from? Sure a hand guard is a hand guard, but is it a Z1234-56-789 or a 987-09876-09, well that depends on the contractor! You get the drift.

Generators there must be at least 30 manufacturers out there and not even now the Iraqi Army does not have one or two suppliers for generators. Most of the small ones we're better off shit canning them than rebuilding them. The AMC guys have been able to ID a couple that we'll work on so we'll order those parts, but getting the generators into our shop is like getting a 10 year old to pickup his room in less than 5 minutes before heading off to school! It'll happen sometime after the Cubs win a world series!! Back home and every where else you turn in a piece of equipment to be repaired and you get a hand receipt which shows that I now have that piece of equipment and as long as you have that piece of paper you can account for where that piece is. Not so in Iraq, it is better to have 10 generators that are circa 1980's sitting in a corner of your barracks area totally trashed than to lose sight of them (though you have the hand receipt) for a couple of days so they can get fixed. I have always commented that the Iraqi Army has the largest collection of useless paperweights in the whole world!

We have until the 20th to finish up on the ASL and the guys at AMC are burning the midnight oil completing the listing so I can review and send up the package in bits and pieces tomorrow and the 20th. Bottom line is more than likley I will not be spending all of that money and it will be gobbled up by another more urgent project, which suits me fine, since all of us have decided that it is better to buy what we actually need than to spend taxpayer money for stuff that more than likely will sit on a shelf and never be used. At least the parts we haven't been able to identify we can still work on getting the part numbers and if there is more funding than they can be ordered then, if there is no more funding I guess the Iraqi Government will be picking up the tab which suits me just fine!

Other than that all is well, yesterday I did a nice long 16 mile run with one of the guys here. We did 13.1 together and he had to split so I ran into the gym and did the last 2.9 on the elliptical trainer since my quads and hips were killing me. Running on these roads which are really crowned and are made of a sub base material is like running on cobble stones and you do that for any amount of time and the body says no mas!! Tonite nothing's flying since it got dusty and windy this afternoon and if I was back home would bet that it was gonna rain, because it smells like rain but that doesn't work over here.

Before I go here's a shout out to my brother in law Pepe and his two sons who are die hard Real Madrid fans, seems they got their asses kicked by my Real Betis Balompie team 2-1 on Saturday night! So this ones for you guys: " Asi Asi Asi Pierde El Madrid" y "Viva Er Beti Manque Pierda"!!!!!!!

The Colonel