By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Maxx, an improvised explosive device detector dog, licks the face of his handler, Lance Cpl. Stephen Mader, during a convoy in southern Helmand province, Afghanistan, July 26. Mader, an IDD handler with 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, Regimental Combat Team 6, volunteered for the job. He's an infantry mortarman by trade, but deployed to use Maxx to help sniff out IEDs and other explosive before they can damage vehicles or Marines."

Spencer Attackerman wrote last month somewhat mockingly about the Pentagon cracking down on soldiers watching porn on official computers. I actually think there is a clear and present danger in porn: I suspect it is the vehicle by which the Stuxnet virus was introduced into the computers running part of the Iranian nuclear program. (Reading Henry Crumpton's memoirs, I began to wonder if the CIA is a major buyer in the porn market, for use with North Korean diplomats, among other contacts. They probably have a "chief acquisition officer, pornography.")

If I were managing any official office that used computers -- which is to say all of them -- I would make watching porn on them a firing offense, not for moral reasons but for security reasons. And I would consider bringing criminal charges against anyone who actually used a thumbdrive to transfer porn into an official system.     

By Kenneth E. Blackman

Best Defense guest commenter

The Defense Department, the veterans administration, and the Obama administration are missing an enormous opportunity to help wounded warriors, indeed every serviceman and woman returning from battle overseas.  

There's a hugely successful program in North Carolina called the Citizen Soldier Support Program (CSSP) that maps data about the deployments of service members down to the local level, trains civilian health professionals to identify and treat those in their communities in need, and then connects the military, veterans, and their families with knowledgeable providers to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and other behavioral problems that result from combat and repeated rotations overseas.

Here's the rub: Federal funding has run out and the program is about to go out of business, despite memos of support from former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, two letters from North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan, another from four influential Tar Heel Congressmen (David Price, Mike McIntyre, Walter Jones, and Larry Kissell), and applause from virtually all who have looked at this effort.

The Citizen Soldier Support Program began with $9.8 million dollars from Congress in 2005-2007. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill serves as host (who says academe doesn't care about the military?). The focus is on military members and their families, especially in the reserves and National Guard, and especially in rural, sparsely populated, and other under-served areas -- in other words, those areas where the military and the veterans' administration aren't reaching the people who need help.

Check it out at www.citizensoldiersupport.org. It's unique -- no other program like it in the country. It starts by mapping the service populations by home zip code. For example, there are currently reservists and National Guardsmen and women in all but 12 U.S. counties (out of 3141 nationally). There are reserve/Guard vets of the Iraq, Afghanistan, and other deployments in all but 27 counties. So the first contribution is locating all those eligible, and their dependents. Take a look.

Then the program trains behavioral (and other) health providers onsite and online -- to date, over 20,000 practicing in all 50 states. Then it tracks the distribution of those trained and matches them against the needs identified in the mapping of deployment data. CSSP offers nationally recognized courses on PTSD, TBI, issues relating to women in combat, issues of importance to military families, and the like. There's training focused on primary care physicians and optometrists to recognize these injuries during routine examinations. All courses are available for free and the cost of continuing education credits is covered.

Last, the program contains a web-based, searchable database of providers to connect them with service members and their families who are in need. This database is modeled on the one developed for North Carolina, where there are more than 1200 total providers in 96 of the 100 counties. The goal is three trained health providers within 30 minutes of every service and family member who needs it -- nationwide.

For over two years, CSSP has sought re-funding from the Defense Department, Veterans Administration, and other government agencies at the highest levels, including speaking directly with the Secretary of Defense, the current and former Joint Chiefs Chairmen, and the Staff of the First Lady. They have had ample opportunity to act but have not, despite White House efforts to marshal the involvement of the nation's leading professional medical associations. The issues facing our returned and returning military population, veterans, and their families are not a government problem; they are a national crisis that is only going to get worse.

The Citizen Soldier Support Program is led by Bob Goodale, a retired CEO of the Harris Teeter supermarket chain, and retired LTC Bill Abb, a veteran of 21 years on active duty in the army. They have been working cooperatively with all these agencies, including the White House Joining Forces effort, and countless others at the local, state and national levels -- not as competitors but to complement and to help.

What puzzles CSSP, and its distinguished advisory board led by a retired Chief of the Army Reserves and a retired Adjutant General of the North Carolina National Guard, is why with all this support, after all these efforts at the highest levels of government, this program will die. It needs immediate funding to continue and then long-term money to realize its national potential -- in total, some $18 or 20 million over five years.

From the start of his first presidential campaign in 2007, Barack Obama has reached out to the military, emphasizing the needs of our soldiers and our military families. His bureaucrats say "they have it covered." But they don't -- not like this, not at the community level, not training local health providers, not focusing on the Guard and reserves and their vets. Last Friday the president essentially admitted that by issuing an executive order full of plans for interagency cooperation, partnering with community mental health services, new plans for more planning, hiring more therapists, creating pilot programs, and more -- proof positive of the crying need to expand mental health services to the military.

Everybody knows that Active Duty Service Members have overwhelmed the military's mental health resources, forcing referrals to local civilian providers. Everybody knows that deployments affect far more than those who went overseas: parents, spouses, siblings, significant others, children, and more. Everyone knows that it takes weeks or months for far too many wounded warriors to get help and that many vets are hours away from the nearest VA facility -- and that help often requires months of waiting and involves terribly frustrating runarounds. Suicides among current and former military have skyrocketed -- July just saw the worst monthly total on record among those on active duty, and those suicides are only the tip of the iceberg.

In that same month of July, the Pentagon asked Congress to allow $708 million appropriated for TRICARE, the health insurance for service members and vets, to be reprogrammed for use elsewhere. Twenty-four members of the House Armed Services Committee asked that the money be focused on PTSD, TBI, and related problems. What better use of the money than to find and connect health providers to those wounded, and their families, who aren't getting help from the VA or the military health system?

The president and first lady will soon be in North Carolina for the Democratic convention. His Executive Order sets in motion all sorts of good efforts but they will take months and years to implement. The Citizen Soldier Support Program is up and running, succeeding, and using the private sector -- health providers in local communities all across the country -- to identify those who need help, and getting it to them through professionals practicing right next door. If the president wants to be consistent with everything he's doing to support our military, and his own Executive Order, he will order the Pentagon or the VA, or both, to continue the Citizen Soldier Support Program, and announce it loudly to the Convention and the country. If he won't act, then Congress should. Not a single soldier or family should be left to suffer if help can be provided.

Kenneth E. Blackman, PhD, served four years in the Air Force Security Service and has spent a career in the biomedical and substance abuse treatment field. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Alcohol Drug Council of North Carolina and as a volunteer veteran representative in the Jail Diversion and Trauma Recovery Program.

By "Hunter"

Best Defense TV reviewer

I'm embarrassed to admit, I recently watched a long portion of the second episode of the new "reality" TV show Stars Earn Stripes. The premise of the show is that eight D-list "celebrities" -- predominately reality TV returnees, washed up actors, and athletes -- train with former U.S. military servicemembers and first responders and take part in "missions" to demonstrate their prowess and nominally learn/appreciate something about military life. There's also a Survivor element to the "contest" where a non-performing team is dismissed each episode. The "stripes" the remaining teams earn equate to $10,000 donations to service-oriented charities like the Wounded Warrior Project and their ilk. NBC claims the show will "pay homage to the men and women who serve in the U.S. armed forces."

I found the program lame and somewhat sad. Anyone with military experience would laugh at the canned explosions -- M203 rounds do not blow up like that, especially when the blue training round lands under rather than in the target. ( I'm looking at you, Picabo Street.) The "tasks" that the "celebs" were charged to execute were laughable. Indeed, the marksmanship demonstrated (even by the military professionals) wasn't that impressive given the high powered rifle sights, supported firing positions, and short distances to the target.

But the real kickers were the unconvincing hostess Samantha Harris -- who previously co-hosted Dancing with the Stars, wearing sexy combat chic clothing that would make the Scud Stud blush, and General (Retired) Wesley Clark -- the opportunist flag officer and onetime presidential candidate everyone loves to hate. The two co-hosts, respectively, bat their eyes and look grim and try to sell the concept as a credit to the troops, but the show devolves "combat" down to a series of Darby Queen obstacles with embedded squibs and targets that don't shoot back.

How sad to see General Clark leering over a fake TV screen (badly overlaid on a circular table) in a fake command post, giving orders and commentary with fake gravitas. But Clark is well known for narcissism and never finding a camera he didn't love. The late David Hackworth once called Wes Clark a Perfumed Prince -- and later retracted his comment -- but this made-for-TV endeavor seems to validate the moniker.

What's most worrisome about this show is that it is a show, sold as entertainment. A squad of Nobel laureates has already criticized the program calling Stars Earn Stripes a "sanitation of war ... likening it to an athletic competition." They called for the show's cancellation stating: "It is our belief that this program pays homage to no one anywhere and continues and expands on an inglorious tradition of glorifying war and armed violence. Real war is down in the dirt deadly. People -- military and civilians --die in ways that are anything but entertaining."

I have to agree with their sentiment, especially given the ham-handed nature of the exercises. There's no real danger, and no real consequences. I'm sure the celebs retire to their Hollywood mansions after each camera shoot, whereas, somewhere in Afghanistan, PFC "Snuffy" finishes his real "shoot" and retires to his tent built for 6-8 of his closest squadmates. Surprising no one, I hope, there's no reality in this reality TV. Even if this show was a well-meaning effort to bridge an increasing civil-military divide (as Clark claims), it is so poorly executed that it marginalizes the efforts of U.S. troops in the field. That's what makes Clark's involvement all the more worrisome. The public doesn't know that Clark is not overly respected within the ranks, and likely accepts his involvement as a military stamp of approval.

The Army Profession campaign has spent almost two years trying to discern the impact of a decade of war on the profession. One of the ideas the campaign members have been considering is the concept of a "non-acting professional." In this case, they have been trying to analyze the role of the military retiree (p. 24) within the profession. This need arose as many general officers (e.g. Clark and Honore) took to the papers and the airwaves commenting on military operations and politics (e.g. Newbold, Batiste) from the safety of their retirement. The ongoing concern remains allowing for the proper balance of dissent, First Amendment rights and the role of former government servants -- who, it should be remembered, remain subject to recall to active service. This is a continuing discussion that will not be resolved anytime soon.

Clark's latest TV endeavor is more embarrassing than harmful, and likely grazes but does not fall within the area of concern which the Army Campaign is exploring. But I do think Stars Earns Stripes undermines the hard work of our servicemembers around the globe, by turning combat-lite into a game show. The fact that the show is giving money to veterans groups doesn't redeem it in the least.

The best way to get rid of such a show is not to watch it. Unfortunately, an estimated 5.4 million Americans watched the Stars Earns Stripes first episode. We're rapidly headed towards the world hypothesized in Mike Judge's Idiocracy, where the top TV show was Oww, my balls. [Note: Another reality TV show, this season's America's Got Talent, actually featured a segment that easily could have been titled Oww, my balls].The quality of what passes for entertainment is worrisome and getting worse.

I've often argued for a Sunday primetime reality TV show (probably on the fourth place network), filming soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines with all their glory (and warts) in theater. Each week would spotlight a different unit, in a different place -- not unlike news reels from World War II. If it was honestly handled, I think that would be a hit show that really better communicates what combat and service means while drawing some much needed attention to the troopers in the field. That would also be a worthwhile bridging effort for that civil-military divide we are always so concerned about. I'll keep waiting; meanwhile, I'll hope that Clark gets his face off of TV and Stars Earns Stripes goes AWOL.

"Hunter" is an Army officer. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, the federal government, the College of Cardinals, the bullpen of the Washington Nationals, or "The Itchy and Scratchy Show." Then again, they might. Especially the bullpen guys.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 25, 2011.

There's a good new study out of interagency high value target teams and the role they played in Iraq in 2007. Secret Weapon: High-value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation, by Christopher Lamb and Evan Munsing, argues that the interagency targeting teams are neither well understood nor much liked inside the national security establishment. It also is one of the most interesting monographs I've read in some time.

The study's core conclusion is that, in Iraq in 2007, "the interagency teams used to target enemy clandestine networks were a major, even indispensable, catalyst for success" (6) Even so, the authors note, the bureaucracies in Washington were not much interested in supporting them. "Cajoling parent organizations for support was a major preoccupation of senior leaders in Iraq." (58)

The most compelling part of the study is the discussion of interviews with former members of the high-value targeting teams about what worked and why. Some highlights:

--The single greatest variable of success was "access to the most senior decision makers...because it allowed the interagency teams to bypass multiple layers of mid level approval and obtain cooperation that otherwise would not have been forthcoming " (40)

--Middle management at the home headquarters and agencies of team members proved to be an impediment to information sharing, which was not the case with top management. The way to get around this, the study says, was to recruit personnel with enough seniority and experience to enjoy direct access to top level officials.    

--Smaller teams generally worked better than large ones. "Team members we interviewed ...agreed that smaller teams, usually 8 to 15 people, were more effective and allowed greater cohesion and trust."

--The safer the area in which a team was based, the more pronounced bureaucratic differences became, with the Green Zone being the obvious example of a bad environment in which the sense of a common purpose was undermined.

--Teams that tried to operate "virtually" were far less effective than those that were physically co-located, eating and living together.

--One area that required constant attention resulted from the different view points of SOF and intelligence analysts. "There was a constant tension between the desire of the intelligence organizations to develop sources and targets and the desire of ... operators to take out targets even at the expense of compromising sources." (45)

--The SOF general overseeing the joint targeting teams found that in order to get cooperation from CIA, FBI and other officials, SOF culture had to change to become more transparent. "SOF Task Force personnel were directed to set the example by being first to give more information. They were told to ‘share until it hurts.' As one commander explained it, ‘If you are sharing information to the degree where you think, "Holy cow, I am going to go to jail," then you are in the right area of sharing.' The point was to build trust, and information-sharing was the icebreaker." (46)

--The leadership of the teams was hand-picked by the SOF general. He knew that the team leaders had only limited authority over their team members and so could not order, but only ask, their members to do things, so he chose officers he thought were hyper active Type As who could pull back to Type B as needed.

It took several years for the teams to become effective, but "By 2007, the interagency high-value target teams were a high-volume, awe-inspiring machine that had to be carefully directed." (50) As it happened, there was a new top American commander who came, Gen. Petraeus, who embraced the teams and used them effectively.

Unfortunately, they conclude, once the crisis passed, the bureaucracies back in Washington who were contributing to the teams began to lose interest in supporting them. They also began to re-assert their own priorities. "By 2008, other departments and agencies, particularly one unidentified intelligence agency, began pulling back people and cooperation, believing information-sharing and collaboration had gone too far." (54)    

It reminds me of something I once read about the British defense against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, that the real trick was not radar but the organization that was able to combine radar, radio and aircraft to get the right planes to the right places at the right times, and keep doing it for months.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 14, 2011.

The more I study President Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War, the more nervous I get about the Obama Administration.

I am still thinking this through, but when I read the history of LBJ and Vietnam, I see him looking at the world through congressional glasses. He seems to thinks that Hanoi is like the opposition in the Senate, something to be cajoled and manipulated. He does not realize he is fighting a limited war but that his Vietnamese enemy is not, and that the Communist leadership really thinks and lives outside his known world. They are not into "signals."

I don't think President Obama is excessively congressional in his outlook. But I fear Vice President Biden is. What's more, they've compounded the error by stocking the White House staff with like-minded people, such as a national security advisor who was a lobbyist and a deputy national security advisor who was a Hill staffer. That comes on top of a president, a vice president and a secretary of State who all came directly from the Senate. That is a very narrow, very peculiar range of experience to bring to the task of dealing with the world out there, especially as Congress has been unusually weak in national security over the last 15 years, to the point that if often has been irrelevant to the discussion. I can't think of a national security team with a background as narrow as this one. Why put on blinders voluntarily? Whatever happened to the "Team of Rivals" concept? How about mixing in some academic knowledge, military experience, journalistic savvy, or business acumen? And if they are so good on the politics of it, which is the one thing they should be, how could they screw up Guantanamo so badly? And why have they left a dysfunctional team in place in Afghanistan?

In addition, Hill staffers who move into the executive branch tend to worry me a bit. I remember covering Les Aspin as a defense secretary and being surprised at how little he really knew about how the military operated, especially beyond the Pentagon. I think former Hill people often focus too much on Congress, and sometimes defer to it in a way that I suspect is inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' intent in creating an adversarial system of competing branches of government. In addition, I suspect that some former Hill staffers retain the habit of excessive deference to the boss, when sometimes the job for the head of an executive agency is privately telling the boss he is wrong before he goes public with it. Exhibit A is George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, who gave his president too much of what that president wanted and too little of what he needed.

Most of all, the congressional mentality sees little danger in inaction. On Capitol Hill, there's always the next term. That's not the case in foreign policy, where opportunities slip away never to return. Lost time is not found again. I think Obama handled Egypt well, but he didn't have to do much there except speak well, which he does consistently. On Libya, though, dithering is dangerous. If you wait for an international consensus to emerge, it probably won't. I am not saying we should do a no-fly zone. I am saying there are many other steps we could take, as I have written aboutbefore. 

If we have a foreign policy disaster on Obama's watch, I think historians will zero in on the dangerous lack of diversity in the backgrounds and viewpoints of his key national security advisors. I wonder how Samantha Power, the former journalist who is the NSC's director for multilateral affairs and human rights, stands it.

So, while I haven't turned in my Obama fan card yet, I am not sure I am gonna renew it.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Military working dog handlers with 1st Law Enforcement Battalion, I-MEF, have been participating in Large Scale Exercise-1, Javelin Thrust 2012. From left to right: Cpl. John Brady, with his patrol explosive detector dog, Tesa. Cpl. Fidel Rodriguez, with his combat tracker dog, Aron. Cpl. Dwight Jackson, with his patrol explosive detector dog, Hugo. Lance Cpl. Isaiah White, with his specialized search dog, Moxie. This photo was taken in July at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, CA.

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk, is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Free Press.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on February 4, 2011.

The fun I had helping a neighbor at Christmastime with the Audubon annual census of birds on our island inspired me to read Sibley's Birding Basics. As I did, I was struck by how you could read some of his instructions as a supplement to David Kilcullen's recommendations on observing insurgents.

--"Watch the edges of the flock and pay special attention to outlying birds or those that act differently; they may be a different species."

--"Consider the time of day."

--"Anticipate the birds' needs."

--"Follow the birds. If you find a number of birds in an area, consider why they might be there. Is there a concentration of food? Is it a warm or cool spot?"

--"Another important point for beginners to understand is that bird identification is not an exact science and often does not involve absolute certainty."

--"Looking at a bird with prejudice, having already determined that it is likely to be one species and leading only to confirm that identification, will lead you into error.… Guard against forming an opinion until all of the evidence is in."

Also, be ready for the unexpected: I was surprised that Sibley lists Central Park, smack in middle of the concrete canyons of New York City, as great bird-watching spot. The reason, he writes, is that migrating birds gravitate toward it, as "the largest patch of natural habitat in the area" -- not unlike, he writes, a desert oasis.

Of course, both bird-watching and dealing with insurgents began by hunting them down and killing them, until those doing the shooting realized there often might be a better approach. With knowledge comes the understanding that hawks act differently from shrikes, and a strong tribe differently from a marginalized one.  

Speaking of growing understanding, I finished reading Senator's Son, which takes that as its theme. I enjoyed it enormously. More next week about that.

By Mackubin Thomas Owens

Best Defense department of civil-military relations

It is fair to say that most Americans do not pay much attention to civil-military relations (CMR) and on the rare occasions when they do, they equate the term almost exclusively with civilian control of the military.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

First, U.S. CMRs appear to be fairly healthy, especially in terms of civilian control. The U.S. military as an institution seems to have internalized a commitment to civilian control. Second, most of those who have written about U.S. CMR, from Sam Huntington to Richard Kohn and Peter Feaver, have focused on civilian control.

But this is problematic: It may cause citizens to miss other signs of unhealthy CMR.

For soldiers, this focus, especially as articulated by Huntington in The Soldier and the State, which provides an "ideal" formula for maintaining civilian control while also keeping the military strong, means that they will tend to focus on operational factors -- how to fight wars -- at the expense of strategy, the purpose for which a war is fought. In other words, they may fail to connect operational art, at which the U.S. military excels, to political goals.

My own argument is that it is necessary to take a broader perspective on CMR. Civilian control is important but it is not the only dimension of CMR. For citizens and soldiers to ignore the other dimensions of CMR runs the risk of placing the Republic in peril.

What do we mean by Civil-Military Relations?

The term "civil-military relations" refers broadly to the interaction between the armed forces of a state as an institution, the government, and the other sectors of the society in which the armed force is embedded. Civil-military relations have to do with allocating responsibilities and prerogatives between the civil government and the military establishment. It can be seen as "two hands on the sword." The civilian hand determines when the sword is drawn. The military hand keeps it sharp and wields it in combat, always guided by the purposes for which the war is being fought.

It appears to me that U.S. civil-military relations constitute a bargain, regarding the aforementioned allocation of prerogatives and responsibilities between the civilian leadership on the one hand and the military on the other.

There are three parties to the bargain: the American people, the government, and the military establishment. The bargain must be periodically re-negotiated to take account of political, social, technological, or geopolitical changes. There have been several renegotiations of the U.S. civil-military bargain over the past 70 years, including:

• World War II, when the military becomes a "central" as opposed to a peripheral institution in America
• The Cold War, with the rise of nuclear weapons and the central role of deterrence
• Post-Cold War, when there was a shift to constabulary operations
• Post 9/11, when CMR has to cope with a time of protracted conflict, giving rise to the possibility of praetorianism

The central question we face today is whether another renegotiation is in the offing.

Read on

By Ryan Woods

Best Defense office of packing light

Speaking of personally acquiring civilian gear to use (I have zero idea how common it is or what kinds of limiting/precluding rules there are, it sounds like it happens a fair bit) I have some tips for saving money:

Everyone in the military can get a promotive.com account with a DoD email account (it is a manufacturer's proform clearinghouse...generally 40 percent off MSRP, a great deal for some brands and more expensive than common retail on others, caveat emptor). Even if you don't want it for any kind of tactical gear, there's some sweet rec gear open to that team as well. (I am not affiliated with them in any way but do have an account.)

Along similar lines, a quick call to other brands (tactical or rec) might well yield access to their actual proform, often at much deeper discounts than 40 percent off. Usually marketing or customer service controls access.

Failing that, it is often possible to get wholesale/proform prices by going directly to a manufacturer with a group buy (generally need 10+ purchasers), eg: if everyone in a unit wants a pack (or one of several packs) from a manufacturer.

BTW, I appreciate all the responses they have been very interesting for me. One thing that still sticks in my craw a bit is the insistence that the weight of stuff is a given and/or necessary. The weight of a thing is not generally a feature, it is rather a byproduct of other engineering requirements or lack of thought. So far, I've got bullets and probably some minimum weight on a hand grenade where the actual mass of a thing has a beneficial component, not that both can't be optimized to be lighter necessarily. Sorry to hammer on this, but I cannot count the number of things where I didn't think about the weight of a thing until I got something lighter and realized how much better it was both in use and in the carrying.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

I came across this wonderful photo of Butch and war-dog tribute in his honor on United States War Dog Association's Facebook page this week. I got in touch with the owner of the photograph, Tonja Dubois, and not only did she graciously give permission to share the image here (a photograph her father carried in his wallet until the day he died), but offered more of the story.

"According to my dad, Butch, a French Bulldog, was the unit mascot (sadly, I don't know the unit's identification information) and he was with the Air Force from the time he was a puppy. The whole unit took part in raising him.

Butch was a true companion to my dad and, according to Dad, 'one smart fellow.' He would accompany the men to the garage and "work" with the crew, fetching tools for the mechanics. He was a beloved dog among all the men but was clearly attached to my dad. They were tremendous friends and my dad doted on him with playtime, tricks, belly rubs, and walks.

Butch had such an impact on my father, that Dad developed a love for dogs that I have seen unmatched in other people. He didn't care what kind of dog it was; he loved it unconditionally.

From the way my father spoke of Butch, he was probably the first real confidante he had. He was also Dad's first dog. No other compared to him. Butch reigned supreme in my dad's heart until his death in February 2010."

Tonja writes that he father was allowed to adopt Butch when he left the military -- the Air Force relented after much begging. Butch lived at home with his favorite Airman until his death that, in a remarkable if not sad coincidence, came to pass on the very day Tonja was born in 1965.

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk, is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Free Press.

By Col. Larry Wexler (U.S. Army, ret.)

Best Defense department of first person experience

I served in Iraq from 2008-2009 and served as the deputy program director for LOGCAP Iraq. I was relieved of my duties in March 2009 after having apparently performed them just fine from October 2008 to March 2009. In January my supervisor recommended me for a Bronze Star for the work I was doing. He was stationed at Rock Island and came for a theater visit in February 2009. At no time did he mention any performance issues or his intentions to relieve me of my duties. What had transpired up to that time was I reported fraud, waste, and abuse on the part of the SERCO Management Contract and certain of the contractors and a failure to perform on the part of KBR on their contract. Prior to all this I had served 30 years in the Army in both active and reserve and extended my retirement a year to serve on the LOGCAP contract, had been promoted to Colonel, had command assignments up to 06 level and had attended the U.S. Army War College. I was also mobilized for two years on a joint assignment as the chief of staff of a deployable joint task force headquarters core element. In my civilian career I served as a vice president of corporate infrastructure -- essentially purchasing and contracting.

Up to the third week of March I had no communication that I was not performing my duties to my supervisors' satisfaction, in fact I had accomplished 90 percent of my performance objectives on my OER support form. I had built out a new life support area to improve the quality of life for those assigned to my detachment, have developed a better training plan, had developed a reception plan, had created a functional chain of command to provide better customer service, developed an SOP to ensure standardization across the detachment, and yet in March I received a call from my supervisor that I was being relieved (he wouldn't say why) and that I had one week to get my affairs in order and be on a plane out of Iraq. My predecessor, who was also relieved, as well as the DPD for Afghanistan who had been relieved, were all given a month to get their affairs in orders. I was given a week because KBR and SERCO wanted me out of country before the arrival of the Congressional committee on wartime contracting the first week of April. They did not want me to brief them on the fraud, waste, and abuse on both contracts. KBR also wanted me out of the picture because instead of just handing the base at Basra to them, I worked with JCC-I to bid out the base life support as fixed price contracts. KBR did not like losing Basra from the LOGCAP contract. They also wanted me out because I would have presented my case that the fraud, waste, and abuse -- and failure to perform in accordance with the respective contracts -- would cost them their award fee bonus. The retired general in charge of the KBR LOGCAP Contract in Iraq worked with his active duty general counterparts to have me removed, not for having failed to perform my duties, but for having the integrity not to look the other way when contractors behaved badly.

The Army still relieves commanders or those in positions of leadership, but as you can see not always for a good reason and those that should be relieved for condoning fraud, waste and abuse are not relieved because generals today for the most part look out for each to protect each other.

Col. Larry Wexler (USA, Ret.), is an Armor Officer with over thirty years of commissioned service, both active and reserve. He has served at all levels of command from platoon through group and is a U.S. Army War College graduate. He was mobilized and deployed twice to Iraq.

By Maj. David Rittgers, U.S. Army Reserve

Best Defense guest respondent

From my desk as a trial counsel (military prosecutor), your "Let's Draft Our Kids" proposal looks more like a full employment act for military attorneys than a productive use of taxpayer funds. A few of the hidden costs associated with your proposal:

1. Not everyone who starts the program will want to finish, and not everyone who signs up will want to work all that hard for the generous benefits you're offering. I doubt this will be a very efficient workforce. Between the malingerers and the shift toward a pro-welfare state attitude of the young folks who would be stuck in this program, you've also perpetuated the myth that we can continue to grow government at a time when we're over a trillion in the hole each year with no end in sight. The ironic outcome is that your future overpaid janitor is someone who started in the Defense Service Corps in 2013 and never quite got off the government dole, staying in a menial labor position with excellent benefits his whole life.

2. Criminal prosecutions: I don't know of any data on the topic, but it is my impression that there is a higher rate of criminal activity and administrative separation with the 'moral waiver' folks let in during the increase of the ground forces during the war in Iraq. These folks never would've gotten in if not for the relaxed standards in place in the mid-2000s. Proposing to put an extra million or so folks (or more, I'm not sure what the numbers look like on this) under UCMJ authority with lowered screening standards is a recipe for courts-martial as far as the eye can see. I suppose we could exempt them from the UCMJ and put them in some special status where they are treated like any other person on a federal reservation, but federal courts already have enough on-post DUI's that we send them and their caseload is already significant, so that seems like a bad idea. Plus, if you exempt them from UCMJ, you lose the ability to maintain good order and discipline, which is implicitly part of the national service rationale under which we're enacting this program.

What about drugs? Do we conduct urinalysis screenings on these folks? If not, we're not maintaining good order and discipline. This is another several thousand administrative separations a year that major posts would have to do, meaning more work for both government and defense lawyers. Plus, the other services besides the Army don't always do separations for drug use, they are more willing to take a "naked" urinalysis -- no other evidence beside the positive test -- to a court-martial. That's a lot of work to get rid of a janitor or gardener. I suppose we could have a lower standard of discipline with regard to drug use in the service corps, but this double standard undermines the good order and discipline we're trying to maintain, and reinforces the perception that the civilian conscripts are second-class citizens on-post.

3. Plus, do we let them marry? You refer to them as "unmarried conscripts," but what if they don't want to stay that way? If they get married, do they qualify for off-post housing with tax-exempt basic housing allowance? Do we kick them out? Is there a 14th Amendment substantive due process claim that allows them to stay in? Do we separate them the same way we do for folks who fail to maintain a valid family care plan for dependents while deployed? The JAG attorneys still have to make this happen, in an adversarial process, that takes months. That's not a lot of bang for the buck if the conscripts only sign up for 18 months to begin with.

4. Setting aside the above concerns, this would bring into the armed services a lot of young people who will require legal assistance -- they're going to buy too-expensive cars, enter into questionable contracts, and generally make a bunch of legally dumb decisions. Adding, say, another 25 percent (at least, given the small percent of the general population currently serving) to the youngest and most legally needy demographic to major installations will be a nightmare for a JAG Corps already with plenty to do.

The libertarian opt-out doesn't solve these issues. We've already got a relatively small all-volunteer force that has plenty of problems along these lines, and increasing the population of folks in the military with what will certainly be lower admission standards will remake the military's purpose from winning the nation's wars to mentoring a young cohort of folks in order to instill in them discipline and a positive work ethic. We already do enough of the latter, and I fear that this proposal would impair our ability to do the former. 

Which is why, if you ask the generation of officers who presided over the birth of the all-volunteer force, we got rid of the draft in the first place.

David H. Rittgers, Legal Policy Analyst, Cato Institute. Mr. Rittgers is a Virginia attorney and former Special Forces officer. He is currently mobilized as a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Army or the Department of Defense.

By Maj. Joseph Bruhl

Best Defense department of leadership studies

Growing up, if I wasn't playing sports, I was building model airplanes or gardening with my father. Both were captivating exercises, but for different reasons. Building models was a drill in precision and attention to detail. Gardening was a complex experiment in give and take. Both developed important skills, but as a leader I return most frequently to the lessons of my father's garden. Leaders who think like gardeners are better equipped to adapt, reason creatively, and approach challenges with humility than those who think like model airplane builders. Unfortunately, many in the army prefer fabricating P-51 Mustangs to nursing tomatoes.

Model airplane building supports an "A+B=C" mentality that is familiar to many in the military. Assemble the right tools, carefully study directions (read doctrine), and work with exactitude. For the model airplane builder, nothing is beyond his control. The only measure of success is: Does the model mirror the standard?

Gardeners, however, do not possess complete control. Their craft is affected by a host of things beyond their control. Gardeners' crop output is graded, not on exactitude, but on an ability to adapt, think creatively, and remain humble enough to try new methods.

Like the gardener, today's combat leaders understand that progress can be affected by a host of things beyond one's control: historic feuds, dysfunctional institutions, and even past mistakes by U.S. forces. Here again, adaptability, creativity and humility are keys to success.

Adaptive leadership, however, is not limited to the counterinsurgency fight. It is a timeless military model. To support the development of "gardener-leaders," the army should do three things: develop a profession of arms that values thinking, writing, and education; adapt its personnel system to support diverse experience; and renew mentorship as a foundation to the profession of arms.

1. Developing a Profession of Arms that values education, thinking, and writing:

Access to civilian education for both officers and NCOs must be dramatically increased. Education develops a leader's identity, mental agility, cross-cultural savvy, and interpersonal maturity. This is why universities are often analogized to gardens, where minds are cultivated and ideas are the harvest.

Increase the importance of non-divisional assignments in an officer's professional development. Assignments to the Army Staff, the Combined Arms Center, and branch school houses are not "take a knee" assignments; they are investments in the institutions that support our profession and broaden a leader's vision.

Encourage officers and NCOs to write and publish. In a recent article, Admiral Stavridis offers some "common sense guidelines" to consider when writing. Army leadership, following these guidelines, should be pushing folks to write and share; there is a wealth of untapped wisdom that will add richness to the army's intellectual debates.

2. Adapting personnel systems to support diverse experience:

The army must transition its personnel systems from an industrial-aged model that views leaders as interchangeable parts to one that manages talent on an individual basis. In the absence of complete personnel system overhaul, the army should allow officers who self-select for civilian education, teaching, or internships to "slip-back" a year group or two in order to avoid missing key developmental jobs in their operational specialty.

By adapting its personnel system to allow officers to pursue opportunities that develop "gardener-leader" skills without hampering competitiveness for command, the army encourages its best officers to broaden their experience. When officers who pursue opportunities outside traditional career paths command more frequently, the army demonstrates a new set of values to junior officers.

3. Renewing mentorship as a foundation to the profession of arms:

In a culture that promotes "gardener-leaders," mentorship is critical. Model airplane building provides step-by-step instructions for the novice to follow. Gardening is something that can only be learned through experience and tutelage.

Lack of mentorship appears near the top of many surveys to explain the decision of junior officers to leave. To reverse this trend, the army should include mentorship in its holistic review of the profession of arms. What better way to build adaptive, creative, and humble leaders who reflect Army values than through active and genuine mentorship?

These three steps cultivate a culture where leaders are not wedded to "the way we do things," but are able to adapt, think creatively, and approach challenges with humility. All are "must haves" if the army expects to apply the right lessons from the last decade and safeguard its profession of arms.

For more on this, read the longer version of this article here.

Major Joseph Bruhl is a strategic planner in irregular warfare and security force assistance at the army's Security Cooperation Plans and Concepts Division. He holds a B.A. from Truman State University and an M.P.A. from Harvard. He is a Next Generation National Security Leader fellow at the Center for New American Security.