LEGO LOGIC (via Will Herzog)

With "Lego Logic" Army Engineers Wage Peace One Block at a Time (Thomas F. Armistead, 6/9/2003, Engineering News Record)

People swarm over the field inside a sports stadium. One cluster with rakes and shovels smoothes the ground while a pair of workers pulls a roller over it. Another cluster throws armloads of clothing into a waiting truck. At the side of the field, a vehicle-mounted loudspeaker sputters to life with lively Iraqi music. Outside the stadium, a street vendor pushes a cart with drinks and food. It feels like a community fair.

But look closer. The rakes-and-shovels crew is backfilling holes dug by Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, which used the stadium as a training ground. The cast-off clothes are uniforms, and some of the workers wear the military headgear as if it were a trophy. Elsewhere, workers squatting on their haunches sweep out dusty piles of trash from long-abused rooms of the stadium. Others patch walls, replace door frames and carry in cement sacks from trucks backed up to the door. [...]

Welcome to Task Force Neighborhood.

On Monday evening, May 12, Col. Gregg Martin, commander of the 130th Engineer Brigade, had received an assignment. Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of V Corps, in charge of Army operations in Iraq, wanted to make an immediate difference in the lives of the people in Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods. Long neglected or actively repressed by Saddam's regime, they now were despairing because their trash was gathering uncollected in the streets, their police force had vanished, or was powerless to protect them from crime, drains were backing up, pure water was impossible to find and many other things were just going wrong while the governing occupation authorities promised much, but delivered little improvement. Wallace's assignment was for Martin, as the corp's engineer, to apply the Army's engineering capabilities to help solve some of the people's problems.

"I want this to be a neighborhood strike force," Wallace said. To counter the impression that the authorities favored talking over doing, "we need to get Americans working with the Iraqi people. This an offensive action. We have the maneuverability to go anywhere we want to go in Baghdad. We want to exploit that." He wanted the project to start Thursday, May 15.

A meeting was quickly scheduled for Tuesday to plan the first task-force action. Wednesday was devoted to further refinement and rehearsal of the plan with V Corps staff members.

"Everyone wanted to say, `we're moving too fast; we need more reconnaissance and planning,' " says Martin. He answered that the operation would suffer paralysis by analysis, and offered what he calls the example of Legos.

"If you give a set of Lego blocks to a group of engineers and another to a group of kids, the engineers will draw up plans and designs and spend a lot of time preparing to do the job. The kids will just jump in and start building things. We need to be like those kids," he said. Armed with that logic and reinforced by the corps commanding general's order for quick action, Martin carried the day.

The fog of war you expect, but this is one damn foggy peace. From story to story you can't tell whether things are going well or to hell. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 14, 2003 6:12 AM