Cutting out the middleman as much as possible

Thanks to The Armorer at Castle Argghhh! for pointing out a Blogger's Roundtable with U.S. Army Colonel Thomas McGrath, where he discusses the recent Kandahar prison break and the ISAF and ANSF response. The transcript is well worth your reading time.

There are a couple of points I'd like to make about this.

First, the fact that a U.S. Army colonel is doing conference calls from KAF exclusively for bloggers is notable. It falls in line with the approach I've been agitating for for a couple of years with the powers that be at CEFCOM and NDHQ in Ottawa. The Blogger's Roundtable is an idea that should be adopted by DND as a whole if possible, and by CEFCOM specifically if not.

Why? Well, that's the second point I wanted to make - you should really read the information COL McGrath was able to put out. Here are some snippets:

COL. MCGRATH: No, not at the time. I really don't want to get into, you know, troop locations and stuff like that. They did not have freedom of movement, though, in that area. The stories that were picked up that they were blowing up bridges and laying mines and things like that proved not to be true. They did, as -- they made their way from the prison, and they also were able to infiltrate from other regions into that area, but it was very shortlived.

...

...you know, the question that I'd really hope to ask, after the obligatory thank-you for taking the time with us, was basically the media impressions of this were that it was a fairly large, well-organized raid on the part of the Taliban. And the impression I'm getting from listening to you is pretty substantially different. Am I correct in that?

COL. MCGRATH: Yeah, I mean, listen, I'll give them credit. They pulled it off. It was successful. So you know, it's all about the results. And they got what they wanted. But I don't think it was that big of a success, because we pursued them up into the district and we were able to kill them and capture them and push them out of the district very quickly within a matter of days -- (inaudible) -- weeks or months, which has happened before. [Babbler's emphasis]

McGrath was able to not only directly refute some of the press reports that had come out of the prison break - bridges being blown up and vast numbers of Taliban in control of Arghandab - but he was also able to introduce some extremely encouraging information that we wouldn't have known about otherwise. Like the fact that this is the first time ANSF have been supported by Afghan helicopters. Or the fact that thousands of them moved into Kandahar from other areas in the country very, very quickly - in a matter of hours in some cases. Or the fact that the ANSF was able to plan the cleanup operation themselves, and support it with their own logistics. All of those are huge steps forward.

As the colonel said:

COL. MCGRATH: Well, I think if you look at it operationally, it was a heck of a movement of forces. Thousands of forces were able to fly in and drive into the region within hours.

Actually, after the prison exploded, there were police and army on the scene within an hour. So that was a good response -- not a good thing to have a good response, but the president and the chief of staff of the army, Bismullah Mohammed (sp) Khan, deployed down here, assisted in planning and the execution of the battle and bringing the forces to bear at the right place, got the troops downtown to re-instill the confidence of the people in the Afghan government -- (confidence down ?) -- they were very visible in what they did. This was a huge success. I don't think they could have done this last year, when I got here, or maybe even six or seven months ago. But in the constant training that we're doing in the train-up, and it shows the flexibility and the agility that they have.

Also logistically, you know, the army -- you know, they're not organized like we are, with huge -- you know, lots of trucks and aircraft and things like that. But they were able to stage the necessary supplies -- ammunition, food, water and things of that nature, and then push that -- classes of supply forward to sustain the forces during the days of the fight.

Although, like I said, the first couple of days were -- I mean, the first few hours were very difficult, not a good thing, I think the response from the government of Afghanistan was tremendous, very positive, very overwhelming, very decisive also. [Babbler's emphasis]

I hate to say it, but the American DoD is way, way ahead of DND on the use of new media and bypassing the MSM filter.

The silver lining in all this...are you listening, CEFCOM, NDHQ, MND's Office, PCO, PMO?...is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Your colleagues in the States have already broken that ground for you.