--- "Robert J. Chassell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 5 Jan 2004, Gautam Mukunda > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said > In other words, the Bush Administration has limited > the numbers of > people available to the Coalition Provisional > Authority and to > contractors. It has placed a handicap on past US > success. It has > made a US defeat more likely; a US victory more > expensive.
The reason there are limits on the number of people there is _logistic_. The Bush Administration is desperately trying to squeeze as many people as it possibly can into Iraq. The "long pole in the tent" is that we are currently at capacity for the number of people we can _support_ in Baghdad. That's the issue. That's also the reason why the odds that I'm going to be able to go have dropped - just because they can't support any more personnel over there right now. I should also add, btw, that there is another reason why people work those hours, which you have missed in your otherwise excellent article. As someone who has worked those hours, it sticks out at me pretty obviously. It's the same reason that my friends in the Pentagon are currently working that, and more. It's that when you're working on something extremely important, the amount of work to be done can be effectively limitless. It is not uncommon for a McKinsey team to deal with decisions involving billions of dollars, for example. In that situation, the marginal value of another analysis is always high - no matter how obscure the analysis it's always worth doing. In that situation (particularly when it's combined with extreme time pressure - a private equity deal, for example) McKinsey teams routinely work those hours. Similarly, in the Pentagon right now the planning staff is doing that not because they lack people (although they could always use more) but because if you doubled the number of people they had, they would _still_ work those hours, because the amount of work _to be done_ is effectively infinite. So you do everything you can, and hope that's enough. Which is what we do as well. Government operations lack the flexibility that McKinsey has, sadly. In Baghdad the major problem is _logistic_ - the Administration has (very wisely) limited the administrative constraints upon the CPA, but they simply can't feed and house more people than they currently have right now. People are sleeping on cots in their offices because _there's nowhere else to put them_. Not because the Administration has put limits on the number of people it can hire. People in the Pentagon are understaffed because of legal reasons - Congress has authorized such and such a budget, which can't be exceeded, so people have to take more onto each individual plate. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
