Recently we have seen the press attack the Pentagon and the Bush Administration on the number of Iraqi Security forces, which have been trained. The average American has no idea how many people are in a battalion, but it is one heck of a lot of people. But I would like to propose a thought.

Perhaps discussing the numbers of trained and ready personnel is the incorrect approach. You see policing and security is based on response times, not pure numbers but rather efficiency. Since Iraq deals in "hit and run" or "drive by" gang and criminal mentalities, as well as murderous insurgents of innocent life; response time is more important that numbers of trained folks.

The Grid defense of the security and how it is handled is more important than the numbers. I worry when the press begins to talk purely about numbers and not about response times in the grids. For instance you have 1024 grids to defend and the average response time is 22 minutes, then that is rather ineffective. Yet, when you can get that down to 5-6 minutes and then to 3-4 minutes you win, as you are so effective you are catching the bad guys who try to disrupt the rebuilding of infrastructures, commerce, government and education.

Of course it is important to have numbers but only in the sense of securing the grids of the civilization and thus it doesn't matter how many people you have as much as how efficient they patrol, respond and control the situation. If they are running around bumping into each other and infiltrated and leaking information to those who wish to disrupt then they are ineffective. If they are efficient and have fast response then they are well on their way to being completely self-sustaining, combat ready and fully operational. So consider this in 2006.