Untitled Document

17 May 2004

Exit Strategies

There are strategies and strategies. I had a turgid discussion about tactical withdrawals last night, how my partner and I could remove ourselves from our current positions and re-deploy our limited forces on a more secure front.

I did not intend to be combative, but if that was your perception, I have to accept it. I do not like Sunday nights before busy weeks and maybe it is my irritation with the working week that helps to get me fueled up.

And Goose, of course. My ex told me she didn't like Sunday nights very much. Maybe my agitation will diminish will change when the gnawing apprehension of the working at other people's agenda is behind us.

Who knows? There is a facility my company operates in Denver and if they like my work here, perhaps I can transfer operations out there and continue to chunk away at business in the Agencies here.

Thirty-six months is a long time but you eat an elephant one small piece at a time.

We can do this. It will just take some time. So I don't known why I was so querulous. Frustration on a variety of fronts. Lack of a defined exit strategy from our current situations.

The usual.

It's muggy here already. I awoke at 0300 and tossed and turned until I drifted off just in time for the alarm to jolt me into reality. So I am starting the week in deficit, and it is not likely to get much better.

I have to get the car to Alexandria and get me back again. The Metro will work, after a fashion. If I get there too early Huntington Line north to Rosslyn, transfer to the Orange Line west to Ballston.

If I take a cab back here I can change into a suit and drive to the vault, and then drive downtown when the morning meeting is over and make my 1300 meeting there in the small conference room, to follow on with the 1500 bi-weekly joint Meeting, and then have the car downtown and another to pick up across town.

Shoot. That won't work. Maybe drive to the garage at Ballston and take the Orange Line down to Metro Center and walk over to the office from there?

That will leave me with only the walk from Huntington back to the Dealer, and I can deal with that later, if they can fix the overheating thing.

The terrorists blew up the President of the Iraqi Governing Council over night, a hurtling attack on the convoy waiting to gain access to the compound that houses them.

It is our fault, according to another member of the Council, who is rightly scared for his life. There are no guarantees anywhere in life, but particularly not where he lives. There is no exit strategy for him, unless it is an airplane or the grave.

As backdrop is the rumor that an exit strategy for U.S. and British Forces in Iraq is being considered, and you probably heard that there are calls for Tony Blair to step down. This has been happening a lot, of late, the exit strategy thing.

The Intel Community's role in managing the 100 top prisoners is in the news this morning, the special people who are being held at the Baghdad Airport in 23-hour a day isolation. One of them is Tarik Aziz, the former foreign minister, and another is the senior female in captivity, the lady who ran the Anthrax program.

A person in a position to know told me Tarik's strategy in dealing with his visitors is to remove his clothing, a sort of mirror image of what the West Virginians were doing to prisoners across town. The Bugs-and-Gas-Lady just flips visitors off with her middle finger.

She must have learned it from the guards.

My week is not nearly that challenging. There is an all-day government council meeting tomorrow, which trumps the Kennedy School of Government reunion downtown and the meeting with the Deputy Director of a major Agency at noon. Then Wednesday I am on the fast train north at first light to New Jersey, with meetings all day and an anonymous Hilton in a town with an impossible name. Then meetings at the Labs till five, then the train south to Union Station, arriving before 2100.

I have no idea what I am doing on Friday.

That is too far away. I'm confident I can come up with an exit strategy by then.