Back in the Saddle Again...

Well now I can say I'm fully back in the intelligence world. I've been a little stressed out these last two weeks because I've been working on a briefing for our Commanding General on weapons smuggling, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. I had to recreate a lot of historical information largely because my predecessor did not leave behind any kind of comprehensive product on any of those topics. I finally got us to the point where now I'll just have to make sure it's regularly updated. Then I'll be able to leave that to whoever replaces me next year so his job won't be so hard to do. All in all, it ended up being around 55 slides of information.

I presented the briefing this morning, to an audience of about 40-50 that included the CG, his senior staff officers, and most of the maneuver unit commanders whose soldiers are the guys out there patrolling. It was the first time I've done a briefing of this magnitude since I was in Iraq (over 4 years ago now!) so I was a little nervous. That probably came across a little but it seemed like I kept most people's attention. That was a daunting task itself, because the briefing came in at just over an hour. The CG came up to me afterward and said he was very pleased and that parts of it would go up to the NATO chain of command. Can't get much better praise than that so it's good to know I've still got it. Now I just hope I haven't raised everyone's expectations too high!