Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThis
Peaceful Citizens of a New Iraq?
Stone, a two-star Marine general in the reserves (rumor has it that he'll soon be awarded a third star), is the driving force behind these initiatives. A mechanical engineer by training and a rancher of Navajo and German descent who was raised partly on an Indian reservation in Arizona, he gives new meaning to the cliché self-made.In the mid-1980s and '90s-between deployments on active duty in such garden spots as Okinawa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Iraq -- he helped found or turn around three Silicon Valley high-tech companies, all of which were sold for a healthy profit. When he is not deployed, he lives with his wife of 36 years, Kathy, on their working ranch of several hundred acres near Sacramento.
In other words, Stone doesn't need this job -- or the four master's degrees and the doctorate he picked up along the way from Stanford, Pepperdine, the U.S. Naval War College, and the University of Southern California.
Compulsively curious, he speaks three foreign languages fluently: German, Spanish, and Urdu. He mastered some Navajo as a child and, on various deployments, acquired some Farsi, French, Italian, and now Arabic. He reads the Koran every morning to help him understand Iraqi culture and how best to turn insurgents and other enemies into peaceful citizens of a new Iraq, if not into genuine American friends.
Stone, who recently turned 58, is in perpetual motion. When he is not hopping on a C-130 or a chopper to visit Camp Bucca, he is meeting with General Petraeus, his boss, or with Iraqi officials to press for greater support for his detainee programs; defusing a "situation" at the Camp Cropper detention facility near Baghdad; or helping resolve a personal crisis involving a soldier.
His day begins at 5:45 with personal training -- usually a half-hour run at the gym -- and ends on his computer well after midnight at his villa adjacent to a lake near the Baghdad airport with a flurry of e-mails to fellow officers, soldiers, reporters, friends, and family. If he's lucky, there's a ten-minute catnap during the day, usually sitting up, in a chair or a chopper, between meetings.
What did Stone know about running a detention program before he was given this mission? "Absolutely nothing," he says, barely suppressing a mischievous grin. "You are totally screwed, sir," Col. Anthony Lieto remembers telling his onetime boss and longtime friend when he learned that General Petraeus had chosen Stone to command Task Force 134. This special group, composed of some 9,000 military personnel pulled from all the uniformed services and the reserves, runs the detention system.
But Stone immediately started studying the detention program that Gen. George W. Casey had begun overhauling after the eruption of the Abu Ghraib scandal. He also examined programs run by Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and other states that have been battling militant Islamism. Finally he asked Colonel Lieto, with whom he'd worked closely in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to postpone his retirement and become his deputy. "Had it been anyone else but Doug Stone, I might have said no," Lieto told me.
Both men initially wondered if they had made a mistake when they arrived in Iraq a year ago last spring. Rioting among the 20,000 detainees at Camp Bucca had almost pushed the soldiers into using deadly force to reassert control. Detainees were being warehoused. And their release resulted in more deaths or injuries of American soldiers. The detention facilities themselves had become breeding grounds for militants, turning humiliated detainees into hard-core insurgents. Stone and Lieto quickly concluded that drastic changes were necessary.
Stone says his background in business helped him tackle the challenge. "It was not unlike a turnaround of a nonperforming company," he told me. "I love problem solving and feel comfortable changing the organizations around me."
In Iraq, that meant finding a way to empower politically moderate detainees, who Stone says were the vast majority of those in custody. So after monitoring and assessing the detainees, his team began separating the hard-core Al Qaeda and other militants from the 80 percent or more who had joined the insurgency simply to feed their families or because they had been threatened into cooperating.
They also devised a system of incentives to reward detainees for "productive" behavior and instituted a pledge for detainees just before their release that they would live peacefully and respect the laws of the government of Iraq. They began paying those who volunteered to learn a skill and participate in the camp work programs the equivalent of $1.10 an hour -- a considerable sum in post-Saddam Iraq. The money is kept for the detainees in bank accounts or given to their families during visits.
"This is an Arab culture," says Stone. "It's all about business."
It's also about respect. Once the detainees trusted their American and Iraqi guards to be decent and fair, they rejected the pressure by militants to shun educational programs offered by the United States.
"Only a year ago, the TIFs [Theater Internment Facilities] were violent places that were often run by the most militant of the detainees," says Brig. Gen. Michael Nevin, who oversees them. "Now they are both predictable and peaceful. We've seen an enormous drop in violence." Many months have passed without a major incident.
10 Easy Slow Cooker Recipes
How to Make Your Party a Success
Quiz: What Do Food Labels Really Mean?
Funny Video: Fast Food Mixup
Joke: Worshippers are greeted by these words at the Travelers Rest Church…
10 Great Gift Book Ideas
Advertisement 
