Major James R. McKee served as the chief of military and civil law for the 1st Infantry Division in Turkey and as the command judge advocate for the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division in the Tikrit area in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In this interview, McKee talks about how Turkey refused to honor the NATO agreement, placing the United States at a disadvantage in negotiating a new memorandum of agreement for the movement of forces through Turkey. Responsible for all of the legal aspects of the 2nd Brigade's predeployment training, he states that the handoff with the lawyers they replaced in Iraq was terrible. "The lawyers who were there were not very good," says McKee, "The guy in the north was incompetent and his people were as well. It was just a worthless right seat/left seat ride." While the legal challenges were nothing unusual, he says that improving their combat skills and conducting combat convoys was difficult. One unpleasant surprise he encountered was the detention facility run by 4th Infantry Division which was turned over to him, saying, "The detention facility I inspected pretty much violated the Geneva Conventions…. There were dirty blankets, mice were living in there, guys were peeing in bottles out in the open area, the toilets were covered with crap, there were no showers." He closes by noting that the Army had gotten very good at handling detainees in Bosnia and Kosovo and that there had been a failure to pass on already acquired expertise.

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