Currently the chief of force generation at Fort Leavenworth's Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance, Colonel Sean Ryan, in mid 2004, was "brought in … to assist Brigadier General Richard Sherlock" - assistant division commander for operations for the 98th Division (Institutional Training) - "as the senior planner on the survey team … to go over to Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq and derive a unit-based solution that would be sustainable to support the MNSTC-I mission," namely to develop, train, equip and sustain the Iraqi security forces. In this interview, Ryan talks at length about the decision to deploy elements of an institutional training division into a combat zone to pick up this training and advisory mission, and stresses the difficulty thereof especially given that "advisor skills are somewhat enigmatic to the institutional Department of Defense." As Ryan notes, "When you say you need advisors, you either look to Special Forces or you put your hands in your pockets and start kicking stones, because there's no definition of advisors and there's no advisory training outside of SF." Based on his own background in SF and past foreign internal defense work in both permissive and non-permissive environments, Ryan also expounds in great detail on what makes a good (and bad) advisor, explaining that it's largely a "function of temperament and personality" and noting that these are not qualities the Army is presently equipped to "measure and track." In addition, he discusses what he considers the lack of a plan to "reconstruct the security forces mechanisms and infrastructure within Iraq" and the inability of US-based "staff action processes" to keep up with theater requirements. Reflecting on the 98th's selection for this mission, Ryan asks whether it was "fair to take soldiers who thought they were only going to deploy as far as Fort Jackson and deploy them into Central Command? It might not be fair," he answered, "but that's what they had to do. You had some people who adapted to it readily and some who did not. It really just came down to the individual." Ryan also comments on the negative consequences of our coalition partners having more restrictive constraints placed upon them, such as the ability to train Iraqi units yet not the permission to "deploy outside the gate with them."

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