From April to October 2005, Lieutenant Colonel Harvey "Bud" Jones III was in Iraq with the US Army Corps of Engineers' Gulf Region Division and served the majority of his tour as area engineer for the Tikrit area office in Salah ad Din Province and then, later, as deputy district engineer in Mosul in Nineveh Province. "I had to work with the provincial leadership and the goal we had … was to do a lot of reconstruction missions," he explained. "We were building health clinics, roads, fire stations, police stations, Iraqi Army barracks and all different kinds of projects. All that was centrally controlled at the provincial level, so we had the opportunity to work closely with the provincial leadership, such as the governor…. I was basically the area engineer and provided supervision to the guys who were supervising all the work that was being done." According to Jones, site and area security was always an issue, especially in Salad ad Din, but exactly not in the sense that conventional wisdom would suggest. "In my mind," he said, "I'm convinced that most of the problems we were having with construction were due to organized crime rather than the actual insurgency…. Everybody blamed everything on the insurgents," Jones said, "when in fact that wasn't really the issue." In this interview, he also discusses his work with interpreters, the myriad challenges associated with often rival Iraqi clans, and the consequences of the country's "institutionalized corruption" with respect to completing construction projects in a timely and cost-effective manner. Jones also talks at length about the contracting process in general, coalition efforts to maintain some form of effective financial oversight on work being done, the organizational structure and personnel complement of the Gulf Region Division, and what exactly was driving his quality assurance folks up the wall. In addition, he discusses his working relationship with Iraqi engineers, his attempts to impart Western construction standards and methods, and what he considers the major accomplishment of his office during his time in country. "I would say that individual projects weren't what were doing anything," Jones explained. "It was the overall building up of the capability of the Iraqis, where they had contractors who were going to set and enforce reasonable standards to get work done…. More than the projects themselves, that's what's going to give Iraq a chance to go on further with it. We also taught them how to prioritize their projects, to learn to budget themselves and try and make the budget fit their priorities. That's the real long term contribution we were in the process of making while I was there.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited