Major Kenneth Wical, a quartermaster officer by trade but also a multifunctional logistician, served as a supply and services staff officer under the deputy chief of staff for resources and sustainment of Multinational Force-Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from July 2005 through June 2006. He routinely worked with all aspects of logistics, and his duties included a lot of property issues in support of the Iraqi Army as well as frequent contact with both the Marine Corps and the Air Force. He commonly worked with contractors, such as Kellogg, Brown and Root, and civilian agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers and United States Agency for International Development. A major challenge dealing with the Iraqis was a set of priorities vastly different from our own. According to Wical, "We would want to talk about what kind of capability we needed to build in the Iraqi ground forces, to fuel, feed or equip a division-sized organization. But their first agenda item would be changing menu items in the Iraqi officer dining facility." He also noted that there was real reluctance in the Iraqi culture to make decisions, "Even in the military where decision making is part of your job description," adding that they were still recovering from the political culture under Saddam Hussein. Another obstacle he had to deal with was the inability of civilian agencies to take on most projects because they were routinely beyond their scope, and some of them would ask for money up front. He describes how the issue of solid waste disposal was a real problem, explaining that it wasn't really safe to transport off the bases, but since places like Camp Victory in Baghdad produced around 35 tons per day, it continued to build up into a larger problem. Wical also dealt with the contracting involved in renovating bases which were vacated by American forces and turned over to the Iraqis, noting that cleanup and repair was important since the Iraqis could ill afford their construction efforts. His biggest personal challenge was shifting his scope from working in relatively small units to working at theater level, saying, "It's not about keeping 60,000 gallons of fuel on hand to supply a brigade; it was more about keeping 15 million gallons in the country at any one time." He also noted that, because of an antiquated border crossing with Turkey, there was a constant backlog of trucks, sometimes 10 miles long or more waiting to enter Iraq. Wical closes by saying that good legal support was critical for logistics, especially at the theater level where numerous international agreements can come into play.

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