Judge Advocate General officer Major Laura Klein is a veteran of three Global War on Terrorism deployments, the first - for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) I - as the brigade legal advisor for the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Kirkuk; the second, as deputy staff judge advocate with Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) 180 in Bagram, Afghanistan, from January to April 2004; and the third, back to Iraq from January 2005 to January 2006 as regimental judge advocate with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment as part of Multinational Force-Northwest in Mosul. In this wide-ranging and comprehensive interview, Klein discusses her work (during her initial OIF deployment) with Team Government, the military/civilian group formed to train and build the capacity of Iraqi local government. She was responsible for the development of the Iraqi Property Claims Commission to resolve often contentious property restoration issues in the Kirkuk area, many of which resulted from Saddam Hussein's infamous Arabization program. Regarding her tour in Afghanistan, she talks about her involvement in detainee operations, to include repatriation of detainee from Guantanamo Bay; her regular interface with the International Committee of the Red Cross; and her thoughts on issues such as interrogation methods and the Geneva Conventions. During her second deployment to Iraq, Klein relates her experiences as a law coordinator and legal planner, as well as her work as a governance line of operations chief and an effects planner. Based on her two deployments to Iraq, Klein speaks with a great deal of authority and offers a number of insights into the Iraqi legal and governmental systems at both the provincial and national levels. With respect to the latter and with an eye back towards the legacy of Saddam Hussein, she notes that, "They are so scared to exercise initiative at the provincial level and to be creative as we would be, because everything was so centralized there that you couldn't even take a crap unless you got permission from Baghdad. That whole view of life is still manifest there and the dependency of the people - that's the brutality and the horror of the system. When you have such a centralized system like that, everyone becomes completely dependent on the state." Klein further shares a wealth of observations on the Iraqi criminal justice system, which, as she freely notes, doesn't always live up to Western standards (especially when it comes to police functions) but, nonetheless, has its own "checks and balances to protect individual rights." She closes her interview by discussing what she broadly terms "rule of law missions" that everyday soldiers are being increasingly called upon to perform. "I would disagree with people who say that soldiers can't do both," said Klein, "because they are doing both."

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