From July 2002 through August 2005, Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Stevenson Jr. was assigned to Joint Force Command-Naples, a NATO regional operational headquarters, at which he served in the CJ5 planning and programming section, overseeing the command's portion of the Mediterranean Dialogue. In the June 2004, NATO picked up the mission to provide institutional training for the Iraqi Army, this mission was given to JFC-Naples, and from September to December of that year Stevenson deployed to Iraq to assist with mission planning and preparation as the senior NATO liaison officer to Multinational Force-Iraq. In this interview, the first of two covering his Global War on Terrorism experiences, Stevenson discusses his principal duties as the liaison officer between Headquarters JFC-Naples and MNF-I, such as keeping the respective commanders informed as to the status and details of the other's pertinent mission details. In this role, he also participated in joint planning sessions with the MNF-I CJ5 staff primarily, focusing on support to NATO as its forces conducted their mission. Stevenson also comments at length about the predeployment he received and why he thinks NATO was "in too big of a hurry to get established on the ground…. So in our haste to make the political statement that we were in the game now and to establish a footprint there," he said, "we had guys down there who wanted for guidance."

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited