meet the viceroy

Retired Lt Gen Jay Garner is now a very busy man. Garner is the head of the Pentagon's new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq. Funny thing though. The ORHA was created on January 20. Difficult to reconstruct something unless it has been destroyed first. The White House must have known something we at bpost didn't. Maybe that was why they waited a month to announce the new agency.

Retired Lt Gen Jay Garner is the new viceroy set to take over reconstruction in Iraq from US Centcom commander General Tommy Franks once the military operations wind down. Some folks aren't too pleased about the Garner choice.

But who is Jay Garner? Slogged around in Vietnam. Did a bit of stuff in Gulf War I getting to know the Kurds thru Operation Comfort securing the no-fly zones. But more importantly, he's the president of weapons defense contractor Sy Coleman. Sy Coleman specializes in Patriot missiles and is the wholly owned subsidiary of L3 Communications. L3 Communications just landed a $1 billion dollar plus contract to provide logistics support to US special forces.

L3 Communications also handles some of the electronic gadgetry in the Pentagon's new favorite toy the JDAM. JDAMS are the precision guided missiles that were falling all over Baghdad. "More bang for the buck" is how one expert described them. There's a poetic symmetry in choosing Jay Garner as the viceroy, no?

An added bonus is Jay's also a close friend of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bpost wonders who is the fourth at their afternoon tea and bridge parties. We're keeping our fingers crossed its Dan Quayle.