A Small Prediction

By Frank | May 10, 2012

I am reading the Steve Jobs biography.

In it, when he returns to Apple and takes over for Gil Amelio, he wants to kill the Newton basically because it is inelegant.  The author quotes – He disdained the idea of having a stylus or pen for writing on the screen.  “God gave us ten styluses”, he would say, waving around his fingers.  “Let’s not invent another.”

He reused this same argument at the introduction of the original iPhone … see it here … “Nobody wants a stylus” … he proclaimed some 10 years later … same sentiment.

So what will be one feature of the upcoming Apple TV that is a full screen real device (not the small box)?

Clearly I can hear the question – “Nobody wants a remote … all they do is get lost, broken, discharged” … “lets use our God given remote … our voice”

The metaphor is just as accurate.  Our voice is our version of remote communications and it is infinitely more exact and able to communicate than a pad full of buttons.

Clearly it will be one key feature.

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More Less Abundance

By Frank | April 22, 2012

OK, every once in a while you get a TIRADE from this website.  But hopefully it is one that teaches you not to believe everything you read on the web or in books.

Today, we take to task the book “Abundance” which was discussed in the previous column.

Here are the claims -

“… imaging toilets that require no infrastructure.  No pipes under the floor, no leach field under the lawn, no sewage system … these high tech toilets powder and burn the feces and flash evaporate the urine … Rather than wasting anything, these toilets give back: packets of urea (for fertilizer), table salt, volumes of fresh water, and enough power that you can charge your cell phone while taking a c**p …

Toilets account for 31% of all water use in America …”

And here are the facts from a US Geological Services report -

Different, right?

The fact is that the major uses of water are for power generation cooling and irrigation.  These comprise 80%.  So it is unlikely that “toilets account for “31% of all water use in America”.  Moreover, domestic water use accounts for 1% of the water use and it is quite likely that toilets account for 31% of that use so in actuality toilets account for 0.31% of all water use in America.  Wow!  A 100x mistake!

Moreover if you were really going to make a difference, where would you put your efforts in have more fresh water in circulation?  Clearly into better forms of irrigation and thermoelectric power generation.

And there are efforts well underway for both.  Israel has been developing drip irrigation and its improvements for many years.  Power plants with out using fresh water for cooling is now part of most generating plant proposals in California; there policy change is diving technology innovation.

It has a biblical ring to it … but by knowing the truth, you can set your self free to work on solutions for the real problems in the world.

Got a fact that seems wrong?  Send us your questions and we will fact check!

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Abundance and Exponential Growth

By Frank | April 5, 2012

I am reading a book entitled Abundance.    Here is a synopsis of the book -

“We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler.”

This is clearly a vision worth understanding.

And it is a vision supported by many different elements of our technologically based society.

But the foundational argument for the book is that technology and the progress it brings is essentially growing at exponential rates.  This compounding is manifest in many areas -

• computing power grows along with Moore’s law so that every 18 months or so computers get 2x as fast or capable and you pay the same price
• disk drive storage expands at rates also aligned with Moore’s law
• shipped fiber optic bandwidth has been expanding at a rate of 10x every 5 years for more than 25 years

There are many more examples.

Similar facts helped NASA in the early 1950s feel it was possible to land a man on the moon in ~15 years even though no human had ever left the earth beyond flying in an airplane!

Perhaps the leading futurist today is Ray Kurzweil.  He published a series of books that have proven uncannily accurate – The Age of Intelligent Machines, The Age of Spiritual Machines, The Singularity is Near.

Clearly if you look around you there have been inventions or products introduced in each of the last 4 decades that never existed and before the end of the decade they were pervasively owned by many people throughout the first world – microwave ovens, VCRs, CD players, DVD movies, Video Games, Internet, Google, FaceBook.

Clearly some things that looked impossible in the past now are possible due to exponential growth in technology.

But …

Such growth does not apply everywhere.  It was predicted in the early 1960s that you would be soon flying on supersonic aircraft for intercontinental travel.  However as Boeing has introduced the 707, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767, 777 and now the 787.  The speed of the aircraft has not increased exponentially as earlier predicted or hoped.  In general it has not grown at all.  Why?  Because it was not practical to operate aircraft at such speeds economically.

Are there other such examples that are today not generally recognized?  Sure!

Optical fiber cable today carries about 1 Tb/s typically using individual channels of 10 or 40 Gb/s and then using multiple wavelengths or different colors of light on the same fiber.  But it is not clear at all that the growth of the last 25 years can be sustained.  Why?  Because optical fiber has bandwidth that is limited by Shannon’s law and other electrical and optical physics.  And in that technology and physics we are reaching the limits of what is possible.  So the growth will slow now over the next decade.  There can still be an enriching of the technology platform and clearly many more fibers can be put into a cable but the actual information carried on a single fiber is reaching its limit just at the amount of information carried on copper wires reached its limit about 20 years ago as modem technology matured.

Other examples are around as well -

• automobiles are essentially the same as there were in the 1940s: same top speed, same basic construction
• shipping is essentially the same
• building size and construction technology has not changed much: we have today only slightly taller buildings than the empire state building where the design was complete and construction started in 1930!

Just to name a few.

It is easy to get caught up in this fervor but in reality exponential expansion in capability never lasts very long before running into limitations imposed by physics or economics.

So be careful when you read how these trends of the past 20 – 40 years are going to solve the problems of the next 40.

 

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Closing 1

By Frank | February 26, 2012

Small World Group Incubator has been operating now for 26 months in Singapore.  We have started 9 companies and a 10th will launch in March.

And we have had 3 companies have up rounds beyond the money we initially gave them for starting capital, these 3 are – HeyPal, Green Koncepts and Third Wave Power.

And for all of this time we had no failures but it had to happen eventually.  And so it has.

What is most interesting is that the company closed not for failure of the technology, nor of market interest.  The company failed because the founding team broke apart and under that condition we could not find a way to continue.

If any of you reading this have any conception that venture capital is about technology, engineering, business model testing, innovation, customers.  It is about all of those.  But beyond all of these it is a “people” business.  And sometimes we just cannot figure that out even if we spend months getting to know a team.

So now our overall batting average looks more realistic!

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Year End Prognostications – Apple

By Frank | December 18, 2011

It has become fan-boy heaven to predict and have “insider” information to know better where Apple is going.  The easy part is to predict newer processors A4 – A5 – (what do you think comes next) or since we know Intel’s roadmap for the next 2+ years that also helps.

But what about the real innovation you will see in the product line.  Well I am going to lay down some suggestions and you can come back to me in 1-2 years and see how it went -

• first the laptops will become more like MacBook Airs as they drop the CD/DVD drives forever.  And there will certainly be some sort of MacBook Air/iPad hybrid that runs OSX in one config and iOS in another config but uses a single file system.
• In the hardware front, what would make these systems so much nicer is to always have some large SSD or solid state disk drive.  But why only that, why not a mix of Flash and rotating storage.  One that is blazing fast and one that is both huge and lasts for very long time.  And make the file system so that the users don’t see it as 2 drives.
• For that matter, why not make all 3 drives in such systems or the 2 drives that most systems have today?  2 drives you say?  yes, the cloud is drive #2 and it will grow … yes it is slow but so what, it is only used for small content storage from computer to cloud.  Users just don’t create that much content.
• Next, it would be so nice for there to be an iPad that was really structured for older people.  Simple, never any issue about peripherals, back ups, syncing, updating and other things.  Optionless computing for those of the pre-computer generation and others who really only want web browsing and such.  Problem now is iPad is still a techy toy.
• iPad may be marginalized compared to the other 2 platforms.  iPhone is clearly for talk +++, but not for content creation.  Mac is for content creation and when needed lugging around.  iPad is for ??? or reading.
• iPhone moves to become your wallet and not a moment too soon.  The wallet is the last thing that I still have in my pocket (except for chapstick).  But in doing this I think it has to include more than NFC and what this will be is biometric level security.  What we lack today is a device that consistently authenticates that I am me … period.  Imagine if the iPhone had finger print recognition and maybe even layered on top of that is retina scanning by the internal camera.  Unless coercion was involved this would be a very much safer version of the wallet.  Passports next anyone?  iPhone could even unlock your computer, car, house, etc.

As an aside, the book “Daemon” is a must read for people who think computer security is just about virus, spam and phishing.  It is so much more and there are unreported attacks now that are deeply disturbing but are being kept from the news carefully by corporations who have been deeply hacked.

• The other threads out there are about Apple moving into other forms of consumer electronics – TVs, gaming?, etc.  But in a sense they are already there.  Gaming?  I bet it is the major use for iPads today in terms of use time.  TV?  Sure if you want to pay too much for something that is already pretty well done.
• Finally, iCloud will be so deeply embedded into the Apple community in 2-3 years but so transparent that you will wonder what you did before.  Like today how 3.5″ floppy drives feel compared to Flash thumb drives.

Glad there is not a time machine so that my mistakes cannot be written about tomorrow.  Ha!

So there are my predictions.

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Milestone Reached!

By Frank | December 11, 2011

On Friday, December 9, 2011, Small World Group Incubator received approval in principle for our 10th company.  Fortuitously, we had already schedule a party at our new HQ for the companies,  our staff and partners and for our friends we have made since coming here more than 2 years ago.  So probably about 100 people showed up over the 3-4 hours of the party.

We handed out “party favors” and here is a photo of the new SWG Coffee mugs!

The office space can support more than 50 people and up to 10 companies (not all of the companies chose to locate in the space with us but most do) and we have sufficient conference rooms, a coffee machine, fridge and other amenities.

While we are obviously proud of the progress, we are also very glad to say that 3 of our starts are closing second round funding as this is being written and all should be closed by end of January.  But we note that all of the term sheets are approved and so the deals now await funding or paperwork but have agreements in principle.

What a great way to end the year!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all of you out there.

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A Growing Program in Singapore

By Frank | November 27, 2011

It has been 2 years since we start the Small World Group Incubator.  Much has evolved and much has stayed the same too.

We started with Dean Haritos and I as partners in this endeavor and both of us are still here.  But we have added Chong Chiet Ping and Kent Pavey as well as a junior member of our team Ken Lee.  The group works very well together and each of these people are integral to our success today.

We have funded nearly 10 companies and our pipeline remains strong and actually is strengthening in terms of interesting opportunities.  We have funded some companies outside of Singapore – notably Spinlectrix.

Our funding partner, the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) has remained steady and together we continue to evolve this program to enhance its success.  For example NRF is seeking to expand the program to include new incubator managers along with the existing pool.  Some of the originally selected groups have become less active but the program, I believe, is being quite successful.

Some challenges have begun to emerge from the program as follow on investing is now beginning to loom for the earliest funded companies.

So what we have is a precocious 2-year-old, one who is growing but also teething and transition from walking and crawling to running.

Stay tuned.

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Amazing Korean Internet Access

By Frank | October 13, 2011

Tonight from my hotel (The Grand Intercontinental Seoul Parnae) I achieved by far the fastest internet access I have ever seen.  Totally amazing.

Here is the graphic showing the actual results using www.speedtest.net -

This is what fiber optic communications should be doing for us all.

Service providers have become very proficient about quoting speeds that they never deliver.  This is so totally the opposite.

Frickin’ Amazing.

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World Wide Acceleration

By Frank | October 8, 2011

When the world wide web (www.abc.xyz) was birthed in the early 1990s, over the next few years it was clear just how pervasive its influence could be.

I went to the keynote talk at the Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) in 1995 where Bran Ferren talked and gave an early perspective on the emerging internet.  Here is a talk by Bran.  In the talk in 1995 he asked a very interesting question: “This Internet thing, its really important right?  But is it as important as the fax machine or as fire”.   The invention of the fax machine nearly killed FedEx because the need for delivery of overnight letters died over night.  So it was very important.  But compared to “[man's control of] fire” which was clearly one of the big inventions of all time!

When Bran asked that audience most of the engineers there voted for fire but a few of us said fire.

Bran said its FIRE – and his reasoning was crystal clear.  The internet would fundamentally change the way humans tell each other our stories and the ability to tell stories was one of the fundamental defining elements of being human.  Wow.  Clear.

Well there is emerging another really dynamic means of changing the world and it is the global use of venture capital, risk capital, private equity (all names for the same basic idea) to transform countries, societies, cultures.

As readers of this Blog know, I live in Singapore and lead an incubator here working to improve the standing of start up companies, entrepreneurs and such here.  Small World Group Incubator, PTE LTD, does this in partnership with the Singapore National Research Foundation and so far we have started approximately 10 companies over the last year.  All are still thriving, thank goodness; all have pretty much open futures for success still.

Over the last year we have talked directly to small groups in the Czech Republic, Thailand, Indonesia, India and we have relationships through YouNoodle and other groups that work around the world, mainly in what in the past were thought of as “third world countries” but today literally there are perhaps 50 countries that have strong, unique entrepreneurial government sponsored pushes to transform their economies and create businesses that will engage the country and their citizens with the wider world.

Here are some examples – CzechInvest, StartUp Chile, StartUp Korea, NASSCOM, CBS (no not the network) …

You get the idea.

So what is happening is that governments are spending what appears to be large sums of money (at least to individual people and startups) but in actuality they are spending small amounts compared to their overall federal budget and with this money they are trying to transform their economies.

And they are getting Venture Capitalists involved.  All of this is causing a dramatic acceleration of ideas, new companies, new business and such all around the world.

So here is the simple message of this column … if Singapore, Chile, Czech Republic can start such programs, what does that mean to similarly sized groups of economically linked people who don’t have such programs or a willingness to engage this way?

Watch out!

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A View from Iraq

By Frank | September 9, 2011

I have a friend that is a somewhat recent West Point graduate who is now on his second tour of duty in Iraq.  This time he works on the staff of a Brigadier Genereal of the Army.

He recently wrote many of his family and friends a letter where he talks about Iraq, what we are doing there and his feelings.  What I like best is that he clearly loves the people there and their resolution and courage.  But he also sees the challenges that cannot be solved quickly and maybe not at all by the USA military.  I liked his letter so much I asked and received permission to share it with the readers of this Blog.  His name is Walter and he is a Captain in the US Army.

There is food for thought here for all elements of the political spectrum.

His words begin here …

What is America doing here [here being Iraq, in case you didn’t read the last e-mail]?

The United States Forces – Iraq is hellaciously busy planning. While our diplomats negotiate with the Iraqis concerning an extension of American troops past the deadline of 31 December, the herculean task of moving all our equipment and soldiers out of the country continues. If you read the news, you’ll notice the new talk is of leaving 3,000 soldiers here instead of the 10,000 that dominated discussion for most of the summer. Either way, most of the actual training is being done by contractors, and that’s what will likely continue after 2012 anyway. What is truly fascinating is watching the military bureaucracy at work. USF-I has myriad staffs, working groups, committees, meetings to prepare for other meetings… it is impressive. It also means that egos, organizational stove pipes, different groups working at cross efforts or unwittingly tackling the same problem, and of course having too many chiefs and not enough Indians make things difficult. And that’s before you start coordinating with the Department of State while preparing to make everything their responsibility. Nonetheless, the people working here are bright, committed, and trying to make a difference. I’m almost universally impressed by the General Officers here as well, which is certainly heartening.

American forces are also busily training the Iraqis, especially on the sweet big ticket defense items we’ve sold them (we could probably solve our employment issues by selling the entire world our last generation of defense technology). These include an old variant of the Abrams battle tank, the M113 armored personnel carrier, and M198 and M109 artillery pieces. Only a few of Iraq’s divisions will be outfitted with this modern equipment, but the challenges are nonetheless substantial, especially since religious tensions come into play on deciding which divisions receive which toys. We have to teach the Iraqis how to operate and maintain complex machinery that is not only completely new to their military, but greatly stresses a fractured and fledgling logistical capability. The Iraqis will be the first to tell you that this is not one of their strengths, and culturemay have something to do with it. That link delves into greater detail than I can, and right or wrong is a very interesting read. On the other hand, I was present for the first firing of Iraqi artillery since the invasion, and the amount of sheer joy expressed by our Iraqi counterparts of all ranks was immeasurable. The Americans who have been here multiple times over are very proud of the progress Iraq has made.

 

What do you think of the Iraqis?

My last time here I interacted with them at the small unit level and was impressed by the generosity and hospitality of the Iraqi people. I should note that my soldiers who had fought against and lost friends to Iraqi insurgents on previous tours were far less forgiving. Now I talk almost exclusively to Iraqi generals (as the “schedule man” to BG Mealer, according to one of them). They are just like our Army, with some extremely competent leaders and some that leave you scratching your head at how they got their stars. The best ones invariably speak excellent English (a trait reciprocated by none of our senior leadership that I’m aware of), display a strong sense of humor, are fierce patriots, and realize how much work lies ahead of them. To a man, they desire American forces to stay beyond December. They also see Iran as the greatest threat to Iraq. During a discussion on the Abrams training program, we told one that it takes 10 years before an American is considered a fully qualified tank instructor. The Iraqi replied that we should call and tell Iran to wait 10 years, then. Another one remarked that “in all the world, the weak, nobody listen to him, everybody want bite from him. If you leave now you leave us in the mouth of the lion.” Today I sat in on a meeting with an Iraqi four star general who I swear was educated at Oxford. He began the meeting discussing the Arab Spring, and likened the transition from American troops to Department of State as reminding him “of the morning flower. It blossoms at the beginning of the day and closes at the end of the evening.”

Even more fascinating is Kurdistan. First of all, the animosity the Kurds bear towards Arabs means it is by far the safest region of Iraq (unless you count the Turks and Iranians pursuing separatists across national borders). While American soldiers don’t leave the International Zone in Baghdad, the cities of Erbil and Sulaimaniyah are so safe that you can walk around unarmed. However, they have seen their comparative advantage vis-à-vis the Iraqi military decline significantly, especially because American efforts to strengthen the central Iraqi state mean their own Peshmerga lack the heavy weaponry of normal Iraqi Army units. The Kurds still love us, but they are deeply worried that once we leave they will suffer again. One of them summarized it this way: “We need money for construction because our country has been destroyed. We are relying on our friends the Americans to help us… for the past seven years you have been giving the Iraqis all the money, and now they have what they want, they have the power, and we have a destroyed country… Please understand we are very thankful. In the name of the […] the Kurdish people, we thank you. We blame the decision makers. They don’t like us because we are different. Everything happening now is the same as under Saddam.”

 

What is Walter’s corner of USF-I doing in Iraq?

My piece of this puzzle has moved from the original posting, Iraq Train and Advising Mission – Army, to the USF-I J5 (Plans). This staff is responsible for strategy, assessments, and most everything taking place in the future. BG Mealer has already been here for over a year, but GEN Austin (currently vying with GEN Odierno for tallest 4 star general) extended her tour to make her the Deputy of this particular staff. The Director is BG (P, which means he’s been selected for 2 stars) Snow, who served as the ITAM-ARMY Director beforehand. They’re both exceptionally bright, driven, and wrestling with what seems like a million different working groups and meetings that attempt to keep the ship of our nation’s efforts here sailing on a smooth line. Interestingly, we’re teaching the Iraqis pretty well in that regard. At the end of a meeting today, the Iraqi conclusion was to form several working groups and hold semi-annual conferences. If that isn’t success, I don’t know what is!

 

What is Walter actually doing in Iraq?

I’m still working as the aide-de-camp for BG Mealer, who brought me with her to the J5. Does  this show her to be a poor judge of character? Absolutely. However, nobody is perfect. I do the important things, like keep her calendar, ensure she arrives to meetings on time and prepared (Heaven forbid the PowerPoint slides aren’t present), coordinate her travel, and of course do her laundry (much less menial than it sounds, since we’ve contracted for laundry services that take care of that). I spend my free time reading, exercising, and studying German, Chinese, and Arabic as well as Army Doctrine. You might want to ask, does Walter have too much free time? In response I ask you to do a word count on this e-mail.

 

What is Walter’s opinion of how this ends?

I should qualify this by stating that my opinion isn’t worth much. First of all, I don’t trust anything a 25 year old says about national strategy, and neither should you. Then again, the same could be said for many 52 year olds. I’m just an aide and don’t sit in the top level meetings or talk to the principal Iraqi policy makers besides saying hello and goodbye. Equally important is that a soldier’s job involves the execution of foreign policy, not forming it. At least, that’s what I remember from Huntington. What’s more, my opinion is difficult to nail down, and it often depends on my mood, the temperature (finally dropping, by the way), and of course the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter. To trot out the old cliché, where you stand depends on where you sit. Looking at the same data set through a different perspective can lead you to wildly different conclusions. To illustrate this fact, I’ve written two sample op-eds you might find in a mediocre newspaper *cough* AtlantaJournalConstitution *cough*.

1.     “Our failed imperial adventure draws to a conclusion.”

As the date for the complete removal of US troops from Iraq nears, the current spike in violence, political gridlock, and sectarian tensions underline how little our invasion accomplished. It’s true that we overthrew a brutal dictator who killed thousands of his own people. But what have we actually achieved in the time hence to either make Iraq a better country to live in or – in line with the original justification for the invasion – increased our own national security? Not much. Despite seven years pumping trillions of taxpayer dollars into the country, Iraq’s residents still deal with critical infrastructure shortfalls. Anbar province, cited as a success story because of the Sunni Awakening widely seen as crucial to the success of the “Surge,” has less than 8 hours of electricity a day. Roughly a third of Iraq’s citizens lack access to sewage services. Many provinces, including Baghdad, have unemployment of 25% or higher. When you place these stark facts against the backdrop of ongoing violence that leaves hundreds dead every month it is easy to understand why Iraqis are losing faith in their government.

 

The messy political system that replaced Saddam has proven equally unresponsive to the will of the people. Prime Minister Maliki left the crucial posts of Minister of Interior and Defense empty for months on end to maintain his grip on the levers of power, stalling much-needed reform and development projects. His chief rival, Allawi, went so far as to accuse him of torture, dictatorial tendencies, and gross mismanagement in a recent article published by the Washington Post. Political posturing notwithstanding, one thing is for certain: President Bush grossly miscalculated in invading Iraq and prosecuting the ensuing conflict. America and Iraq have suffered astronomical costs in blood and treasure to the advantage of the region’s true malign influence, Iran. The mullahs continue to provide Shiite extremist groups with sophisticated weaponry to bomb our convoys, attack our bases, and force more and more of the Iraqi elite to follow their de facto representative, Muqtada al Sadr.

 

Looking back over the last decade, it’s impossible to keep from thinking that America’s war of choice in Iraq likely cost us victory in Afghanistan. To add insult to injury, the Arab Spring adds further proof that a country’s populace has the power to accomplish what no amount of GIs and American Provincial Reconstruction Teams can match. What’s more, it has helped bring about our current financial distress, exhaust our military, and led to renewed calls for American isolationism. It’s time to forego foreign adventures and start dealing with the aftermath of short-sighted and duplicitous policy.

 

2.     “Glimmers of Hope in the Cradle of Civilization.”

Excluding the possibility of a new agreement between Iraq and the United States, America’s combat soldiers are mere months from completely withdrawing from the country. As they turn over America’s partnership with the Iraqis to the Department of State, they can do so knowing they made a crucial difference in the lives of millions. Despite initial failures, President Bush had the courage to double down on Iraq, and in David Petraeus found a general able to help the military relearncounterinsurgency. Since the “Surge” broke the insurgency’s back, the partnership between Iraq and America has yielded tangible security benefits. Of Iraq’s 18 provinces, only two still see enough violence to qualify as unstable.

 

Despite a historical trend for increased violence during Ramadan, August was the first month since our invasion that not a single American soldier was killed in action. The volatile region between Kurdish and Arab Iraq maintains a tenuous truce despite the removal of American soldiers from the Combined Security Mechanism. Prime Minister Maliki finally ended political gridlock by appointing Ministers of Interior and Defense. What’s more, the Arab Spring proved that yearning for democracy comes just as naturally and is felt just as powerfully throughout the Arab world as in other parts of the globe. Iraq’s military now boasts powerful Abrams battle tanks, APCs, and artillery that combine with expert American training to shape it into an effective guarantor of both national sovereignty and a convincing counterweight to Iran. Just as important, with the price of oil still over $100 a barrel and the world’s second largest proven oil reserves, Iraq has the resources to invest in the infrastructure it so desperately needs.

 

As Syria’s Assad continues to machine gun demonstrators and Egypt’s military struggles to manage a transition to democracy, the region can look to Iraq for valuable lessons learned. Was everything done as well as it should have been? No, but great undertakings are rarely perfect from the start. One of the proudest American traditions is reinvention, and our success in Iraq proves that it is alive and well. Even after a decade of war and no matter what some people say, the United States hasn’t lost its soft power appeal: we are still considered the coolest country in the world by far. Seeing the difficult road in Iraq to completion is a testament to our men and women, both uniformed and civilian, tirelessly striving to make a difference. History will show that they have.

 

— end of letter  —

 

Thanks Walter for the insights and unexpected view of a far away place.

 

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