Kentucky Has $800 MILLION in Unclaimed Property | Mark Metcalf

Uh, The two biggest lessons are to listen and to be humble in the approach of executing my duties.

The most important thing you can learn as a JAG officer is the importance of commander's intent.

What does the commander want? He lays out his intent, which is usually a one or two sentence paragraph, And all of his principal officers work from there under commander's intent.

So in Iraq, it was, Jag, you do your part to get us out of here.

That meant... largely, um, aiding our commanders all over the country where we, we occupied the entire country and it was assisting them from a legal standpoint in closing forward operating bases and later on closing victory base complex, uh, which was the largest installation in Iraq and in the, um, and in the Middle East.

And, um, it also meant assisting, um, contractors in clearing, uh, The clearing, the complex, it's called VBC, Victory Base Complex.

And the biggest problem laid on me towards the end was the senior project manager for KBR who comes to me and says, Jag, I can't get my property off and I can't get my contractors off.

And I said, sir, I have the solution.

I've vetted it with my commander.

If you'll allow me to give you what the solution is, I'll do so.

And my commander told me within three minutes, give it to Mr. Downey, who's a retired Air Force colonel.

And We drafted the – soon after that, but I drafted the orders for the theater – assistant theater commander.

That was U.S.-Iraq Central.

And that started moving contractors off post.

And what – the reason the Iraqis were bottling us up – because they wanted to keep all this property.

And they'd gone so far, some of them, as holding our personnel, not our military personnel, but our contractor personnel at gunpoint, and taking away their rigs, the big rigs, taking away everything that was on the rigs, or sometimes just holding guns on contractor personnel and stealing big items like generators and appliances.

So...

It was a very challenging job, but Kentucky sent 3,000 soldiers over.

We brought 3,000 soldiers home.

We had wounded, certainly, but we had no killed in action.

I thank you for your service, just on a personal level, your sacrifice and your willingness to go over there and to serve with our troops and with Kentuckians in particular.

Thank you for that.

Uh, The two biggest lessons are to listen and to be humble in the approach of executing my duties.

The most important thing you can learn as a JAG officer is the importance of commander's intent.

What does the commander want? He lays out his intent, which is usually a one or two sentence paragraph, And all of his principal officers work from there under commander's intent.

So in Iraq, it was, Jag, you do your part to get us out of here.

That meant... largely, um, aiding our commanders all over the country where we, we occupied the entire country and it was assisting them from a legal standpoint in closing forward operating bases and later on closing victory base complex, uh, which was the largest installation in Iraq and in the, um, and in the Middle East.

And, um, it also meant assisting, um, contractors in clearing, uh, The clearing, the complex, it's called VBC, Victory Base Complex.

And the biggest problem laid on me towards the end was the senior project manager for KBR who comes to me and says, Jag, I can't get my property off and I can't get my contractors off.

And I said, sir, I have the solution.

I've vetted it with my commander.

If you'll allow me to give you what the solution is, I'll do so.

And my commander told me within three minutes, give it to Mr. Downey, who's a retired Air Force colonel.

And We drafted the – soon after that, but I drafted the orders for the theater – assistant theater commander.

That was U.S.-Iraq Central.

And that started moving contractors off post.

And what – the reason the Iraqis were bottling us up – because they wanted to keep all this property.

And they'd gone so far, some of them, as holding our personnel, not our military personnel, but our contractor personnel at gunpoint, and taking away their rigs, the big rigs, taking away everything that was on the rigs, or sometimes just holding guns on contractor personnel and stealing big items like generators and appliances.

So...

It was a very challenging job, but Kentucky sent 3,000 soldiers over.

We brought 3,000 soldiers home.

We had wounded, certainly, but we had no killed in action.

I thank you for your service, just on a personal level, your sacrifice and your willingness to go over there and to serve with our troops and with Kentuckians in particular.

Thank you for that.