This study is an assessment of the Department of Defense's response to the call to create specialized forces to address the exigent strategic requirement for stability and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. To make an assessment it was necessary first to understand the reason for the call by analyzing the different proposals and the analogy made with the Vietnam-era CORDS program. That analysis revealed that the passage of time has sanitized the memory of CORDS from the political considerations that facilitated its creation. Today, there are significantly more political issues...