Its cold, and I am thankful

Well the temp has settled out a fair bit. It is in the 60's or colder at night. Usually doesn't hit much above the 70s during the day. This is all perfect with me. There are plenty of people here that are not as OK with it as I am. I see a lot of "cold weather" gear being worn around. Me, I am still in shorts when i go running. That's about the only time I don't have my uniform on.

Still pretty busy. My boss is gone on R&R so I am in charge. Now that I have a real handle on what needs done I am enjoying it. The first few days were a little tuff. I still don't like all the briefings, meetings, working groups and other such gatherings. I know have to go at least 2 hours of briefs a day. That spikes to 5 1/2 hours of various meetings once or twice a week. Still, I'd rather be in charge than not.

Thanksgiving was OK. The DFAC did the best they could. They really did a great job decorating. Butter sculptures, displays, food carvings the works. The food was OK but really, it was just another meal. I am thankful for that. I am glad I didn't think it was great. It just means to me that my family and holidays with them are in fact special. That no matter the quantity or quality of the food, the lavishness of the presentation; it is the company you are in that makes a holiday. In fact, you can have a holiday any time you want, because what matters is who you are with, not what day of the year it is.

I would like to say a few things I am thankful for. Not the laundry list sort of thing, just a few comments.

• I am thankful to God, for all of it.
• I am thankful for my parents and my forefathers. They gave me not only life, but they gave me "a life". From my parents who sacrificed so I didn't have to and love me unconditionally in spite of my many faults; through my great uncles and aunts who fought and died or worked at home for liberty; all the way back to my forefathers who took a great risk leaving all they knew to come to America and forge a new life.
• I am thankful for Emily and her family. I have found a true friend and true love in Emily, I simply can't express the impact she has had on my life. I am thankful beyond measure to her parents for the faith and trust they have put in me in dating their daughter and for always making me feel welcomed and loved.

Certainly I could go on and on, but doing so would cheapen what I have already said. If I have learned nothing else in the past few years, I have certainly learned that defining priorities and then acting in such a way as to respect those priorities is key to success and happiness. The things I mentioned I am thankful for are important to me. One can expect that the bulk of my efforts and energy will be directed at ensuring the safety and happiness of those included.

November 3d!

WOW, so I just realized that my last blog was over 2 weeks ago. Man, every yesterday seems so long ago. This is a weird place for time. I might be able to tell you what day of the week it is without looking at my watch 20% of the time. There is also the whole groundhog day thing to deal with as well. It so no so much that everyday is the same its that everyday runs into the next or is just a continuation of the last. So thats not so good. What is good is when you look at a calender to find what day it is and realize that, yes it is Saturday, but damn it is Saturday the 17th. Of November! So thats cool. Then of course I start day dreaming about the 17th of Dec, Jan, etc etc.

This Saturday was particularly interesting. Work is work. I'd say it sucks, but nobody is shooting at me and I don't have to live in a tent or go outside and down the street to an outhouse, so I am not going to complain. I'd say it was great because Ohio State dominated Michigan, but that made Emily sad so I am a little sad. I won't even pepper my blog with all the yummy details except to say Ohio State was, by every metric, the dominate team. So it was an interesting Saturday. 13 hours at work and then a nice 4 hour football game before bedtime.

Today is Sunday so I'll be heading off to Mass in a few minutes, and then to work. Doing some laundry today as well. That'll be about it for the day, and that'll be about it for this post.

300 and Flat G

I am happy to report I have broken the 300 barrier! I am under 300 days remaining in theater. I realize this doesn't seem like all that big a deal, but it is one of those landmarks. The next, in case you are wondering will be the 101st day. That will occur on 05 December.

In other news Flat G has arrived! Finally after months away Flat G has found me again and is diligently watching my every move. Flat G is an interpretation of the popular children's book "Flat Stanley" This all stems from my tour in Korea. A buddy of mine, Mike, has a son named Charlie that sent him a drawing of himself. The drawing was a "flat" representation of himself, Flat Charlie. The idea was that Mike would take the picture around Korea take pictures and write his son about where "they" went. This would be a way for the two of them to bond and tosatisy a class project for Charlie.

Well, we got hold of this and started taking Flat Charlie everywhere. We took Flat Charlie to work, out to dinner, up to Seoul. We even took him places 3D Charlie, or for that matter any of us should not have been! After a few trips to places I liked to go Mike decided he didn't want his son, flat or otherwise hanging around with me and took him back. Unfortunately Flat Charlie was left in the back seat of a cab by his dad after a Korean wedding. Ooohhh the horror and loss! Somebody decided we needed a new friend and alas Flat G was born.

Flat G is a picture of our Team Commander in Korea. Again we took him everywhere. This time though we decided to send him around to people that had been part of the unit. Flat G went with some folks to Thailand, went to Ft Lewis with me, was in D.C. with Mike and Toni. Now Flat G is here with me. I was thinking about creating a Flat G blog all it's own. What do you think?

Trick or Treat?

Seriously, another 5K? Yeah seriously. I realize this is wholly out of character for me, but what the hell there isn't anything else to do here except go to work.

So while the civilized world is out getting drunk, toilet papering trees, egging houses, and the various other activities of "All Hallows Eve" we here at Camp Arifjan took to the prescribed 5K route at the witching hour of 2000, or 8 pm if you are in the National Guard. I did not even have to be goaded into it this time. I just went out and ran it. I can't sat it was fun as I like to define fun, but it was cool. As you can see I have another t-shirt to add to my collection. It is my goal to leave here with 12 t-shirts, one for each month.

I finished under my alloted time of 30 minutes. I was at 29 something, I didn't really pay attention. Unlike last time, my roommate was not here to harass me the whole way about my pace. I just kinda ran along. Until I realized i was at about he 4 K mark. Then I started noticing all the females around me. Now don't go hammering me about being a male chauvinist pig. There are truckloads of females that run faster than I do. Some younger, some older. They work harder than I do at it and they are faster, doesn't have anything to do with gender and I know that. However, I was not about o get beat by a bunch of females with in eye shot. Maybe it is a character flaw, but that's how I feel about it. So, I pick out the girl in front of me and focus my running to catch her figuring I'd get a few meters in front and cruise on in. I chug away and wouldn't you know it, there is like a pack of 'em in front of her. Well, darn sure can't have that so off I go. Get there, a few more past her. This goes on for a minute or two. When I started this I only had about 1,000 meters left in the race so by now I'm turning the corner to the finish-line. I'm thinkin to myself "Where the hell did all these women come from?" I keep running and by now I am sprinting. Unfortunately so is everybody else. We are all pretty similar down inside in the military, we don't like getting beat. Now keep in mind we are at 28 minutes. The winning time was 16 something, so we have been beaten. Beaten almost as badly as Ohio State will beat Michigan (had to get that in there). None the less, in every ones mind the same thought is screaming out "don't let that guy/girl beat you." So we are just pumping it in. PAss that person find the next,pass them find the next, pass them. I gotta say, that is the best part of the race. Those last couple hundred yards that you are just pounding it out.

So in i rolled. Felling like I had achieved some victory. In a pure statistical sense, I got beat by over about 50% of the pack. I know that, but still I am going to go out there next month for the Marine Corps Birthday Fun Run and do it all again. Its an odd thing. I really don't like running, but I sure do like finishing!

Hanging Out

Well not really hanging out. Just nothing I thought was interesting enough to write about. I haven't gone on any trips lately. No one is shooting at me. I have gotten a handle on most of what my boss and his boss want. 12 hours days are now the norm so when things are slow and we go home a little early I am pretty bored.

Now that I know a lot more about my job I can explain it a little better. Man I have never been in a job where the learning curve was so steep! I guess that should be expected since we are at war and most things should be moving fast. So I have a better handle on the responsibilities. If you are really into government you can check out a lot of I do by researching Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreements (ACSA) along with Code of Federal Regulations Chapter 22 State Department. Yeah me, working with laws and crazy international agreements.

FMS is a process, and I mean a process whereby foreign nations purchase military equipment form the US. This is a long and cumbersome process that involves Department of State, and Defense and a host of other agencies; and of course congress. My role in that is to track all that stuff as it flows into the country. One would think that with all that bureaucracy and oversight this would be a simple task. Well, probably one would think that with those chiefs things are pretty jacked up, and one would be correct! My main problem here is that all these chiefs want info, so they all have staffs. These staffs work in different places and at different paces so they report info differently. Then when the chiefs all have pow wow it hits the fan. Yeah so my job is to make sure that my boss's boss always has the "right" info. It's a mess. My good pals in the US Congress are ever so interested in this issue. So of course there is a lot of focus. Oh yeah the best part of FMS tracking, not really supposed to be the job if the staff section I work in! No shit! The folks that are supposed to do it (who are much larger than my section) jacked it up so much so often that we got stuck with it. I love the Army.

ACSA is something similar to FMS but simpler. Basically it provides a way for our Coalition Partners to exchange Logistics Supplies, Support, and Services (LSSS) with us. This process is restricted to certain kinds of items. For example, if the Polish contingent here needs food, or fuel we can transfer that under an ACSA. If they want a F-16 fighter, they need to go through the FMS process. We actually manage the ACSA process so that is a lot of work. There is a lot of LSSS being transfered as one might expect during war. This process is faster and simpler and therefor much easier to manage and to explain.

So thats pretty much what I do. I track FMS shipments and I manage ACSA transactions. I have a couple soldiers that work with me and I am also responsible for managing their time. They are pretty senior, so that's not to tuff. It's not like having a bunch of Privates around that you have to really provided focused leadership and direction to.

My apologies to my adoring fans. There just wasn't a lot going on. I promise I will blog more, even if it is mundane. I realize it probably isn't all that mundane if you not here every day.

Fun Run?

What do you do for fun when your in the Army and the Navy is having a birthday while deployed to a foreign country? You get together with about 500 of your newest best friends and you get up at 0430 on a Saturday so you can run a 5K! Yeah baby, thats livin the dream.

I realize that this does not seem like a fun idea, except to the dedicated few runners I know. It wasn't really the sort of thing I'd do on a regular basis on a Saturday morning. While it is true I have been known to be found running at 0430 on a Saturday morning that was more likely running FROM somebody than for another reason. I will say that seeing 0430 after waking up is a much different experience than seeing it just before you go to sleep. Ahhh how I miss Korea. But I digress...

So I get up and Jeff, my roommate and I join several hundred of our fellow Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines in front of the gym. We wait for Reveille and then the start gun. Which here is a horn, for obvious reasons. Off we trot on our 5K run. I do mean trot. We ran around the camp and I came in at about 28 minutes. A little better than my self imposed 10 minute mile pace. There were no prizes as this was a "Fun Run" but they did hand out t-shirts. Jeff and I are modeling the newest in Navy birthday fashion. Pretty stylish, and not bad for free.

The run was not the high point of this day. Not that I expected it to be, but I got some great surprises. I finally found the "panel" we did last time I was here. I was deployed to Kuwait in 1999 in a mush more austere environment. We lived out in tents in the desert and were her for Operation Desert Spring. We were a continuing presence left here in Kuwait after Desert Storm. Every rotation would get a sheet of plywood and paint a commemorative panel. When the rotation was over the panel was hung in a sort of "canteen" on the base that used to be known as Camp Doha. Camp Doha closed and they moved every thing to Camp Arifjan a while back. The panels were put up in different Gyms, and Canteens on Camp Arifjan because they would not all fit in one place. The run started at a different gym than the one I usually go to, so I had not seen our panel. It was cool to see it hanging up there.

I got another surprise when one of my former soldiers from Pennsylvania walked by and pushed my shoulder with a "Hey, Sir!" That was pretty cool, it's always nice to see old friends. I also found out that another of my soldiers who retired from my unit in PA was here as well as a contractor. This now brings the total up to 5 soldiers I have run into that I know, by name. There are about a dozen or so more that I know I served with but either were not actually in my unit or part of my organization but I sort of recognized. Those meetings are funny. They kinda go like this: You start talking to somebody or you have to go to another office for this or that and after a few minutes of lookin kinda funny at one another somebody days "...don't I know you? Yeah I think so, where you been. Ever been to Hood? Stewart? How about Korea? Well in 19xx I was xxx. in yyyy I was at blah blah blah." That goes on back and forth until bam! "Oh yeah yeah that was it. Hey man how are you? Hey you remember blah blahblah..."

So that was my Saturday. Not to bad. quick 5K for PT. Free T-shirt. Stroll down memory lane. Heck I even had a short work day, only 10 hours!

Camp Bucca

Ok. This is not going to be all that comforting to read. It's also not going to be all that specific. For obvious reasons I can't tell you about everything I saw. What I want to do, what I hope I can get across, is the feeling of Camp Bucca.

If you Google Bucca you get a whole lot more info on the place than I am going to provide here. I can tell you it is bigger than it was. There are a lot of detainee's there. There are a lot of young American's there too. I can tell you nobody is living good there. The detainees live in buildings until they riot and decide to burn them down. Then they get a tent. Not real smart, considering how hot it gets and the fact that they have A/C in the building and nothing in the tent. Our folks live in trailer like mobile huts. Usually 4 or 8 to a room. The latrine and shower are down the block a few buildings. Yeah that's right, they have to go outside, down the street to go to the bathroom. Think about that next time you get up in the middle of the night. The detainees' have a bathroom building as well. We eat in a fairly big dining facility. Food was pretty good! There was a lot of it the day I was there, lots of selection. Pretty much the same as I get here in Kuwait. I ate with a few Airmen and they said occasionally they run low on food. When they get low, the guys said all the "good stuff" like Ice Cream, lunch meat, chips, cake, etc is gone. Then there comes the point where your eating the same few things for a couple days. But as these great young Americans said "...it aint nothin'. My buddies have it worse." The detainees get fed a traditional diet. The Red Cross is there to make sure they get a decent meal and are treated well. Thing is, the food is all given to one detainee in the quad, the "chief". He gets to decide who gets what and how much. I run this altogether because that is how I saw it. These detainees and our troops are both living pretty hard.

The detainees are an interesting lot. Very industrious, very creative, very smart. Make no mistake, they control the battlespace inside the wire. That is exactly what it is, battlespace. They riot, they dig, they scheme, they injure and kill one another, the works. They have their own chain of command. They have their own justice system. Anything you think you know about what goes on inside a prison, goes on there. For example, the detainees will take the Chai Tea they get and mix it with dirt to make "Chai Rocks" that they then use to hurl at the guards. They make shivs out of anyhting. Slingshots and other weapons. I saw all kinds of contraband and weapons they confiscated, to include crude body armor and a gas mask! Yeah, really. There is so much to tell about these guys. Like the fact that the most requested movie for the 5 days before Ramadan was "The Passion of the Christ", and many of them wept through every showing of it. Sounds odd, as much as they hate the infidel, but Islam teaches that Christ was a prophet. My guess is this movie gives them just another reason to hate the Jews. There is some pretty gross stuff too. They get drink boxes of milk, but instead of drinking them right away they put them out in the sun all day. Gross? Yeah, but it gets worse, they pee in the boxes and mix it with the milk and put that in the sun all day! No kidding, supposed to be good for you. Most of the detainees are illiterate, so there is a literacy program. There are also work opportunities and the ability to learn a trade. All of it voluntary. If they just want to sit around all day, they can do that to. Oh yeah, and they get some of the best medical care anywhere. Just as good as the guards.

There are all kinds of people in there. Some of them are really, really, bad dudes. Unfortunately there are some who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them get turned in by angry neighbors. Yeah really, piss the guy down the street off and he'll turn you in for something you didn't do! One of the most interesting things I think I will get to see while I am here is the effort to weed out those that should not be in there. There are some who would have America believe we just round 'em up and lock 'em away. I can tell you that is not the case. I witnessed it. Every single detainee will have their case reviewed every 6 months. if the review board feels they were detained without sufficient reason, or if they are no longer a threat they are released. The detainees have an opportunity to speak at the hearing and question any witnesses that may be called. I got to sit in on one. I am glad all I had to do was observe. It has to be a hard thing to have to decide wether to send a guy back, or set them free.

I don't think i have done a fair job of describing Bucca. It's tuff to put it all into words, especially while trying to guard against putting to much out there. It's not as easy as some would lead you to believe. We don't just toss the detainees in and forget about them. A lot of work goes into intelligence gathering. A lot of effort is put into sorting out the bad guys from those that should be sent home. Of course there is a ton of effort put into trying to get the point across that we simply want them to stop killing us, and to live in peace with their neighbors.

I need to say I have the greatest respect for those young Americans stuck up there. They are really "in the shit". The amazing thing is their attitude. Given all the reasons things suck, they just do it; like no Nike commercial could ever capture. More importantly, they treat the detainees with a dignity and respect that is most often not reciprocated. They have a job to do and they do it well. These folks truly embody the saying "I am an American Soldier, I fight where I am told and I win where I fight!"