Month 5 Day 31

Notebook Entry
Ten Reports to ANA [Afghan National Army], Watch Morning, Map Class, Commanders Unit Assessment Tool, RMAsia Parts truck arrived, Improvised Explosive Devise Lane Expanded.

Journal Entry
Covered a shift at the new CCoC [Combined Combat Operations Center] in the morning. Capt Arthur and GySgt Young are still not back. I don’t imagine that they are in any rush to get here, but it is getting a bit silly how long they have been gone for. I had to come out a couple of times and remind Maj Valquist that you desire to get something done does not make it possible. LtCol John Walcott came into the CCoC in the morning and wanted to translate several hundred slides. We have 4 terps with security clearances on the entire base. Two of them were in there. I got them started on it, and by about 1500 they had translated about 12 slides. LtCol Walcott went to spazcon-5 and sent the tasker to Maj Valquist. I’m like these are classified slides, we don’t have terps with clearances. I have been saying we need them all along, but they have not been produced. Maj Valquist is like, well can we put the stuff on the NIPR and translate it. I’m like, really, sir? There are so many things that are wrong about that that it is difficult for me to list them all

1. Burning classified information onto a disk
2. Moving it to an unsecure medium
3. Having a person without a clearance work on it
4. It can’t even be completed in the time allotted.

Then he asks me, deuce, you can speak Dari, why don’t you just translate it. I’m like, Sir, it took me two hours to do two pages. I can’t do this.

Holy shit the regiment can’t order its way out of a problem and they might need to plan ahead a bit more. Wow, I thought that is what staff officers were supposed to do, plan ahead. That doesn’t happen here, it is just omnidirectional taskers, just like the Afghans do. We are more like them than we would like to admit.