Month 6 Day 9

Notebook Entry
No reports, worked on the sorter in the morning, late for class and thus no class afternoon.

Journal Entry
Worked on the Significant Activity sorter in the morning. It is really frustrating working with these guys because they are just not going to do their jobs unless the General tells them to do it. The problem is that the General has no idea what intel is supposed to do. Every other staff section has training to show them how to do their job. The General does not receive any training, he gets treated with deference and respect the whole time. I understand that Maj Valquist is in a tough position because he has no backstop (e.g. MGen Malouk is not going to come in and blast BGen Shujai if he isn’t doing his job), but I would really like him to teach the General something. If he had to be coercive to do it, then that would be fine with me. It is just more than a little aggravating because I can’t get anywhere with my guys until he gets somewhere with his guy.

In the afternoon I was going to teach the Sgts a class. They picked the time and said they would be ready. For the last few days they have not been on time for the classes, so I told them. No, we either do the class now, or we don’t do it at all. They selected don’t do it at all. I said fine, I won’t give you any reports or any weather. I thought they would get chewed out in the meeting the next day, but when the meeting came, they didn’t show up. No one gave a shit either. They made up some excuse. The General walked into the Combined CoC [Combat Operations Center] and said ‘who are you’ to one of my sgts. That motherfucker, the XO [executive officer] has not even been speaking to him.

I also had a chat with Capt CJ Radin about the intel shura. It is pretty clear that this is another check-in-the-box as far as the S2 [Marine Intelligence Section] is concerned. They want it to be ANA led, and just have a stenographer there, I am like, why? We don’t have to pretend like we aren’t involved and the overbearing presence in this AO. It was also incredibly frustrating that he hadn’t bothered to read his own frago [fragmentary order]. He was also surprised to hear that we only brought over 4 guys per day for the combined CoC. The Regiment is so ‘partnered’ that in 3 weeks he hasn’t even stuck his head in there. This is why commanders need buy in, not orders. If you order people to do what you say, then they will do it, but they will only do what you say, they will not do anything more or less. Which means that we have to have the crutch of micromanagement orders. (e.g. the regimental commander talking to marines about having slings on their rifles).