Month 9 Day 30

Notebook entry

56 guys return from medical without qualifications, interview class, late and training, Gen. Petraeus.

Journal entry

the 56 NCOs that were sent to Qandahar for medical training returned no better than they left.  The program was supposed to train them and make them into officers in the medical corps.  I was really annoyed at the time because they took some of the very best NCOs to the course.  I just saw Najibullah, he was back with his old SSgt rank on.  I asked him what happened.  He said that none of the NCOs from the [1st Brigade 215th Corps] were promoted.   He did not fail the test, he got a 98%, but the only guys who got promoted had family connections or were willing to pay a bribe.  Awesome, so they’ve been gone since the beginning of March and for what?  We could have made headway with some of them…

I managed to get Najibullah to do some of the work related to discharge paperwork that the XO had irrationally assigned to Salim, so that he could focus on talking to his detainee.  I brought Bobby Brumfield, the Law Enforcement Professional over from mainside to give him a class.  Salim was still 20 min late.  This is why I hate bringing people over.  Oh well. He didn’t have the forms he needed, so I made him copy the copies that I had.  Salim questioned the detainee and we took a training time out once every 3-4 questions so that Bobby could give him pointers, tell him things to look out for, etc.  The guy was found in Nawa by the ANA with 3 AK-47s in his house.  The guy said that someone had just come up to the edge of his field, motioned to him and left the weapons there.  He didn’t know who it was, he claimed the TB had never threatened him.  He claimed that he just took the weapons into his house and that he was only scared of the police or ANA.  The dude was lying through his teeth.  Everyone has at least been approached by the TB, they don’t just leave weapons in the corner of a field, they are too valuable for that.  He probably didn’t know what we were getting at when we asked him about being scared, but when he said he wasn’t scared of the TB, that makes a hell of a lot of sense because heprobably knew them.  Anyway, we had him on the possession charge and he admitted to that, so such is life.

Gen Petraus came for a visit.  He came through the combined COC and asked the ANA to get radio checks with their kandaks and asked the COC watchO where his kandak HQs were.  Luckily it was Aqa Sherin, he is a smart guy and actually knew the answer, basically any of the other watch-o’s would have been fucked.  This is the view from the top a 5 min visit into a bullshit combined COC.  The general asked the right questions, he just didn’t have the time to get the full picture, had he walked in the day prior he would have found the entire watch staff asleep on the floor.  I wonder what he thinks about this place.

Salim (Left, Facing away) questioning a detainee with Fareed (facing) listening