A couple days ago one of the Machine Gunners I had been out on patrol with earlier in the day asked me how much I could bench.
 
The little gym at COP Reilly is sparse, but effective enough, especially when you consider that the guys are burning up a lot of energy on patrols and standing post. I haven't benched heavy since my surgery in January but thought I could get 295 at least once .  I got it a few more times than that.
 
The young guys, as they always do, attributed it up to Old Man Strength which is a real a phenomenon.
 
It may seem odd for infantrymen to workout while fighting a war, but it is a smart idea.  If all the acitivity you do is patrol and stand post, your body will adapt to that and your body will not have the extra reservoir of strength and conditioning for the fast moving gunfight or multi-day operation.
 
I'm in transit now to the next job, 60 days with Task Force Duke in the Eastern mountains around Khowst Province, so there will be lots of odd and informative articles and notes well into the Summer.

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The Marines and Brits stationed here barely shrug at the news about Bin Laden.  His lividity is of little matter to the situation in Helmund province, Afghanistan.
 
Are they happy about the news?  Sure.  Satisfied justice was finally served?  Yes.
 
But his death changes nothing here and will change very little, if anything on the ground throughout Afghanistan.
 
Al Qaida has long since become an organization with no need for a leader--even a symbolic one.  In the canal country of the Helmund river, the opium poppies provide more revenue to fuel the Taliban and Al Qaida than Bin Laden's long since spent millions and fund raising.  Opium sloshes billions of dollars around Afghanistan, Pakistan and  the Emirates.
 
The Marines and Brits know this, which is why the news, while welcome and gratifying, is not celebrated with cheers.
 
In my own opinion, killing bin Laden does little more than provide a specious pre-text for a premature withdrawal of NATO/US forces from Afghanistan.  I remember clearly when Zarqawi was killed in Iraq.  The insurgency kept going for 3 more years.  It is not a man we are fighting, it is an idea.

The upper floor of the house converted to an office in Kabul's district three, near the Afghan parliament, was loud, smokey and noteable for those in attendance.

To my left was a member of Afghanistan's Parliment.  Sitting next to him was a former General of the KhAD, Afghanistan's intelligence service during the Soviet era.  To my right were two retired Colonels.  One a retired Spetznas/GRU officer of the Soviet/Russian, the other retired from the Lithuanian Army.

I was the only one not speaking Russian.

The travel writer Paul Theroux recently exhorted readers of the Sunday New York Times to ignore "the know-it-all, stay-at-home finger wagger [who] says of many a distant place, 'Don't go there.'" 
Theroux says his trips to "these maligned countries are the most fulfilling."

Rugged, adventure travel in the nominally dangerous country he says can be life changing, the value of the enrichment only understood after the fact.  [Or in the telling of the stories to impress people at dinner parties.]

Theroux also writes, "I wouldn’t go to present-day Somalia or Afghanistan."

I'm living in a boutique hotel above a Cafe and ranging around the city and outlying areas on foot or in a Toyota Four-Runner the way a tourist on a budget would.

After a spate of attacks in central Kabul a few months ago, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan supposedly stepped up security in the capital.

The also seemed to hire a PR firm to come up with a catchy phrase for the stepped up security--Ring of Steel.

So at the usual checkpoints staffed by police officers, there are these big metal signs.

 I am sure they will deter the Taliban.

An M-ATV, rolls into a parking lot outside of Camp Dubs.  The remains of the Royal Queen's palace are in the background.

The M-ATV is two analogies and a seriously bad idea.  Using the M-ATV for true combat operations makes about as much sense as its name.

The "M" stands for MRAP which is Mine Resistant Ambush Protected.  The "ATV" stands for All Terrain Vehicle.  The All Terrain part should be in air quotes because there is a lot of terrain in Afghanistan the M-ATV is not rated for.

(Read Part I here)

The Musahe District, southwest of Kabul on the border of Logar province, is dotted with small villages in the valleys low, rocky mountains.  The Directorate of National Security says that the Taliban uses it is as a staging ground for attacks on Kabul.  District police officers report Taliban activity ranging from criminal extortion to planting bombs on the roads to target Afghan security forces and ISAF coalition forces.

As part of the Validation Transition Team's assessment of the 1st Battalion, 111st Afghan National Army Divsion, they wanted to ride along on a mission in Musahe District.

The VTT is NATO/ISAF's internal reviewer of the readiness and operational abilities of Afghan Army units.  When Congress and think-tanks release reports on the state of the Afghan National Army, they are largely based on the work of the VTT.

The upcoming reviews of President Obama's strategic plan for Afghanistan, which relies on increasing the size of the Afghan security forces, will use the work of the VTT.

To properly assess a unit the VTT follows them on a mission from beginning to end--from the planning phase to the after action review.

On the afternoon when the Battalion Commander, Colonel Zalmat Nbard was supposed to review the mission with the VTT it became very obvious that the planning phase had never even been considered.

Col. Nbard, MAJ Gries, MAJ Johnson and Wally

The Musahe District is within Nbard's area of operations.  He is tasked by his higher headquarters with patrolling the area no less than once a week.  Heading out to Musahe is a routine operation and hardly worthy of a full blown process.  Many American units have regular operations and just update the plan with the latest intelligence.  Majors Gries and Johnson understood how this was a regularly scheduled patrol and tried to get the Colonel to walk them through the basics--which should have been pretty easy since he did it every week--it wasn't.