Something I came across today

So, I have another example of why we should all be wary of the internet and its absolute inability to protect itself from being absolutely corrupted. I received a message on my Facebook from a friend in NC, asking me my opinion on an email she received. Here is a copy of the text of that email:

Hello everyone,
As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to 'The War Zone'. I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you. I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier
(married and father of 6 children)

Other than the fact that, as a military officer, CPT Porter should have a little bit better grasp of the written English language, I agree with his opinion about Barak Obama. Someone else, I think it was my mom, asked me about this the other day about the senator's visit to Afghanistan and I gave a similar response, although, I don't have first hand knowledge of what happened at Bagram Airbase. I am stationed in the middle of nowhere on a tiny base I am not allowed to name. As far as I could tell from the news reports, Obama's chief reason for visiting Afghanistan was to meet with the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai; however, it wouldn't be prudent for him to come all the way here and not stop at a military base to show "support" for the troops. I doubt that he was genuinely interested in seeing the troops, but more so in appearing to be in tune with the world situation and the global war on terror. However, I was not there, so I cannot attest to his sincerity or to the actual specifics of his visit.

That being said, I did a little research on the good ole internet, something everyone should do when receiving something like this. I tend to be very wary of when something like this hits the email. What I found was that this "CPT Jeffrey S. Porter" is a military intelligence officer in a Utah National Guard unit, but not the "battle captain", an official position, that he cited in the email. The press release about this email says that Obama never went to any clamshell tents to play basketball, nor did he "blow off" soldiers and not shake hands. In fact, troops from his home state were invited to come and meet with him during his stay. I don't like Barak Obama and I won't vote for him, but it is this kind of nonsense that makes people look down on the military and if you are going to attempt to discredit someone, then your information needs to be above reproach. This is one of the first laws of PSYOP. Anyway, I just wanted to pass it along, so that if, or more likely when, you receive this email, please reply to all and let people know that it is not true. Again, I have no desire for the election of Barak Obama as our next president, but I also have scruples and do not see this as playing fair.

God Bless and Have a Good Night.

Fun With Horses

Little known to most people, we have on our camp about 19 Afghan horses. They are not too unlike American Quarter Horses, except that they are not near as big. As you can see in the pictures, they are not much taller than six feet, although I couldn't tell you what that is in hands (unit of measure for a horses height). After I put these pictures up on my Facebook page, I got a lot of questions from people about why we had horses and why I, specifically, was working with them.

Without going into too much detail and giving away a lot of information I shouldn't, suffice to say that I work with a unit that "thinks outside the box" and does things a little differently. The main purpose for these horses if they were in shape, and they aren't, is to use them for military purposes. Why would we need horses if we have trucks? Trucks make a lot of noise, a lot of dust, and require a lot of maintenance. Horses are generally quieter and much less overt if you wanted to get from point A to point B, without a great deal of notice. But, like I said before, these horses aren't in the appropriate physical shape to do that sort of thing. The unit that was here before us, either lacked the knowledge or the motivation to take care of the horses in a way that would keep them in shape and mission ready. So, now, we will spend a better part of our deployment doing that, and hopefully pass on that to the next unit.

When I say "we", there is much more emphasis on the other people in the "we", than "me". Prior to working with these horses, I knew how to mount and dismount a horse that was already saddled and could ride it if it was docile and not prone to being rebellious. However, some of the other guys here grew up around horses and have a good idea of what they are doing and have experience in handling horses that are less than agreeable. One of the big parts of these horses being out of shape is that they were rarely handled or ridden prior to us getting here, so some of them are quite against the idea of being ridden. They're nice enough to let you mount them, but they have no intention of letting you tell them where to go.

Some of the other things that we have been doing with them beside exercise is health maintenance. The pen that the horses are kept in is pretty big, maybe about one quarter of a football field. It is all dirt, though, so their hooves never get worn down requiring a fair bit of work regularly. There is a furrier (sp?, guy who shoes horses) in town but from I hear he is overpriced and doesn't do good work. So, every once in a while, each horse has to have it's hooves cleaned out and trimmed, much like what Debra would do with goat hooves.

Another thing that we learned about horse maintenance is called floating the teeth. By the way, I think I forgot to mention that we got a veterinarian in a couple of weeks ago to teach us a lot of this stuff, but he is leaving in a couple of days, which is why we have to learn it because he has to move on to the next place or something. Anyway, teeth floating. Horses are much like cattle or goats in that they grind down their food, which for horses consists of hay, grains, and feed corn, before they swallow. After a while, their teeth become sharp to the point that they can no longer grind the food properly, so you have to take something that resembles a large dental mirror with a "float" or metal file on the end and grind down the points on their teeth until they aren't sharp. The horses are not fond of this and like to fight it, so we had to sedate a few of the horses while doing this.

That is where another learning lesson came in and that was how to IV inject a horse with fluids or medications. Pretty cool stuff really, basically you just stick a few fingers into the horses neck to pinch their jugular vein, which inflates the vein higher up. Once inflated you insert the needle until you get blood flow, connect the syringe to the needle, and in goes the horses cocktail.

The reason you need a ruffie for the horse is because when floating the teeth, it is best to put a speculum on the horse, otherwise it will bite your arm, like one of the horses did one day to the vet, causing a very nasty mark. The speculum holds the horses mouth open so that you can stick your hand in to check the teeth for points and not get bit. It doesn't put the horse completely out, but it does look like its had too much to drink.

The last thing we learned how to do, was to castrate a horse. Seriously, I thought that it was going to be a lot bloodier and a lot more disgusting than it really was. This time we gave the horse a cocktail to start, and then gave it something else to knock it out for about an hour, although the whole procedure only took about half an hour. After it was all done, the horse woke up, and started walking around; I am not sure how that is even possible. A few people had asked on Facebook why I was learning to do this and why the army was spending the time, energy, money, etc., to castrate horses. First of all, these are our horses, they don't belong to random people in our area where we have arbitrarily decided to go and emasculinate there animals. It is for the same purpose that people spay or neuter their animals. We have 19 horses here and if the males were not fixed, we would have many more horses. At one time this base had almost 30 horses, which were admittedly too many, but about nine or ten of those died when the Taliban, who has absolutely no concept of aim, shot a rocket at our base and it landed in a feed trough. Also, just for FYI, there have been no rockets fired at our base since I got here; apparently, my reputation preceeds me and they are afraid. Anyway, you have to fix your animals if you don't want them to breed. That's just how it works.

Another question I have been asked is why I am doing this. Well, I have a specific job that I do, but I don't do it 24 hours a day. There are some days when my job requires about an hour of the total day; however, I can't just do my one hour and then go back to bed. On this particular camp with its particular personnel numbers, everyone has to pitch in to do various "camp work" so that everything runs smoothly. Basically, there is a lot of efficiency going on here. So, a lot of the time, when my time is not consumed by my job, I help out with the horses because it is interesting and it is something that I can actually post stories about on the internet, unlike some of the other things I do.

So, there you have it. We have horses, they are getting healthier, I ride the docile ones, and we castrate the horses out of necessity, but only our horses.

Updates from the 'Stan

Okay, so my mother-in-law, Karen, was concerned that I am giving an unequal treatment to my Facebook audience and not really keeping the Blogger audience as informed, so I am going to put up a few posts here to let you know what I've been up to. Also, because the Blogger format is more conducive to journal writing with a few pictures, I will put up the best pictures, and then if you want to see more, you will have to go to Facebook and see the rest.

For this first one, I have some various "field trip" pictures. Most of them are just various places we went throughout the area in which we work, mostly from where we stop and talk to people. We also had one day where a bunch of kids came around and we got one of the little girls to try a ClifShot Gel, in mocha flavor. If you don't know that is, they are little packets of thick syrup that contains calories for energy and, in this case, caffeine. From the picture you can see that she didn't like it much. There was also one very early morning where we had to drive up a big hill and park on top. I'll leave to your imagination what we were doing up there... no, it wasn't sleeping, although the though had crossed our minds. It was a very early start to a very long day. Also, sometimes people ask how it is that we get our supplies, whether they are driven out here or brought by some other way, so there are a couple pictures of how the modern man hunts his dinner.

Our Adventure at Clark Park: Spiders, Lizards, frogs and... Buzz Lightyear????

This is the spider that I found when i went to get the wagon out of the garage that morning.

The nature center at clark park...lots of fun creatures to look at.

Jessica, Connor and Victoria

"Look! A turtle!"

"A Dinosaur!"


"Whats in here?"

" What does that sign say?"

The Bridge

Snack Time





"No Mom you stay there."

"Whats in here?"
The big grass area


"Look mom a turtle."

The Status of the Beard

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Just thought that I would drop everyone a quick note to let you know how my secondary mission here is going, and that is the growing of the beard; kind of like the running of the bulls, but without the risk of getting speared by a horn or the expense of traveling to Spain.

As you can see, it is coming in quite well. I am trying to see if it will get any lighter as it gets prolonged exposure to the sun, something we have in ample supply. Not that I am self-conscious about it, but there are quite a few grey (nay, white) hairs on my chin and I just think that, overall, it would look better if the whole thing were lighter and they all matched.

Of course, there is also the sub-task to this mission and that is to not cut my hair until I leave my currently undisclosed location. This won't be near as drastic as the face hair, since the hair on my scalp doesn't grow very fast.

Previously, Debra has expressed concern that she doesn't like my beard, and that it makes me look like "a scary man." However, these pictures were not actually taken by me in my room with bad lighting, and she thinks they look a lot better. Let me know what you think.

Hanging out with The Dean's (minus Mike) at Chick-Fil-A

Nehemiah and Victoria, the stars of our show...

Theres only one way to get these next few pictures...

View below: Jessica and Connor

Connor, Loving the new maya wrap

We traded in the toys for ice cream.