I have been spending the better part of two weeks moving into the FOB and had hoped to get a least one day to rest up, but that's not the case. Ever since the last few days of February, we have not had a complete day to ourselves, and I suppose that's a good thing, since time is seeming to pass quickly.

The frustrating thing is that even though we seem so shorthanded, and barely able to perform our mission to prepare the IA. Other Army and Air Force personnel on LSA Anaconda seem to have nothing but time on their hands. I know they've all got duties to perform that are vital to the mission, it's just that it seems the focus is misdirected.

I mean, my gosh, they've got 50 basketball teams in a league and 30 softball teams. I don't think that was the case in WW2, and we work 18-hour days as the norm. There are even people that work eight hours and are off for 48, how wrong is that? I hope this doesn't sound too much like sour grapes, but it just seems so wrong. I also know that troop morale and support is important. It's vital. But a lot of that comes from attitude, whether or not an individual has focus. And as strange as this may sound, the people with the least seem to have the best attitudes. I've been on several FOBs visiting and now live on one, and these folks just seem better motivated.

I think it's important to mention that on the LSA a huge percentage of the personnel are not military, a lot of import workers and our friends from KBR (aka Halliburton), and they are a big reason for such a imbalance in "luxuries."

Example: It took us a full 10 days to get showers at our Bunker, and they still are mosquito infested and drain directly into our swamp. We have no hot water inside our bunker and use bottled water to brush our teeth because of health concerns over the water. Our broken down shower trailer has two poor sinks, and the showers don't even have soap dishes. Now seven miles away, there are olympic pools, inside and out, with showers for just rinsing off before entering the pool. Even though the women make up about 10 percent of the personnel here they have almost an equal number of shower trailers. And yet our first week and a half here we used bottled water and wooden pallets to bathe.

Part of the reason my entries have suffered is also lack of internet access, which is very difficult now. I will soon be making entries on the current IA training and their improvement, very well, the reason for such resentment towards people at places like Anaconda and Kuwait. We in the combat arms refer to those groups as "REMF's and POGES."

I will just finish up by saying our group has gotten smaller, but seems to perform better. Most of the people we released were those that had made a lot of negative comments about the people of Iraq and some very inflammatory statements about hurting others needlessly. We're all glad they're gone. We are getting stronger in our relationships with the IA, and the U.S. soldiers here at this FOB are a privilege to work with and are people to be proud of.

Today's phrase is - Tasha Rafnaa or honored to meet you