There's a lot of that kind of friction around here. Every organization and service here has a culture based on a ranking system. There's always somebody around pulling rank.

Yesterday I took a couple of diplomats over to the flight line to meet their helicopter. The State Dept has its own security group and that group has its own small fleet of helicopters at the Embassy. A few of them are painted dark blue and they call them Blue Birds. Just about everything else that flies around here is green or gray. Two Army Blackhawks came in while we waited. I was standing outside the van with the door open, the van was sitting just off the flight line about 75 yards from the Blackhawks. An Air Force Colonel grabbed my shoulder from behind and yelled in my ear over the rotor noise.
"You need to get these passengers off my flight line!"
"Sir, these are State Dept personal! We're standing by for the RSO birds!"
"I don't care, they need to get off this line, all passengers need to wait over there!" He pointed away from the flight line toward distant entrance to the terminal buildings.
"Sir, they're not military birds coming in, they're the State Department Blue Birds!"
He didn't acknowledge me, he just walked away. His confidence was intimidating. One of the guys I was dropping off came closer. We yelled over the helicopters and through the earplugs.
'What did he want?!"
"He wants me to take you guys to the other side to wait!"
"He's a Colonel, you may want to duly note anything he says!"
"We'll just wait him out!" In eight months I've never seen a guy that high ranking out here! It's a new deployment! They're all fired up!
A moment later I saw why he was clearing us out. A small white bus passed us and pulled up near the Blackhawks. Three guards set up a little perimeter around it. Another guard brought out a man in a white blindfold with his hands bound behind him. Holding one of his arms, the guard guided the prisoner to the ground where he sat on his knees with his head lowered. The diplomat leaned back toward me.
"When I was in the Marines we put hoods on them! They said it was inhumane, so I guess now they use a blindfold!"
It made me sick. The whole thing. The Colonel, the guards, the prisoner, the helicopter, the diplomats, the crappy white van, and me.
What the hell are we doing here?
They loaded the prisoner up and flew away.
The Colonel didn't come back, which surprised me. I thought he was going to come back and ream my ass.

Of all the agencies I've encountered over here the coolest is USAID and the lamest is Border Patrol. Everyone who works for USAID loves USAID. Its crazy how much they like their work and their agency. Border Patrol on the other hand, those guys are a wreck. Its like flunky police+mustache+Daddy problems = Border Patrol. I met a big group of them off a flight last week and the very first thing one of them said to me was, "Do you have any ammo you can give me?" What! They had no idea that they were inside a great big secured parameter, AFTER I explained it a couple times. Even inside our compound they wanted to roll around locked and loaded. Within an hour they'd asked us four times where they could get ammo. It was awesome-scary to witness their sweaty paranoia.

The photo at the top of this post, it's an Airman sitting on top of the duck-and-cover shelter. He was guarding the third country nationals who are on a subcontract to KBR to dig a new trench for a water line. So that's one guy actually working; digging with a pick. Two KBR guys supervising him digging. And an Airman guarding all of them because their not American citizens.

It'll never add up. Ever. Ever. Ever.

Today was a beautiful day. I wish the weather would stay like this.