I've made it back to FT Riley in preparation for our deployment, probably some time this weekend we'll be out of here and headed to Afghanistan.  Needless to say this morning was absolutely awful having to say goodbye to Jennifer and Denali, I think I'd rather be water boarded than have to do that again, which unfortunately I'll have to when I come back for mid tour leave. 

Not sure what the Army's plan is for deploying us if we go to Germany, Turkey or somewhere else en route to Afghanistan.   Always a holiday with the Army planning your travel!  

It's interesting to be back here after having completed our training and watching other units that are where we were two months ago.  The training here was OK it was definitely aimed at the lowest common denominator.  I used the John Galt analogy because you conduct the same training here if your an Army Combat Advisor or a Navy or Air Force logistics guy.  That may sound great at first, the log guys get some cool combat training, but it's the other way around.  The training gets dumbed down so they can play along too!  Not sure who figured this one out but it sounds much like the factory in Atlas Shrugged that gets run into the ground because they never produce anything.  If I'd only thought of the ironies when I titled the blog! My AAR (After Action Review) was similar to John Galts speech on the radio.   Enough about the past training.

On some levels I'm looking forward to getting started, that may sound strange but it's true.  I do think this is a very worthwhile mission and in the long run things will start to get better.  After just writing that it strikes me as maybe a little naive and overly optimistic, but I've got to tell myself things like after just having had to say goodbye to my family and head to war.  We shall see, it may be very interesting to read my early posts 6 months from now.

My plan is to get one more stateside post in before we head out!