Staff Humor

[The Reaper]

If you can relate to these, you have served on a staff too long.

Enjoy.

TR

Subject: Staff officers say the strangest things.....
"I finally figured out that when a Turkish officer
tells you, "It's no problem," he means, for him." Maj
(EUCOM)

"Never in the history of the US Armed Forces have so
many done so much for so few..." MAJ (Task Force
Warrior) on the "success" of the Free Iraqi
Forces (FIF) Training Program, where 1100 Army troops
trained 77 Iraqi exiles at the cost of, well, way too
much...

"Our days are spent trying to get some poor,
unsuspecting third world country to pony up to
spending a year in a sweltering desert, full of pissed
off Arabs who would rather shave the back of their
legs with a cheese grater than submit to foreign
occupation by a country for whom they have nothing
but contempt." LTC (JS) on the joys of coalition
building

"OSD will continue to drive this cart into the ground
long after the wheels have been sold on E-bay." MAJ
(JS) on the progress of FIF

"Please don't laugh. This is my job."
Maj (EUCOM) from Protocol, explaining in great detail
the approved procedures for dropping off VIPs

"I guess the next thing they'll ask for is 300 US
citizens with Hungarian last names to send to Iraq..."
MAJ (JS) on the often-frustrating process of
building the Iraqi coalition for Phase IV

"If we wait until the last minute to do it, it'll only
take a minute." MAJ (EUCOM)

"The only reason that anything ever gets done is
because there are pockets of competence in every
command. The key is to find them...and then exploit
the hell out of 'em." CDR (CENTCOM)

"Working with Hungary is like watching a bad comedy
set on auto repeat..." LCDR (EUCOM)

"Between us girls, would it help to clarify the issue
if you knew that Hungary is land-locked?" CDR to MAJ
(EUCOM) on why a deployment from Hungary
is likely to proceed by air vice sea

"We are condemned men who are chained and will row in
place until we rot."
LtCol (CENTCOM) on life at his Command

"Right now we're pretty much the ham in a bad ham
sandwich..." GO/FO (EUCOM)


"So, what do you wanna do?"..."I dunno, what do YOU
wanna do?"..."I dunno,
what do YOU wanna do?," etc. COL (DIA) describing the
way OUSD(S) develops and implements their strategies

"Let's face it: Africa sucks..."
DOS representative (Bureau of African Affairs) at a
conference on Africa

"One of the secrets to maintaining my positive
attitude in this job is this: I complete no tasker
before its time..."
MAJ (EUCOM)

"It is nothing for US soldiers to be in the desert for
a year without a woman. It is different for us,
though, because we are Latin..." LTC (LATAM
country) on one of the differences between Latin
American soldiers and their US counterparts

"I'll be right back. I have to go pound my nuts
flat..."
Lt Col (EUCOM) after being assigned a difficult tasker

"I guess this is the wrong power cord for the
computer, huh?" LtCol (EUCOM) after the smoke cleared
from plugging his 110V computer into a 220V outlet

"OK, this is too stupid for words."
LTC (JS)

"When you get right up to the line that you're not
supposed to cross, the only person in front of you
will be me!" CDR (CENTCOM) on his view of the
value of being politically correct in today's military

"There's nothing wrong with crossing that line a
little bit, it's jumping over it buck naked that will
probably get you in trouble..." Lt Col (EUCOM)
responding to the above

"I may be slow, but I do poor work..."
MAJ (USAREUR)

"Great! What we really need are some more 0-5s around
here..." MAJ (EUCOM) on the release of the list of 0-5 promotables

"Don't ever be the first...don't ever be the
last...and don't ever volunteer to do anything...."
CDR (EUCOM) relating an ancient Navy truism

"Hey, somebody should really do that..."
CDR (CENTCOM) on the CENTCOM tasking process

"Are you sure they aren't writing about us? Hell, at
least we should jump on that wholesale desertion
thing..." Maj (CENTCOM) on the following report
from a newspaper: "(The Iraqi military was crippled
by)...a multitude of erratic orders and strategic miscalculations, while
its fighting units barely communicated with one another and were
paralyzed from a lack of direction...these woes were compounded by
incompetence, poor preparation, craven leadership and (the) wholesale
desertions of thousands of soldiers..."

"Cynicism is the smoke that rises from the ashes of
burned out dreams." Maj (CENTCOM) on the daily
thrashings delivered to AOs at his Command

"WE are the reason that Rumsfeld hates us..."
LTC (EUCOM) doing some standard, Army
self-flagellation

"South of the Alps and East of the Adriatic, paranoia
is considered mental equilibrium..."
"The chance of success in these talks is the same as
the number of "R's" in "fat chance..."" GS-15 (SHAPE)

"His knowledge on that topic is only power point
deep..." MAJ (JS)

"We have no position on that issue. In fact, your
position IS our position.
Could you tell us what our position is?" CDR
(TRANSCOM) at a policy SVTC
"Ya know, in this Command,
if the world were supposed to end tomorrow, it would
still happen behind schedule." CWO4 (ret) (EUCOM)

"Even if Al-Qaeda nuked this place, the Chief of Staff
would approve a 4-star visitor the very next day!"
GS-12 (EUCOM)

"Never pet a burning dog."
LTC (Tennessee National Guard)

"It's basically announcing to the world that I've
completely given up." LT (USN F-14 squadron) on his
initial feelings behind the wheel of his brand
new minivan

"A staff action is like getting an out of state check, countersigned by
a fraud on a phony ID: some of the time it clears, but most of the time,
you're screwed." Lt Col (USAF)

"I need intelligence, not information."
Maj (EUCOM)

"Ah, the joys of Paris: a unique chance to swill warm
wine and be mesmerized by the dank ambrosia of unkempt armpits..." LCDR
(NAVEUR)

"'Status quo,' as you know, is Latin for 'the mess
we're in...'" Attributed to former President Ronald
Reagan

"We are now past the good idea cutoff point..."
MAJ (JS) on the fact that somebody always tries to
"fine tune" a COA with more "good ideas"

"Who are you talking to? ...Hang up the phone!"
Lt Col mentoring MAJ (EUCOM) on how to stay in his own
lane...

"The hardest thing about having a third child is
switching from 1-on-1 to a zone defense." MAJ (EUCOM)

"Nobody ever said you had to be smart to make 0-6."
Col (EUCOM)

"I haven't complied with a darn thing and nothing bad
has happened to me yet."
"Whatever happened to good
old-fashioned military leadership? Just task the first
two people you see."
"The first question I ask myself when tasked to do something that's not
obviously and overwhelmingly in my own best interest is, 'Exactly what
happens if I don't do it?'"

"Accuracy and attention to detail take a certain
amount of time."

"No need to tip our hand as to how responsive we can
be." CDR (EUCOM) in a passdown to his replacement

"I seem to be rapidly approaching the apex of my
mediocre career." MAJ (JS)

"I think that my next set of orders will take me to
Iraq. My career's going so badly that I'm considered a 'dead-ender.'" Lt
Col (EUCOM)

"I just realized that this War on Terror might take a
little longer than we thought, so I am developing a
new system of hanging charts on walls to solve
our problem and win the war." LTC (EUCOM) after a
review of long range Counter Terrorism (CT) plans

"Much work remains to be done before we can announce
our total failure to make any progress." "None of us
is as dumb as all of us." Excerpted from a
brief (EUCOM)

"Things are looking up for us here. In fact, Papua-New
Guinea is thinking of offering two platoons: one of
Infantry (headhunters) and one of engineers
(hut builders). They want to eat any Iraqis they kill.
We've got no issues with that, but State is being
anal about it." LTC (JS) on OIF coalition-building

"It's not a lot of work unless you have to do it."
LTC (EUCOM)

"I'm gonna have to leave work early today and probably
stay home tomorrow.
I'm fighting off a cold and I want to beat it before I
start my leave in two days." MAJ (EUCOM)

"Creating smoking holes gives our lives meaning and
enhances our manliness."
LTC (EUCOM) at a CT conference

"Interagency is a process, not a noun."
Anonymous (EUCOM)

"Eventually, we have to 'make nice' with the French,
although, since I'm new in my job, I have every
expectation that I'll be contradicted." DOS rep at a
Counter Terrorism Conference

[The Reaper]

"Everyone should have an equal chance, but not
everyone is equal."

"I am so far down the food chain
that I've got plankton bites on my butt."

"You can get drunk enough to do most anything, but you
have to realize going in that there are some things
that, once you sober up and realize what you
have done, will lead you to either grab a 12-gauge or
stay drunk for the rest of your life."

"Once you accept that a dog is a dog, you can't get
upset when it barks." Lt Col (USSOCOM), excerpts

"That guy just won't take 'yes' for an answer."
MAJ (EUCOM)

"Let's just call Lessons Learned what they really are: institutionalized
scab picking."

"I can describe what
it feels like being a Staff Officer in
two words: distilled pain." CDR (NAVEUR)

"When all else fails, simply revel in the absurdity of
it all." LCDR (CENTCOM)

"Never attribute to malice that which can be ascribed
to sheer stupidity."
LTC (CENTCOM)

"They also serve, who sit and surf the NIPR."
CPT (CENTCOM)

"I hear so much about Ft. Bragg. Where is it?"
"It's in the western part of southeastern North
Carolina."
LCDR and CPT (EUCOM)

"I've become the master of nodding my head and acting
like I give a sh!t, and then instantly forgetting what
the hell a person was saying the moment
they walk away."
Flag-level Executive A$$istant

"Mark my words, this internet thing is gonna catch on
someday."
LTC (EUCOM)

"You're not a loser. You're just not my kind of
winner..."
GS-14 (OSD)

"He who strives for the minimum rarely attains it."
GS-12 (DOS)

"I'm tired of waiting on somebody who I know is just
going to ignore me once they arrive." Lt Col (EUCOM),
while waiting to start a brief for a visiting
VIP

"If I'd had more time, I'da written a shorter
brief..."
Derived from the writings of Mark Twain

"Vision without funding is hallucination."
Maj (EUCOM)

"I work at EUCOM. I know bullsh!t when I see it."
LTC (EUCOM) in a game of office poker

"You only know as much as you don't know."
GO (EUCOM)

"I'm just livin' the dream..."
EUCOM staffer response to the question, "How's it
going?" or, "What are you doing?"

"I'm just ranting...I have nothing useful to say."
LTC (EUCOM)

"Why would an enemy want to bomb this place and end
all the confusion?"
GS-14 (EUCOM)

"How soon before we can give this guy a medal, a good
OER, and send him on his way?" GS-12 (EUCOM) referring
to his boss

"Other than the fact that there's no beer, an early
curfew and women that wear face coverings for a
reason, Kabul is really a wonderful place to
visit." LTC (CENTCOM)

"It was seen, visually."
LTC (EUCOM) during a Reconnaissance briefing

"Let me tell you about the benefits of being on a
staff..."
"This should be a short conversation."
LtCol to Lt Col (EUCOM)

"If you want to take down a country, gimme a call.
We'll get it done." GO/FO
(EUCOM) to a gathering of US Amba$$adors

"Hello gentlemen. Are we in today or are you just
ignoring my request?"
GS-15 (DSCA) in an email to EUCOM staffers

"After seeing the way this place works, I bet that
Mickey Mouse wears a EUCOM watch." Maj (EUCOM)

"Your Key Issues are so 2003..."
CPT (CJTF-180) in January 2004

"USCENTCOM commanders announced today that they intend
to maintain their presence in Qatar "until the sun
runs out of hydrogen," thus committing the
US to the longest duration deployment in human
history. When asked how they planned to maintain the
presence in Qatar for a projected length of 4 to 5
billion years, planners said "we're working on a plan
for that. We don't have one yet, but not having a plan
or an intelligent reason to do something
has never been much of an impediment for us in the
past; we don't foresee it being a big show stopper for
us in the future either."

Among the options that were being discussed was an
innovative program to "interbreed" the deployed
personnel. "We are going to actively encourage the
military members in Qatar to intermarry and raise
children that will replace them in the future. Sure,
it may be a little hard on some of our female
service members, since there currently are about 8 men
for every woman over there, but we expect that to be
OBE as the sex ratios will even out in a
generation or two. In any case the key to the plan is
to make these assignments not only permanent, but
inheritable and hereditary. For example,
if you currently work the JOC weather desk, so will
your children, and their children, and their children,
ad infinitum. We like to think of it as job
security." CPT (CJTF-180)

"That's FUBIJAR."
COL (CENTCOM), Fu--ed Up, But I'm Just a Reservist...

"As far as I'm concerned, I'm the only one that
matters in here." COL (CENTCOM)

"No matter how hard this Command beats me down, I am
still able to get it up." Maj (EUCOM)

"I keep myself confused on purpose, just in case I am
captured and fall into enemy hands!" GO/FO (CENTCOM)

"Cheese-dickery abounds at this Command."
LtCol (EUCOM)

"Does anybody around here remember if I did anything
this year?" LTC (EUCOM) preparing his Officer
Evaluation Report support form

"This is all happening because we had the sympathetic detonation of a stress grenade." Maj (EUCOM) after an insignificant issue became a theater focus because somebody used the "Reply all" function

"I'd be happy to classify this document for you. Could
you tell me its classification?" GS11 (EUCOM) in an
email from the Foreign Disclosure office

"Nothing is too good for you guys...and that's exactly
what you're gonna get..." LTC (EUCOM) describing the
way Army policy is formulated

"The only thing that sucks worse than being me is
being you..." LTC (EUCOM)

"Why should I worry? Nobody here outranks me by that
much."
MAJ (SOCEUR) briefing a group of 0-6s

"I have to know what I don't know..."
Col (CENTCOM) during a shift changeover briefing

"No. Now I'm simply confused at a higher level..."
Foreign GO/FO when asked if he had any questions
following a transformation brief at JFCOM

"I'm planning on taking the weekend
off...notionally..."
LT (EUCOM) midway through a huge, simulated command
exercise

"'Leaning forward' is really just the first phase of
'falling on your face.'"
Col (MARFOREUR)

"I've heard of 'buzzwords' before but I have never
experienced a 'buzz sentence' or a 'buzz paragraph'
until today." Maj (EUCOM) after listening to
a JFCOM trainer/mentor

"We've got to start collaborating between the
collaboration systems." "Our plan for the Olympics is
to take all the ops and put it in the special room
we have developed for ops." GO/FO (EUCOM)

"Did you hear that they're canning Bob Edwards on
NPR?" "Why? Did they catch him standing up for the
National Anthem or something??"
COL to CDR (EUCOM)

"Not to be uncooperative, but we're just being
uncooperative." CDR (EUCOM)
in an email response to a request for information

"We're from the nuke shop, sir. We're the crazy aunt
in the closet that nobody likes to talk about ..." Lt
Col to GO/FO (EUCOM) in briefings

"We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the
impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much
for so long with so little, that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing." Anonymous, but classic...

"The 'L' in CENTCOM stands for leadership..."

"At this Command, we have written in large, black
letters: DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on the back of our
security badges."
Maj (CENTCOM)

"He cloaked himself in an impenetrable veneer of
terminology." Lt Col (JFCOM) describing the Jiffiecom
alpha male

"Transformation has long been the buzzword for those
that are dispossessed, dispirited and dis
illusioned..." Chaplain (EUCOM),
allegedly talking about the Disciples...

"There are more disconnects on this issue than CENTCOM
has staff officers."
GO/FO (EUCOM)

"Is that a Navy or a Marine admiral?"
MAJ (EUCOM)

[Razor]

If it weren't true, it wouldn't be so funny.

[NousDefionsDoc]

ROTFLMAO! HAhaha!

I know several of these:

"His knowledge on that topic is only power point
deep..." MAJ (JS)


Great stuff Reaper.

[SP5IC]

This has been the most outstanding series of posts that I have had the pleasure of reading on ANY site. Outstanding, simply OFS, I hope many more are posted.

Still learning....

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Damn Reaper, after reading all of those I am beginning to have serious flashbacks. Wonder if I can qualify for Post Traumatic Staff Disorder

Jack Moroney

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by Jack Moroney
Damn Reaper, after reading all of those I am beginning to have serious flashbacks. Wonder if I can qualify for Post Traumatic Staff Disorder

Jack Moroney

Well of course, Sir, most of those were Eucom related.

The others are mainly CENTCOM, which at MacDill we used to refer to as "SADCOM". They would stand up a CAT and go on shifts if someone in the theater sneezed.

At SOCOM, we were referred to by the others as "HAPPYCOM", no doubt due to our sunny disposition.

TR

[Guy]

LMAO!

[Max_Tab]

Originally posted by The Reaper


"We are now past the good idea cutoff point..."
MAJ (JS) on the fact that somebody always tries to
"fine tune" a COA with more "good ideas"

"He must be the Good Idea guy" former Team Leader talking about a Staff Officer who was trying to change our plan.