Here are my two cents after having briefly worked with Matt.

Overall, I thought of him to be a go-getter type of guy.

He left...my first impression: so what, the mission still continues.

Zabul is hard...organizational issues between the Romanians and American Task Force and its headquarters in Kandahar. It's the poorest province in Afghanistan. What district or province isn't hard? No easy button in Afghanistan...sorry.

Most of us at Task Force Stryker cover both Kandahar and Zabul and all the headaches that generate from that. Governance, Reconstruction, Development and all that other jazz.

In conclusion- we are fine. Other people have stepped up to fill the roles. In fact I've never even seen heard of the media attention until I signed up for this forum today...so maybe it's a case of armchair generals and reporters overanalyzing things.

P.S. Building a girl's school is dumb, especially in a place like Zabul. Z-PRT has been assessed to not move too far away from HWY1.