Friday, June 30, 2006

We Take It Day By Day

Dear readers, it has been a little over a day since I landed in Kuwait City. The flight was long but not as bad as it was hyped to be. We had a stop in Bangor, Maine where we were greeted by handshaking, bonafide patriots that thanked us for what we were doing. I don't get their frame of mind, really. But whatever helps them sleep at night. Our next stop was outside Frankfurt, Germany for a short while. I exchanged our pitiful dollars for some Euros for a souvenier, which I hope I don't lose. Upon taking the steps down to Kuwaiti soil, I found the weather fairly shitty but not as bad as it was hyped. The way I can describe it is a car's AC on a hot day when it's still blowing hot air. The wind doesn't bring a cool draft, just more heat. It's hotter in Kuwait than Iraq, so getting used to it here is advantageous.
When we arrived we were force fed a lot of tripe about how dangerous blogs are to security, and how Osama is twiddling his fingers, laughing manically because he found out ultra sensitive information like how mad I get when we have to move a lot of boxes. They prattled on that information from blogs could be used against us or our family. They might find my blog and tell me to delete it and send it to hell before someone destroys the world with the knowledge I gave them. But in the meantime, I'll keep on truckin.


AH

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The Man, The Myth, The Legend

I dreadfully trotted to a range early this morning, the quick and dirty kind that superiors hurry along, sharing the same discontent with us common underlings. We arrived fairly early and there was another group already standing by, waiting to use the same range. The paper pushers at brigade had decided to come down for trigger time. It was there I spotted Lt. Watada, Ft. Lewis superstar of the media. For all those that were questioning where he is and what he's up to, he's doing the daily grind of whatever a cushy brigade job entails. I take my camera everywhere if my earlier posts were any indication, and today was no different. I wanted to snag a few pictures of him but could find no tact way of going about it, so I did the only sensible thing: pretend to pose for unrelated photos.

You big meanies!
Center: Figure of Our Times.
Right: Some spaz.

He must've noticed the commotion we were making and turned his back to a few shots. As we were standing however, I noticed he was reclusive and isolated from his group. I can't imagine the media-fed elephant in the room they have to deal with. I did manage to snag this winner, though:

Don't mind me, just emo'in

Above: Moments before Lt. Watada is devoured by a twenty foot tall emo kid.

I was glad to end this phase of writing on a humorous note for a change. I hope to have a positive tone in the future for those who think my writing is too negative and cynical. Everyone else, I thank you for your support and kind words that you bless me with in my comments section. You can reach me at hortonhearsit at hotmail.com to get my address sometime in early July. I don't know when I'll be able to communicate or update this blog but it should be within the next few weeks.

Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day.

AH

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Compassionate(?) Shit of The Week

For the first time in my two year career, a week went by where not one certain thing dominated the week with a strangle hold on the practical and efficient. We had half days Tuesday and Thursday, which means nothing was going on and we were cut loose at 1:00 or so. Last Thursday the dreaded weight room detail was started in the morning instead of in the middle of the day. And these tired eyes couldn't believe that there was a sufficient amount of people to carry out the task. Bravo, Army. You managed to not be so gutless and cruel for a three day work week. Don't go and strain yourselves to be reasonable all next week, though. I can't imagine the military running on well greased wheels. It's never been done before, who knows what to expect?


AH

Friday, June 09, 2006

Two Week Special Edition of SSOTW™


It was not my original intention to skip a week without an entry, but it turned out that way out of sheer neglect and procrastination. We are busy tying up all the loose ends that go with a deployment, like shots, wills and so forth. I still cannot say when we leave, but it is no secret if you watch the local news or listen to what Rumsfeld announced months ago. We can't say where we're going to our families but it's in the public domain anyway. Also, they say don't post pictures of Strykers that can easily be accessed on Google Image Search. Who is being satisfied by this hoop jumping? I'd like to know.

And now to the Stupid Shit. The nominees are:

Mandatory Fun
Lt. Watada Media Circus
Stricken Three Day Weekends

And the winner is:

Lt. Watada Media Circus!



Suckaaa


If you've been current on the news, you might have heard about an officer from Ft. Lewis refusing his order to go to Iraq. But unlike some armchair patriots around the web calling him a coward and a leftist tool, I know Lt. Watada. He was in my company for over a year as our Fire Support Officer. I didn't talk to him much, seeing how he is an officer and I'm a lowly junior enlisted, but he was all about his soldiers and his job. There is much brouhaha about how he objects to what he calls an 'illegal, immoral' war since he received his commission months after the Iraq war started. But what these kneejerk reactionaries don't consider is the thought process every soldier goes through. Watada is not your average grunt; his job is to coordinate close air support and artillery barrages, which means he has the ability to drop precision guided bombs when given the order. Like any soldier, I am worried that I could accidently harm or kill a civilian when I'm in Iraq, but his job would most certainly include collateral damage. He would have that on his conscious until the day he died; was that purported training camp he dropped a 500 pound bomb on really a hospital or a school?
I sincerely don't think he's a coward, fame hound or pussy. I think he should still be punished because of his refusal of an order however. Someone is going in his place because of his actions, and his training could have saved lives in a close air support situation.
What is maddening is all these pundits speak of mega-patriotism and support of troops from one side of their mouth, then damn Watada out of the other, calling for his jailing and execution. He's done more for this country than your blogs have, give it a rest.

AH