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!

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