[Hmm, for some of Our Troops it appears a weapons catalog would be more fun than porn. The article below is one of the creepiest pieces I've seen about America's professional battle bots.]
The Bitter End: Democrats are right to push for an end to the Iraq war. But don't expect the troops to be grateful.
By Spencer Ackerman Washington Monthly, June 2007
... Haunted by Vietnam, Democrats are determined to express support for the troops. This is admirable. The truth of the matter, however, is this: many troops in Iraq, perhaps even most of them, want to stay and fight. That doesn’t mean that we should stay in Iraq any longer. It does mean, however, that if Democrats want to bridge the divide between themselves and the military—an effort further complicated by their opposition to the war—they’re going to have to recognize that arguing in the name of the troops isn’t going to work.
To speak to the troops fighting in Iraq is to see a particularly stark difference between their mindset and that of most Americans today. I saw this when, a few weeks into the surge, I traveled to Baghdad to see what the change in tactics looked like on the ground. One of the places I visited, on a hot March afternoon, was a much-heralded “neighborhood outpost” in the Hurriyeh Joint Security Station in western Baghdad. Crammed into the basement of the building, which houses a contingent of Iraqi soldiers and policemen, were soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 325th Infantry Regiment. I was struck by the griminess of the locale. The air was thick with the smell of dried sweat, and all the light came from a few intensely flickering florescent bulbs. Don’t ask about the latrines.
None of this, though, dampened the mood of Lieutenant Jonathan Wellman, a twenty-five-year-old Georgian. His platoon from the 57th Military Police Company, which was partnering with the 1-325 to “mentor” the Iraqi police, had arrived to check the outpost’s communications equipment. The task was as irritating as it was important, and one of Wellman’s sergeants, bored to tears and uncomfortable standing around in his body armor, mentioned how much better everything would be in Hawaii, where the company would rotate to in a few months.
Wellman wasn’t having it. “What do you got in Hawaii that you don’t have here?” he asked. “There’s sand and beaches. You can’t tell the difference.”
“Chicks in bikinis,” the sergeant felt compelled to note.
“Who needs chicks in bikinis when you got terrorists with AKs?” Wellman retorted. “You can get a hard-on from that.” ...
<http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0706.ackerman.html>
Carl
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