All The News That's Fit To Print

Not many people work here. I've lamented that before, and it is still true. I put in a good half day, and I think I do the most of the staff guys. So how do they fill their time? The Communications staff plays video games. The Supply staff watches TV. In the Operations Center, there is more visibility from the command, so they are more subtle in their time wasting. At least one good hour a day, if you really stretch it out, can be filled with the newspaper. I'm not talking the Weekly World News, which we all know is the only true paper, but the Stars and Stripes which is a near second to the WWN in reliability.

Stars and Stripes is a Dept of Defense creation. It is available in paper copy or on "digits" as the Army says since electronically and digitally are full words and not Army approved abbreviations or acronyms. Digits is much more surreptitiously read in the Op Center and thus the favored version among the staff. There are comics, Dear Abby, and even a "news from all 50 states" portion. It makes me feel like I'm at home. For instance, today there was even an article about the doctor who gave me my cortisone shot last spring being charged with secretly video taping his sponsor mids when they didn't know about it. Always good to get news from the home front. There was also a human interest story on a newly married pair of Privates First Class who lived on the same FOB whose commands had worked together to get them a common barracks room. Precious. Luckily I only figuratively threw up on the keyboard when I read that one today, so my computer survived.

Those were both in the S&S today, and as nice as it was to read such uplifting stories there were two stories this last week that made me question the editors understanding that he was paid by the Department of Defense. There was a story, really more of a puff piece, about a soldier had deserted in Germany and about the organization that helps deserters get back on their feet and find jobs in spite of their background. It gave a website and everything. The Army is getting a good return on their investment for that one. Then there was a story about a little girl who had gotten drunk when she licked the hand-sanitizer that her preschool teacher gave her off her hands. Of all the hundreds of stories to choose from, what were they thinking publishing that one?

There are two things that are in high supply on every US FOB in Iraq. Hand sanitizer and borderline alcoholics. General Order #1 for US Central Command states that, among other things, alcohol is forbidden. This rule has split soldiers into two groups: those who are looking forward to getting home to see their families and those looking forward to getting home and having a beer. It is just a sad truth that there are quite a few people over here who see being over here as being in a forced rehab center. And then a government sponsored news paper writes a story about how to get drunk off of one of the most common things around. Unbelievable. After I read that, I was expecting to go out and see soldiers drinking out of the hand sanitizer dispensers on the port-o-johns like they were a water fountain. (Irony, Koichi?)

I suppose that the editor would spout some trope (that's a proper use of the word, Tim) about the First Amendment or some such baloney, but puh-lease. If being subversive is truly a right, is it a right to do it at the expense of the one being subverted? There may be a justification for the endless stories S&S has on the Pat Tillman controversy, Haditha, and how the surge is not giving the results desired. They could be called news. But how to break Gen Ord #1 and how to desert? Maybe S&S isn't quite the right place for those two. Just throwin' that out there.