I don’t know much about the guy who’s writing the blog from Iraq called “Just Another Soldier,” but he sure can write. Maybe the true journalistic innovation of this war will not be embedded journalists but embedded soldier-bloggers. The hard reporting on what the hell is going on over there is invaluable. And then there are these classic insights into army life:
The first and second squads of my platoon share the bottom floor of a two-floor barracks. It’s an open bay and we do most of our squad-level classroom type training here. If you are wondering what an open bay barracks is like, watch the beginning of Full Metal Jacket. It’s just one big room with a bunch of wall lockers and bunks, except ours is seriously run down. A few days ago we’re all working on disassembling and assembling the M249 machine gun (aka “SAW” for squad automatic weapon). Once again, I had the best time behind Dan. I think I could have beat him, but I believe that the politically intelligent thing to do was to just let him win. I think there is more value in him feeling superior than there is for me in the gratification of beating him. Or I could just be full of shit and this is my elaborate excuse for not beating him. :) It’s probably a little of both. Anyways, after the guys got tired of this, we started working on taking it apart and putting it back together while blindfolded. This can be really tricky, by the way. While James (another city cop in real life) was taking it apart, he was having trouble with one of the parts and asked, “Does anyone have a Gerber? [multi-tool]” and he puts out his hand. Without missing a beat, M______ says, “Yeah, here.”, whips out his dick and puts it in James’s open hand. Everyone was on the floor in tears. For about a good ten seconds, James didn’t seem to know how to handle this unprecedented violation, and continued to work on the weapon before finally taking the blindfold off and making an attempt at trying to find some sort of physical retribution for the affront. This incident has become a source of much discussion and the jury is still out on who is more gay: the guy that touched a dick or the guy that let a guy touch his dick. One could literally write volumes about the homophobically homoerotic undercurrents in the infantry.
Maybe that guy should write the volumes.
ONE LIBERAL FOR BUSH: Roger Simon joins disgruntled Democrat Zell Miller and opts for Bush in 2004.
TWO IRAQ FIBS: Just little ones. From MoDo, to begin with, as usual. Then there’s this classic from the BBC:
More US troops have been killed since “peace” was declared than died in hostilities during the invasion of Iraq itself.
Who exactly declared “peace”? Er, no one. But it gives the guy a nice mock-the-Yanks sneer line.
The Dish 