Tomorrow I leave for the next phase of my trip; Army training at Fort Jackson.  My guess is that my days will be very different.  I know that rather than my comfortable but seedy hotel style accomodations will be traded for barracks life.  Based on my experiences at bootcamp and what others have told me, snoring can be a major issue.  A new friend told me today that his bunkmate snored so loud that it rattled the bedframe.  It's for the next few weeks that I was told to invest in some quality earplugs. 

The tempo has been slow enough this week that I got two books read during down time.  The first was "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" by Ken Kesey.  The movie came out in 1975 I think and starred Jack Nicholson and more obscurely, Brad Dourif, who played the creepy Wormtongue character in the first Lord of the Rings movie.  Anyway it was a good quick read.  I gravitate toward those movies and stories where the man resists The Man, who tries to break him but can't.  "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" are two others that come to mind.  Keysey's book is an interesting look at the inside of a mental institution, personality dynamics, what real therapy can look like, what leadership can look like.  I'm not condoning what was accomplished through that leadership, however, at least in the disturbing last few pages of the book.

The other book is one that was long recommended by my friend Bryan.  I found a copy of "Executive Power" by Vince Flynn at the base library.  He's actually a Minnesota author who Joe Soucheray from AM1500 is fond of and plugs often on his show.  Flynn, in return, created a character named Mr. Soucheray who is a neighbor of the book's main character and spends his days puttering in his garage listening to the radio.  Anyway, I wasn't that impressed by the novel, no offense Bryan. 

One of the main story lines involves a deputy Secretary of State leaking some classified information which leads to the death of some Navy SEALs during a covert op.  This is anathema to the main character, Mitch Rapp.  However, throughout the book he is consistently telling people classified information based on his ability to just know that he can trust those people.  He even talks to his wife about some stuff in a D.C. restaurant when she doesn't need to know and certainly has no security clearance.  Being in the industry makes me particularly sensitive to how classified information is handled.  What Mr. Rapp is doing is no less a breach of security than what the deputy SECSTATE did.  Do you think that spies might not frequent D.C. restaurants hoping to gather a little information passed between politicians, staffers, diplomats, etc?  It might seem paranoid but that's why they make a lot of rules about what we can and can't talk about.  Sure the chances are slim that anything leaked will get to anyone who would know how to use it but it only takes one little morsel to cause a major problem.

So that and the fact that Rapp, who is supposed to be a phenomenal counter-terrorism expert really is just a phenomenal commando type.  The real goal of counter-terrorism isn't about taking out guys who do bad stuff, it's about preventing them from being able to act in the first place.  Probably the best CT types in the country have never fired a gun and spend a lot more time on the computer than at the range.

Anyway, I need to turn in so I can rest up for the big bus ride to Ft. Jackson tomorrow.