Sorry I haven't written for a while.  Our internet connection has been so slow that it's been barely worth trying to log on.  It's a weird, new aspect of going to war these days; guys download and watch movies, have video chats with their kids, wives or girlfriends and play online games.  The upside is a better connection to loved ones.  The downside is that rather than connecting with each other we're often wrapped up in some form of amusement.  We still talk at meals and between training evolutions, which is good.  I'm just anti-amusement.  The word itself is a clue as to why.  "Muse" means to think, or to reflect on.  The prefix "A-" means "without" as in "amoral".  So being anti-amusement makes me pro-thinking.

That's all an aside.  Last Sunday my sister, brother-in-law, two nieces, one nephew and my father all came to visit me from where they live in Anderson, SC.  I hadn't seen most of them for a year, which is a long time when it comes to the young'uns.  After a fine non-cafeteria meal we found a walkway along one of the rivers in Columbia.  The path wound through the waterworks, along the historic canal and past some historical places of interest. 

I was in uniform since I thought my family would enjoy seeing what I look like in my new camouflage duds.  I like to pay particular attention to the people who pass by whenever I'm in uniform and observe their reactions.  Depending on which uniform I am wearing most people don't seem to notice.  Although it is difficult to miss a man running around in a crackerjack costume.  Some look fearful (I don't understand this) and some look disgusted (I do understand this).  I just smile at them and say hello.  A precious number warm my heart by how they react. 

A timid looking middle aged woman passed our group on her way out of the park.  As she did, she looked directly at me and with a shy voice said, "Thank you."  I don't think anyone else noticed and she passed quickly by before I could say thank you in return.  Other people have said similar things to me, normally more boisterously and often stopping to ask me a few questions.  But something about this woman's quiet sincerity and how serious it seemed to her that she say something made her comment mean a lot more.  A lump formed in my throat and I suddenly felt a lot better about this new job I have.

I got my weapon yesterday.  And about 150lbs of other stuff too.  Various cold weather gear: goggles, light gloves, heavy gloves, socks, long johns, heavier long johns, hats, gore-tex/thinsulate suit, and insulated boots.  Body armor: vest, ceramic plate inserts, axillary supplemental pads, kevlar helmet with night-vision goggle mounting bracket, shoulder pads, neck and throat protector, groin protector, knee and elbow pads.  Add the insect netting, backpack, rainsuit, socks, warm weather boots, sweat suit, shorts, t-shirts, more t-shirts, 4 complete desert camoflage uniforms, 2 "boonie" hats, two 8-point hats, earplugs, Camelback hydration system, two canteens and 3 duffel bags to carry it all in.  Then there's the prescription sunglasses, prescription ballistic googles, the extra prescription glasses, rifle magazines, sling, belts, cleaning kit, translation guides and first aid kit.

What does this cost the taxpayer?  I'm guessing probably $6,000.  A lot of that stuff I get to keep when this is all over.  The pads that line the helmet by themselves cost $280.  We have a single bandage that costs $82.  It's made out of a derivative of chitin, the same stuff lobster shells are made of.

These first few days we've learned how to handle, disassemble, clean, clear and fire our weapons, combat first aid, map reading and navigation, intro to Islam, intro to middle eastern and west-asian cultures and radio use and communications.  Tomorrow we spend the whole day at the firing range. 

I'm going for close to a year.  They spend all of this time and energy on people who are going for six months as well.  Start adding salary, benefits, travel, meals, and the numerous hidden costs of sending someone oveseas and it starts to become clear how this war is costing us so much.  I think heard that it costs close to $500,000 per year to support the average person we have serving overseas. 

Anyway, I want to respond to Lisa's reply to my last entry.  She made a lot of good points and it made me think about my position on this "war on terror" from a different perspective.  It will have to wait until tomorrow though at the earliest.  We've been getting up between 4:15 and 5:15 every morning since we got here and push training until dinner which is between 6:00 and 7:00.  Then we clean our spaces, review our materials, sort our gear and go to bed.  It's an interesting way to live. 

Today is my second day at Fort Jackson.  Yesterday went well.  I was a little nervous the Army was going to start chewing us out like you see in the movies.  They didn't.  Saying "Hooah" all the time is going to take some getting used to.  That's the standard Army response meaning, "Yes, I understand."  Nothing against my Army friends but I don't think it sounds very intelligent.  The Navy's "Aye Aye," is much preferable.  By the way, for you etymologists, "Aye Aye," is derived from the phrase, "I understand and I will obey."  Nobody really knows where Hooah came from.

Tomorrow they are going to issue us our weapons, cold weather gear, and body armor.  I may not be able to sleep well tonight with that kind of excitement at hand.  It's like Christmas Eve.  The bad part is that we're responsible for hauling all of our gear around on our bodies and I already have a huge duffel bag full of goodies plus my carry-on and computer bag.  By the time we get out of "Relaxin' Jackson" (Thanks Gary) we should have two more duffels.

One of today's briefs was delivered by a wry commander of a Military Police unit that worked convoy security in Iraq for over a year.  If you couldn't guess, that's probably one of the most dangerous jobs in the military.  After he introduced himself he went on to give one of the most sobering talks I've ever heard.  He talked about his men who didn't come home, about a dozen, and the ones who were wounded, about 150.  Among many other anecdotes he spoke of a young man who, after being struck multiple times by enemy fire refused to come down from manning the .50 caliber machine gun turret atop his up-armored HUMVEE.  Their convoy had been ambushed and was being pursued by enemy vehicles through a gauntlet of small arms fire and RPGs (rocket propelled grenades).  Eventually an RPG struck the back of this young man's vehicle and detonated, sending fragments of hot metal into his body and brain.  He lived long enough to be evacuated to a hospital where this commander was with him as he died of his wounds.

This commander went to the house of this man's parents where he saw their fence festooned with yellow ribbons and a huge picture of their young soldier.  He attended the funeral in a small town in Pennsylvania where the whole town turned out. 

His point was not to be morbid, although everyone's attention was rivetted and where I had been dangerously close to dozing off, I was now wide awake.  His point was that this is a war zone to which we are headed.  Some people there want nothing more than to kill Americans.  Our enemy there (adherents to a militant, pantheistic Islam) sees this as an epic battle between ideologies and they have a 100 year time line to meet their objectives.  What kind of timeline do we in the United States accept to see them defeated?  After just a few years and a three thousand dead we have largely lost our resolve.  If they beat us in the front lines of this war, Iraq and Afghanistan, or rather, if they don't lose, they will be bolstered by having faced down the sole super power remaining in the world and chased it back to its own shores.  They will no longer have anyone to fear and they will then move on to Southeast Asia where they are already establishing a foothold.  Imagine trying to rout an enemy from the thousands of nameless islands in the Indonesian archipelago.  Impossible.  And they will continue to spread, subjecting their conquered lands to a tyranny characterised like all tyrannys by manipulation, paranoia, fear and violence.

So we must also see this as an epic battle between ideologies.  We can't ignore this.  How well does it work to ignore the murderous and psychotic individuals in the world, whether manifested as rapists and serial killers or despots and dictators?  Eventually they must be dealt with.  They can't be negotiated with and they won't compromise any more than you can negotiate or compromise with a deadly virus.  What does that leave?  Only two options; containment or anihilation. 

Does anyone see a third option?  I'd like to hear it.  Have a good night.

On October 30th a Navy F-18 aircraft accidentally dropped a dummy bomb which clipped a warehouse and skidded harmlessly to a stop against a shed.  First of all, thank God it was a dummy.  Second, good thing it didn't crash through the roof of a school or shopping mall.  Third, was this really an accident?

All right, in this case I bet it was an accident.  Something to consider though is the not so immediately apparent benefit of having our military, FBI, CIA, or other large three letter organizations suffer well publicized screw-ups.  My guess is that they aren't necessarily all screw-ups, and if they are, the people in charge aren't always disappointed that the stories are publicized.  What better way to get the bad guys to relax and make mistakes than to let them believe the people in charge of hunting them down are a bunch of clowns? 

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. 

Instructions from “Smallpox Vaccination Patient Self-Care Kit” given to us after our shots yesterday.

            Day 3-6 as needed – Start Claritin for relief of itching.

            Day 5 – Replace waterproof bandage with new one.

            Day 6 – Site begins to turn white and fills with pus.

            Day 8 – Change waterproof bandage.

            Day 10 – Have vaccine site read by Medical for positive take.

            Day 11 – Change waterproof bandage.

            Day 14 – Vaccine site begins to dry as scab forms.

            Day 14 – Change out last waterproof bandage.

            3-4 Weeks – Scab will dry and fall off leaving a pitted scar over the vaccine site.  Discard scab in biohazardous waste container provided by Medical.

Oh yeah, stay away from children (wasn't told why or for how long) and be sure to take an ibuprofen every 4 hours.  Why the ibuprofen?  Well, because you want to shrink the swelling of the sack surrounding your heart, of course.

Let's see. . .  Today for lunch I enjoyed an appetizer sampler of Tetanus and Influenza.  For the main course, Small Pox with a small side of Anthrax.  (The Typhoid just didn't look fresh and the Hep A & B won't be in season for another three months.)  Dessert - a magnificent PPD sensitivity test.  I hear this place has the best Meningococcal/Yellow Fever combo in the tri-state area.  Maybe tomorrow!

A few weeks ago I got notice from my Chief in the Navy that I won an all-expense paid trip to an exotic overseas location.  The only catches were that I can't take my family, I have to work at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and I won't be coming back for a long time.  I mean a long time.  I leave in a few days and there is a lot to do.  I have trouble packing for a two week vacation! 

Some of you with whom I have already spoken about my excursion may wonder why I am being so vague, not just in this initial entry but as I will in any future ones as well.  It's a little thing the DoD likes to call "OPSEC" or Operational Security.  The idea behind OPSEC is that if we aren't careful about what we say and how we behave the bad guys can learn a lot about our military operations, bases and personnel.  90% of intelligence is put together from what is called "open source" information.  And 47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.  Open source intel is gathered from any unclassified source like newspapers, libraries, public meetings, academic journals, the internet, blogs, etc.  A commander in Iraq once wrote an open letter to the editor of a military periodical explaining, in unfortunate detail, how his people were able to successfully counter road-side bombs.  How handy for the insurgents!  Thank you very much.

Anyway, the concept is that through collecting and interpreting seemingly innocuous and separate events a picture of something far more significant emerges.  Like a puzzle, the more pieces you get, the easier it is to figure out what the picture is to the point where you may not need to gather many at all, if you gather the right pieces, to get the gist of the whole picture. 

None of this is what I wanted to write about.  I won't be able to share many details of my trip but I still want to write about it.  Not just to keep my friends and family updated but also to keep a record for myself.  If I don't write things down I forget them.  Except for entertainment trivia.  It's shameful but my mind is an unwitting sponge for that junk.  So if I can't write about what I'm doing what can I write about?  That's what I've been wondering. 

Really there is plenty.  What will my living conditions be like?  How will I deal with issues of privacy and personalities, how will I spend my spare time, what is the food like?  I am famously non-selective and cheap when it comes to my diet so will I binge on food I normally refuse to pay for but love, like pastries and other high-fat, low-nutrient breakfast foods?  Every day at work I would normally eat a bland bowl of oatmeal.  Because it was good for my heart?  No, because it's pretty much the cheapest gut-filler you can buy!

I'm curious to see how often I will be able to interact with the native population.  Will I be allowed off base or will they keep me sequestered in a bunker the whole time?  I really want to get "outside the wire".  If I have to go halfway around the world for as long as I'm going to be gone I want to get my money's worth.  See some sights, meet the people, experience something other than the "Little America" I'll have within the walls of my compound.  Yep, I'll even have access to the epitome of U.S. culture abroad; a McDonalds.

How will I change when no longer under the influence of my friends and more importantly, my wife?  How will I handle the lonliness?  Or maybe I won't be lonely.  Traditionally I don't mingle well on business trips.  I'm the guy who brings a book to the conference and reads during the frequent breaks instead of build my social and business network.  "Hey, lets go play pool after the banquet tonight," somebody suggests.  No thanks, I'd rather go for a walk around this town I've never been to before.  By myself.

What do I expect from my readers?  Well I hope you ask questions and tell me what you think about things.  I'll answer your questions if I they don't violate OPSEC.  I really want this exercise to be interactive.  The blogs to which I contribute I do so only because I like that the authors write back and we generate new ideas and interesting questions and novel topics.  Blogs bore me when it seems like the author only wants to keep what is essentially an online diary. 

So, welcome to my first blog.  Will all of the entries be as long as this one?  I don't know.  Those of you with whom I correspond occasionally know that I can suffer from diahrea of the keyboard.