For those of you who used to follow the adventures at Armor Geddon, I thought I'd let you know that Red6 and his wife are home safe from their year in Iraq.

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Read this too: An Honest Confession by an American Coward by Pat Conroy (via Cold Fury)

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Read this.

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I just came across photos of PFC Gunnar Becker's headstone. It's beautiful, and so fitting. I love it, Debey. The tank is so cool. And I'd like to think that his friends are leaving him Mt. Dew and whiskey...maybe to wash down that bug he ate!

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Greyhawk has a lengthy and thorough analysis of the damage the Abu Ghraib scandal did to the war effort. It's posted in two parts: A Combination of Blurring and Smearing Part 1 and Part 2 (the internal links are busted, but you can figure it out).

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Let Them Eat Bullets

A nation that's defended Europe from aggression in the 60 years since World War II is asking why Iraq can't defend itself. The fact is, Iraqis risk their lives for their country every day.

Clearly the days when Democrats warned of a long twilight struggle and pledged to pay any price and bear any burden to ensure the success and survival of liberty are over, judging from remarks by Carl Levin, incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee.

"We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves," Levin opined Wednesday at a Capitol Hill press conference. "The only way for Iraqi leaders to squarely face that reality is for President Bush to tell them that the United States will begin a phased redeployment of our forces within four to six months."

"We cannot be their security blanket," he added. But why not, if it's in our best long-term security interest?

Yes, we should demand more of the Iraqis. But those who ask whether we can or should stop Iraqis from killing themselves forget that we're in this to stop others from killing us and using Iraq as a base camp from which to do it.

We've been Europe's security blanket for six decades. We are Japan's security blanket. We are South Korea's. It's been said that were it not for us, the French would be speaking German and the Germans would be speaking Russian. In 1938, the West decided it couldn't be Czechoslovakia's security blanket and sold out that country in Munich, Germany. The rest, as they say, is history.

Read the rest. Via Cold Fury and Instapundit, who says he'd like to see a phased redeployment from Europe. And how.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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CaliValleyGirl sent me an email today, asking me if we know anything else about the craziness that is my husband's next assignment. She said,

Man, you know, it's strange...part of me almost misses the deployment...don't get me wrong, it sucked...however, I felt like I was part of something bigger. You know? The ups and downs, but I was in it together with all these other families. I felt more a part of the military...I miss that.

I think that life during deployment feels more precious than life out of it. I didn't think OIF II was that bad for me. I have no memory of how I passed the time though; my husband's been in the field two days now and I'm bored out of my mind. But when we're facing deployment, I think we try to find the silver lining as best we can. We relish the tight community that develops between those on the homefront and feel a part of something big and meaningful. And, on a more practical level, we come up with all these things we will accomplish when they're gone: next year I'll lose weight because I won't cook as well, I'll make those two quilts I've been talking about for years, I'll read all those books, I'll fly to L.A. to visit CaliValleyGirl, and so on. We convince ourselves that the year will go by fast because we'll be so busy. And then, when he gets home, we'll start a family. Everything will be perfect, because we've convinced ourselves that it's all working out according to plan.

But that's not what's happening now. My husband found out that his switch went through. He originally had made a scratch-my-back deal with his branch manager that she'd let him leave if he took this slot in the deploying unit that no one else wanted. We were all set to do that, when he got word that he's going directly to Civil Affairs training. No more deployment for us.

ArmyWifeToddlerMom always says that when you're on the outside looking in, people think that reintegration is just jumping up and down with a handmade sign and life is all flowers and sausages. But for the people going through it, it's not always that simple. That's how I feel today about this non-deployment. I would never say that making a quilt or reading a book is better than (or even comparable to) having my husband living in the house with me, but I had psyched myself up with all the ways I would get through next year, and it's just strange to turn all those thoughts off all of a sudden.

And the family thing, the family thing is killing me.

I heard my husband tell his mom on the phone the other day that we just had our hearts set on having a baby "like a normal couple." The way he phrased it, "like a normal couple," broke my heart. I want that so bad, and I thought it was within reach. He'd come home from deployment and have time where he was stuck in school and not going anywhere. And we'd be together for the entire pregnancy and birth. Like a normal couple. Unlike nearly every other Army wife I know who has done it alone. We had found a way to control our destiny, if only for a while.

And now, now he starts training a year early. And we're not ready to be parents just yet. Our options have now become 1) go for it before we're ready, or 2) take the chance of doing it apart. I don't like either of those options.

Civil Affairs most likely means more deployments in our future. We're fine with that, but we just wanted to get a leg up on the Army, one last stint of normalcy before he gives his life over to the whims of current events. And I find myself extremely disappointed.

I'm disappointed that my husband isn't deploying. Try explaining that complex emotion to family and friends.

So I milked all that patriotic praise out of you guys earlier this month, and apparently we don't deserve it at this time. My husband isn't going anywhere just yet.

Which is a good thing. Just a different thing.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:25 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 "...and apparently we don't deserve it at this time..." Just because he's not deploying? No you're wrong. Nothing has changed. He's just going to do something different. In the long run it will be something he really wants to be doing and something that will help in a bigger way. You both deserve every bit of praise for doing a difficult job. As for children... I have to say, there is no "good" time to have them. Trust me on this one. If it's good in one way it will suck pond water in another way. Kids are one thing that can never be properly prepared for. It's more difficult in the military because of all the moving, deployments, etc. but still there is no good time. Many people "think" themselves out of having kids because they never "think" the time is right and they wait too long. This comes to you from someone who had 2 kids at the "worst" possible times. :-)

Posted by: Teresa at November 17, 2006 05:40 PM (gsbs5)

2 sarah, please cross post this over at SpouseBuzz... I too am on this hurry up and wait thing...

Posted by: armywifetoddlermom at November 17, 2006 05:45 PM (GrO13)

3 It'll happen for you when the time is right. I know that sounds trite and cliche. But from what I've seen there is no perfect time. Thanks for the note you left on my blog. Was much appreciated. I am checking my reads, just not as much.

Posted by: Mare at November 20, 2006 02:55 AM (3cGBi)

4 Ditto to Teresa's first comments. I have no idea about the kid thing! Give Charlie a pat on the head for me!

Posted by: MaryIndiana at November 21, 2006 05:11 AM (YwdKL)

5 Well Sarah, I can confirm that there is no "good" or "right" time to have kids. The "good time" comes AFTER you've had them. It is a new adventure that you are never fully prepared for. Think of everything you've been through with your puppy. Now imagine the love you have for that puppy multiplied by 100 or 1000. That is a kid! Good luck to you both. Incidentally, I encourage you to have kids in the military, it is much cheaper! Jim

Posted by: Jim "The Cat" at November 23, 2006 06:33 AM (bapGX)

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Deskmerc keeps asking what Finance officers could possibly be doing in the field. I ask the same question every time he goes. Seriously, they play with fake money and pretend to pay contractors and stuff, while getting "mortared." I know, I know.

The last time he went out, he told me a great story. They were getting "attacked" and he and another hooah guy ran out and started "shooting" at the enemy, hamming it up with some m-f words as they valiantly, and fakely, fought back. And the officer in charge of the exercise told them to watch their mouths.

Remember: Horrific, deplorable violence is OK, as long as people don't say any naughty words.

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CaliValleyGenius has a post up about taxes.

I've written so many times here about fraud, waste, and abuse. I can think of dozens of examples in my own life of how the government wastes money in the military community. And if they're wasting it in the few places I've been, I can't stand to think how much waste there really is.

I've got one word to sum up fraud, waste, and abuse: Pearl.

Pearl was our education counselor in Germany. She was brought out of retirement to fill the position. She gave soldiers so much wrong advice that it makes me ill, she couldn't write a grammatical sentence to save her life, and she constantly brought me her work and asked for help because she didn't understand. I made $8.50 an hour; she made over $60,000 a year.

And if there's one Pearl, there are surely plenty of others.

The government doesn't spend money wisely, and there aren't many checkups once it's spent to make sure they're getting bang for their buck. I don't want the government to have a dime more than they need.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Hi Sarah! Thanks for commenting on the taxes post. Your blog is fantastic! I can see I'll be a daily reader from here on out. Have a good day today!

Posted by: KC at November 17, 2006 10:40 AM (TSy2I)

2 Oh man, don't even get me started on Pearl. She surely has to be the biggest waste of the Army's money. Ever. (although I've seen some pretty awful waste and fraud in the Army.)

Posted by: Erin at November 26, 2006 05:39 AM (D8Fkq)

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I was messing around over at Tammi's World and decided I wanted to do part of her About Me:

* I AM: the Household 7. Most wives say they're the 6, but I work for a living!
* I WANT: my husband to be as happy as I am
* I HAVE: nine big plastic tubs of yarn, waiting to be used
* I WISH: my body didn't require sleep; I think sleep is a waste of time
* I HATE: disagreeing with people
* I FEAR: losing my husband to a car accident
* I HEAR: Charlie barking his fool head off as kids leave for school
* I SEARCH: for Charlie's kong toy; we threw it down the hall a year ago and never saw it again
* I WONDER: how long we'll be at our next duty station
* I REGRET: not meeting Bunker before he died
* I LOVE: the Apollo program
* I ALWAYS: knit while I watch TV; I don't know how to just watch TV
* I AM NOT: a feminist, by any stretch of the term
* I DANCE: to Elvis with the dog sometimes
* I SING: Swedish showtunes when I feel like belting it out; somehow my singing voice sounds awesome when it's not in English
* I CRY: at the end of Raising Arizona and most episodes of Cold Case

DO YOU:

* HAVE A CRUSH: Yes, on every man I've ever met named Fred, which is my favorite name in the whole wide world. I have no idea why I'm hooked on that name, but I get giddy around every Fred I've ever met. I remember the day we met Angie's husband, and my husband went "oh lord, here we go" when we found out his name. Angie's Fred, on the other hand, has no idea who I am even though we've met several times, which obviously points to how cool I am. (By the way, just so I don't look like the only crazy one, my husband has a crush on one of my friends from college; he schemes for her to get divorced and then marry his best friend from high school.)
* WANT TO GET MARRIED: I'd sooner die than be at a point in my life where that'd be possible.
* GET MOTION SICKNESS: not really
* THINK YOU'RE A HEALTH FREAK: ha, I wish
* CURRENT HAIR COLOR: brown, same as it's ever been. It always makes me laugh when someone says I've changed my hair color, because I've never dyed it or gotten highlights or anything.
* EYE COLOR: blue or something. I've worn contacts so long that I can touch my bare eyeball with my finger and not flinch, which makes my husband want to puke.
* BIRTHPLACE: I am way too proud of being an Okie.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:50 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 I'm laughing so hard I'm crying about the Fred stuff. See, I think you should just have a baby girl so she can marry my lil' Freddie. Our Freddie is the 4th consecutive generation with the name in our family. Whenever you get to meet Freddie you'll for sure have a crush on him too.

Posted by: Angie at November 17, 2006 05:11 AM (ec43W)

2 p.s. Fred says he DOES know who you are Too Funny!

Posted by: Angie at November 17, 2006 05:15 AM (ec43W)

3 "hey, how you doin?"

Posted by: fred at November 17, 2006 09:22 AM (GrO13)

4 you kill me, with this Fred thing. That is a lot of yarn!!

Posted by: armywifetoddlermom at November 17, 2006 09:23 AM (GrO13)

5 A finance officer in the field? What, pray tell, is he doing?

Posted by: Fredmerc at November 17, 2006 11:34 AM (Qlh7l)

6 I enjoyed your thoughts - keep them coming and thanks for the service of you and your man - from an old retired 06 (Texan turned OKIE)

Posted by: bob at November 23, 2006 04:01 PM (Vee40)

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Slighted...

In the past week, there are 476 documents on Nexis heralding the magnificent achievement of Nancy Pelosi becoming the FIRST WOMAN speaker of the House.

I thought we had moved beyond such multicultural milestones.

The media yawned when Condoleezza Rice became the first black woman secretary of state (and when Lincoln Chafee became the first developmentally disabled senator).

There were only 77 documents noting that Rice was the first black woman to be the secretary of state, and half of them were issues of Jet, Essence, Ebony or Black Entrepreneur magazine.

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CNN Headline News is re-showing the program Exposed: The Extremist Agenda on the Glenn Beck Program on Sunday night at 7:00 and 9:00. Check it out if you missed it last night.

UPDATE:

The show ended up being the second highest rated show in the history of Headline News.

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I just had to fill out the papers for our next move, and I got to do the fun one where you tally up all your beds and desks and sewing machines and get an estimate of your moving weight. In the blank where you can say what other heavy stuff you have that's not listed, I put "books -- at least 1000", which if you think about it is heavier than all our desks combined.

My mother-in-law read that I was a US history dummy and mailed us some history books. She asked my husband if I had had a chance to read them yet, and he snorted and said that I had a lot on my plate right now. Here's my birthday jackpot, thanks to my husband, Oda Mae, and CaliValleyGirl.

And that doesn't include the stash of cookbooks from my mom and mother-in-law. Nor the twelve paperbacks I got at Goodwill yesterday, nearly rounding out my Michael Crichton collection. (I swear I'd buy his grocery list if he published it.) Life is good.

I just finished reading Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. I completely recommend it for anyone my age, we who were too young to really appreciate Reagan as a president. That man was fantastic. I just started Island, and after about 100 pages, I'm still at that feeling where I can't decide if I'm liking it or not. I guess I'm not disliking it, but it's not what I expected.

My husband said I need to stop buying books and start seriously hoarding that money to buy, oh, a refrigerator, washer, dryer, sofa, and backyard fence. I told him that my books cost less than his beer, and last much longer. And that he's lucky his wife's Day of Splurging means spending seven bucks on paperbacks at Goodwill.

But I promised: no more books until after we move.

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Make sure you try to see this show tonight: Exposed: The Extremist Agenda. Glenn Beck is running footage from the Middle Eastern media. It'll be like LGF, only on TV.

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I missed this last week, from the always-genius Annika: I blame Bush.

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John Hawkins has an interview with Mark Steyn, whose new book is apparently on Pres Bush's nightstand. Here's one interesting tidbit from the interview:

I mean this idea that it's normal for the state to be as big as it is in advanced social democratic societies is something that would have seemed incredible to anyone a hundred years ago. I mean, I remember being struck by - on September 11th - and I was writing a column a couple of days afterwards and, you know, we're all done with our initial reaction, so you're trying to think a couple of days ahead and find a new angle on it, and I happen to just notice that it was more or less (a hundred years after the) assassination of President McKinley. I was thinking, well, maybe I could tie these two things together, these two big traumatizing events and, you know, bookending the century, whatever - you know, just peck, peck, peck - we journalists always are going to peck.

So I sort of rummaged around the clippings of President McKinley's assassination and realized that while people were upset about it, they essentially regarded it as the removal of a remote figure who played a peripheral part in their lives. To that point for most people in most parts of the U.S. the federal government did not impinge on their life in any way.

So when people talk about the modern social democratic state, you know, cradle to grave entitlements, we should understand that it is, in effect, a huge experimental departure from the normal course of human history - and the experiment as we can see in almost every other country apart from the U.S. has failed.

And if you need an even bigger dose of Steyn, check out his newest column:

If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.

The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked.

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Last night we were flipping channels and passed by an MTV show that's some sort of Yo Mama jokes standoff. We watched the last few minutes of the show kinda dumbfounded. And as soon as it ended and he went to change the channel, my husband said, "Yo mama's so dumb, she wouldn't understand the Laffer curve if they explained it on Fox & Friends." Oh good lord, I laughed so hard I nearly choked. That's the best yo mama joke I've ever heard.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:54 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Do you know the story of Joe and Tommy?

To the eye, Bloody Omaha is just a sandy beach.

No white crosses, no huge memorial, no visible signs of those who sacrificed themselves and fought for freedom. No sign of those who fell for it.

Yet I remember "Joe" and "Tommy", heroes with no names but so many faces, who came here one day, fighters for a just cause, in a liberation army.

I was told about them, I read books about them, I saw pictures of them, and I watched interviews and movies. I heard their stories. The Joe and Tommy who got through this, told me about their brothers who didn't.

And they show me why they didn't fall in vain.

One day in July, standing on the sand of bloody Omaha a long time ago, I learned about Joe and Tommy. I learned that my own Grand Pa' and Grand Ma' once hid Joe, whose plane had been shot down, in their attic, to save him from Fritz. I learned that Fritz could have killed Joe and my grand parents for that. I learned that Fritz killed and imprisoned a lot of people because they weren't like him or just because they didn't think like him and disagreed with him. And I learned that Joe and Tommy came to stop Fritz acting like this and send him back to his country.

I know I wanted to thank Joe and Tommy for that.

Who wouldn't?

So I guess I asked: "And where is Joe now? Where is Tommy?"

My parents probably answered that they were gone, back home long before I was born. Joe and Tommy didn't come to conquer like Fritz did, you know, hence they went back to their own countries. That's why, since I wasn't born when Joe and Tommy shed their blood to make sure I would come to life free in a free land, I learned about them by my father and mother, many years later.

And that's why I couldn't thank Joe and Tommy, like I wanted.

I know that today, there are fathers and mothers in Kosovo telling their kids about Joe and Tommy. I know there will be others tomorrow in Iraq.

I don't know if there are memorials to Joe and Tommy in Kosovo today and I don't know if there will be in Iraq tomorrow.

But I know that as long as I and other kids born free in a liberated land, here, in Kosovo or in Iraq, remember them, the fallen Joe and Tommy will live forever.

I know a fallen Tommy; his name is Sean Sims.
His own son lost him two years ago today.
But may he live forever in the hearts of kids born free in Iraq.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:49 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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We bought a house yesterday. Let me tell you, that was way more stressful than I thought it would be. Sometimes people get stuck because they can't find a good house, but we had the opposite luck: there were too many to choose from. And houses are not an apples to apples comparison. This one's a couple thousand more, but it has more square footage. But it's a longer commute to post. And this other has a better school district but hideous wallpaper throughout. This one has nice landscaping, a long commute, and costs more. And so on. My mom thought that I'd get a gut feeling about one house and just know I had to have it, but I didn't. Or, I kind of did, but that house was entirely too far from post, so it wasn't perfect either.

We picked one, and have spent the past two days alternating between ecstasy and trepidation. I guess there's no way to know if we made the absolute right choice, but at least we made it.

So now the moving begins! Man, I can't believe we just did this six months ago.

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The other night when my husband got home from his staff ride, his world had changed: a Democrat Congress, an Army without Rumsfeld, a potential slot in Civil Affairs, and a new deployment to a completely different country. He paced around the bedroom for a long time, talking out all the different possible futures and what he might accomplish in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I sarcastically added that, given the change from elephant to donkey, it might all be moot because the troops could be home. Agitated, he said, "I know, I know, that's why I have to get there as soon as possible so I can help before it's too late."

My husband's visible discomfort that he might not have another opportunity to put to use all he learned in Iraq, all he has digested and mulled over for two years, stands in stark contrast to the Iraqi quoted in this article:

“What was I going to wait for that would keep me on the force?” said Mohammed Humadi, a police captain who quit in August after one of his commanders was killed and beheaded. “Nothing was going to get any better. I have children, and if I were to sacrifice myself, it wouldn’t change anything.”

I struggle daily with the two opposing camps of the War in Iraq: those who say that the US has no business trying to set up a utopia halfway across the world, and those whose idealism bubbles over into dreams of playing Iraq in the World Cup. But the one thing I do know is that it's a knife in my heart that my husband would give his life for Iraq while this Iraqi would not.

A knife in my heart.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:07 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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