Personal update, trial results

I wound up leaving the trial as they broke for lunch Tuesday, since we were on deadline and the only thing that had been accomplished was panel selection (in a court-martial, a panel of soldiers acts as the "jury," all must be of greater rank than the accused). The accused, a sergeant first class, pleaded not-guilty to two specifications of trainee abuse under Article 93, and one specification of obstuction of justice under Article 134.

I learned later that the accused, formerly a drill sergeant serving in Company E, 1st Battalion, 81st Armor Regiment, was sentenced by the panel to reduction in grade to staff sergeant (one stripe) and a letter of reprimand.

In other personal developments, I found out at the dentist's office today that I'm going to need to have all four of my wisdom teeth pulled and a cavity filled in the next little while. Here's hoping they're generous with the anaesthetics.

Plus, I've been pegged to stand in a battalion Noncommissioned Officer Induction ceremony next week. I'm going to be representing the Army from the World War I, and I picked up the solid-wool set today -- a jacket, "britches," two of the ugliest boots I've ever seen, a nearly-as-ugly overseas cap, and legging wraps.

Now, even though I'm sure all of the newly-pinned sergeants in LEC are just itching to attend this ceremony, I'm wondering if it was really necessary for the operations guys to see how many people's time they could squander.

Oh! Here's an email -- I swear I am not making this up, I just got it:

Due to a scheduling glitch, you need to turn your complete Period Uniform back in to SSG Stone at LEC by 1600 today. Sorry for the incontinence.

Words fail me.

Therefore, I think it would be appropriate to play this song, which warms my heart every time I hear it. And by "warms my heart," I mean, "makes me nauseous."

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A new conclusion to the previous entry

Watching Sports Center up in the Finch's room, I saw Ricky Williams in a piece about his upcoming re-entry into the Miami Dolphins' program. I couldn't help but think of a new conclusion to the piece I wrote for this week. Here we go, in draft:

The show is gone now, and while it was horrible while it ran, I think it has a place in today's sports world. "American Gladiators" could be a perfect auspices under which players like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Ricky Williams, and Jose Canseco could finish their careers.

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UPDATE: And here's the Mudville Gazette's latest Open Post.

The worst damn sports show, period

Since I've got the trial tomorrow, I'm trying to get as much sports done today as possible. That also means that coming up with new blog material is somewhat low on the old priorities list, so I'm going, once again, to post the upcoming commentary for this week's paper. This came out of a random discussion that arose this weekend on '80s kitsch.

American Gladiators: The worst damn sports show, period.

By SPC. IAN BOUDREAU
TURRET SPORTS EDITOR

Tom Arnold returned to television airwaves a couple years ago with a program called, "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period."

While the idea of Tom Arnold participating in anything even remotely associated with athletics is funny enough, I think that since there's a "best" sports show, there must also be a "worst" one, and I have a nomination for that category.

Think back about 16 years. It's 1989, the first George Bush was president, and Guns 'n Roses was considered an "edgy" band. On TV sets across the nation, people were watching the first season of "American Gladiators."

The premise of the show was to pit ordinary people from, say, Peoria, Ill., against super-human "gladiators" who wore spandex and had names like "Nitro" and "Blaze" in competitions that ranged from climbing a rock wall to avoiding tennis balls being shot out of a cannon at 100 miles per hour.

Action took place inside an arena that looked like it came straight out of the set from any '70s B-grade science fiction movie, with surfaces painted flat-grey with "space-age" stripes placed seemingly at random.

One event was the obstacle course, where contestants raced gladiators through a series of brightly-colored pipes, ramps, and rolling catwalks, trying to avoid being yanked down by other gladiators stationed below.

There was also the joust, which immediately came to mind during basic training when the drill sergeants introduced us to the pugil sticks. One gladiator and one contestant would perch on raised platforms and try to knock each other off using their jousting sticks. This activity could probably be nominated for "Television Event that Resulted in the Most Dental Surgery," since kids my age had a tendency to pick up broom handles and square off against siblings after watching the show.

As the series went into subsequent seasons, the show's producers tried numerous gimmicks to boost viewership. These included having celebrity guests participate, including "Lois and Clark's" Dean Cain, whose Superman was anything but gladiatorial.

Miami Dolphins hall-of-famer Larry Csonka did a stint on American Gladiators as an "analyst"... although I'm not quite sure what kinds of strategies existed within the context of the show to analyze. Coming up with lines to fill dead air must have been tough: "Gee, Mike... it looks like Blaze should have tossed the old jumpsuit in the wash before contending today."

I'm making the case for "American Gladiators" being the worst sports show ever, but I don't want to confuse anyone -- I watched the show avidly when it initially came out, and probably could have been considered a fan. Looking back on the show, however, I realize how monumentally stupid it was. I suppose there are a lot of cultural elements I could include in this category -- Star Wars, for instance.

Much like other horrible television programs, "American Gladiators" spawned an entire line of merchandising, including kid-sized jousting kits, action figures, video games, and trading cards, which I suppose were meant to lend the steroid-enhanced "gladiators" an air of athletic credibility that their actual profession didn't provide.

The show had its fans -- including me -- but I'm not sorry that it's gone. There has been no shortage of awful television programming to fill the gap it left 10 years ago. Tune into ESPN's "Around the Horn" if you don't believe me.

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So it was the detainees who "flushed" the Quran

Hey! Check this story out over at CNN:

Detainees, not soldiers, flushed Quran

A U.S. military investigation into the mishandling of the Muslim holy book at the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists has determined that detainees -- not U.S. soldiers -- attempted to flush the Quran down the toilet there.

That's certainly a bit different from the Newsweek story. But since this one also is careful to include accounts of U.S. soldiers "kicking" and otherwise maltreating the Muslim holy book, psychopaths still have a reason to go around rioting and killing.

Here's Michelle Malkin's treatment, with links galore.

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UPDATE: And here's the Mudville Gazette's latest Open Post.

Another drill sergeant trial

I'll be covering the trial of the third drill sergeant charged with trainee abuse in connection with the events that occurred on or around Feb. 5 in Echo Company, 1/81 Armor. Regular readers may remember the first trial I covered:

Post drill sergeant pleads guilty to charges

The court-martial is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

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Mike Tyson: 'My whole life has been a waste'

File these in the "Freaks" category: In the lead story in USA Today, former heavyweight champion of the world Mike Tyson says his "whole life has been a waste":

"I'll never be happy," he says. "I believe I'll die alone. I would want it that way. I've been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I'm really lost, but I'm trying to find myself.

"I'm really a sad, pathetic case."

Last year, I had a press pass to watch Tyson vs. Danny Williams in Louisville. Here are a couple photos I shot at the fight:

It was pretty amazing to walk into a major boxing match on the red carpet, even though I had to do some serious haggling with security to make them believe that my press pass was actually valid. But I made it in anyway, and sat in the press area down on the floor. I estimated that ticketed seats that close cost around $1,100.

I doubt they'll be that expensive when Tyson fights Kevin McBride June 11 in Washington, D.C.

Another advantage of being in the press area was that the fighters walked right by us as they headed to the ring. I snapped this shot of Layla Ali, daughter of the legendary fighter and Louisville native Mohammed Ali, on her way to the ring, where she pummelled the snot out of Monica Nunez:

In other news, the Michael Jackson trial has gone through closing arguments and is going to the jury.

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Woodward's account of 'Deep Throat'

I'm reading through the Bob Woodward's account of his relationship with W. Mark Felt, who Tuesday admitted to being "Deep Throat," the secret source Woodward and Carl Bernstein relied on for tips and information in constructing one of the 20th century's most important cases in journalism and politics, the Watergate scandal. It's really a remarkable piece.

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UPDATE: Via RealClearPolitics, here's the Vanity Fair piece that broke the "Deep Throat" story (.pdf, Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

UPDATE: I'd be remiss if I didn't include this link to The Daily Show's coverage of the "Deep Throat" story, via BoingBoing. Hilarious, as always.

Pat Tillman - Still a hero

Here's the draft of the piece I worked up for this week's Sports Column. Lately, ideas have been sparse, but I thought this one turned out pretty well. See what you think.

Pat Tillman - Still a hero

By SPC. IAN BOUDREAU
TURRET SPORTS EDITOR

On Monday -- Memorial Day -- I found myself thinking about the battered story of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the man who turned down a $3.6 million pro football contract to join the Army Rangers after Sept. 11, 2001, and eventually was killed by friendly fire on a dark mountainside in Afghanistan.

Public anger erupted when the true details of Tillman's death eventually surfaced in the Washington Post, and many accused the Pentagon of hijacking and obfuscating Tillman's story for its own ends; namely, to create a "recruiting poster boy" for the Army in an attempt to bolster sagging enlistment figures.

The truth of what happened to Tillman -- that he was killed due to a communications mishap that resulted in another squad firing on his position -- was kept from the public and from his family until well after the highly-publicized Silver Star memorial service held in his honor last May, and his parents are rightfully angry.

But in the midst of the public debate over government cover-ups and full disclosure, it seems to me that the core of Tillman's story has been forgotten.

The fact is, Tillman WAS a "recruiting poster boy" -- a real hero -- long before he died in tragic fratricide.

I never met Pat Tillman, so I don't know what he was like in person. I don't know him the way his friends and family did, and I never got a chance to learn about the particular mixture of flaws and virtues that made him a human being like everyone else.

But I've read enough about him to know that he was an exemplary man. A little background research shows that Tillman graduated Summa Cum Laude from Arizona State in three and a half years with a degree in marketing, a 3.84 grade-point average, and a spot in the 1998 NFL draft.

He played for the Arizona Cardinals, and stayed with the team even after being offered a more lucrative contract by St. Louis in 2001. Tillman apparently knew about loyalty long before he learned that it was one of the Army Values.

After witnessing on TV the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Tillman showed where his values lay. He and his brother Kevin, a minor-league baseball player at the time, joined the Army, determined to become members of the elite Rangers corps and to "make a difference."

While Tillman's April 22, 2004 death was a tragic accident, he didn't fail in that goal. He made a difference by demonstrating with his own life that there are higher ideals than money, celebrity, and success in professional sports.

I doubt Tillman needed an extensive interview with his recruiter, because he clearly wasn't joining the Army for the benefits. He didn't need to hear about SGLI, the G.I. Bill, student loan repayment, or other incentive programs.

He wanted to do more with his life, and he gave his life in the service of his country. He gave it freely, because he felt that doing so was a greater reward in itself than the millions of dollars he was promised as a professional athlete.

So on Memorial Day, I found it helpful to think about Pat Tillman's sacrifice, and to look at my own decisions and intentions in the light of his. Regardless of any spin put on his story after the fact, Tillman is and will continue to be a role model not only for Soldiers, but for American citizens.

And it bears remembering that it was his life -- not his death -- that made him a hero.

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UPDATE: Once again, I leech the almighty Greyhawk's Open Post traffic.
UPDATE: Added the link to the article on Turret.com. Click the headline.

Army announces new Combat Action Badge design

ARNEWS has the story of the new Combat Action Badge design, which is set to go into production this summer:

Who qualifies? From the article:

[A]ny Soldier performing assigned duties in an area where hostile fire pay or imminent danger pay is authorized, who is personally present and actively engaging or being engaged by the enemy, and performing satisfactorily in accordance with the prescribed rules of engagement, according to its authorizing language. Award is not limited by one's branch or military occupational specialty.

This addresses the fact that soldiers other than infantry are actively engaged in combat in the asymmetric warfare model currently being used. Infantry have historically been eligible for the Combat Infantry Badge. I've heard the badge will be awarded retroactively to 2001.

However, it seems that Congress doesn't want any more women earning the award. Apparently, they've earned too many Purple Hearts already.

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UPDATE: "MilBlogs on Tee-Vee" at The Mudville Gazette.
UPDATE: "Senior Marine Officer - Operations New Market and Mongoose" at BlackFive.

In the Lynyrd Skynyrd parking lot

I got home this morning around 1:30 a.m. after 13 hours of being on "Parking Detail." My face and neck were sunburned, my feet were sore, and I had lost even more faith in the human race.

Lynyrd Skynyrd and .38 Special had come to Fort Knox, and they performed at the airfield on a huge stage that had been set up near the hangars. Over a week ago, I'd learned that I had been pegged for duty that day to help direct the flow of more than 6,000 vehicles on to and off of the airfield.

The first element was the "briefing" from Law Enforcement Command at 12:30 p.m. Tim and I showed up at the company ten minutes early, which is usually a good idea when it comes to formations, particularly with units you aren't normally affiliated with. As it turned out, that was for naught, since the briefing didn't get started until 1.

The MP master sergeant who was in charge of the whole works eventually broke us down into our individual areas of responsibility, and then told us what to expect.

"There are going to be people out there acting stupid," he said. "And there are going to be a lot of them. When it comes to drugs, if you smell something, find the person smoking or whatever and just tell them to put it out... but if someone's got a duffel bag or a 'Weed for Sale' stand set up, we're going to have to bust them."

We also learned that there would be people getting very drunk out there. Gates for parking opened at 3, but the early-comers were going to be herded into the back area of the staging area until 6, when the stage gates opened. That meant that there were three solid hours for Skynyrd fans to stand in the sun, drink beer, and get pissed off.

After the briefing, the concert detail - about 35 of us, total, including stage security, parking, and traffic control - piled into the MPs' "White Whale," a gutted Winnebago that is clearly not designed to hold 35 people.

We piled out at the airfield after a bumpy ride from LEC, and everyone on the parking detail was given a reflective vest with "POLICE" written in large block letters on the chest and back and a cheap flashlight with a six-inch pink plastic cone on the end, which everyone referred to as their "light saber."

I was given parking area 2, which was going to be filled after parking area 1, but would take overflow from 1 if it got heavy. All of the parking areas were landing pads and airstrips of varying sized scattered around Godman Airfield's 3.8 square miles of open land.

The sun was shining, but a stiff wind had kicked up across the airfield, which knocked over the plastic orange construction barrels set up to mark parking lanes. Another specialist and I spent an hour or so chasing them down and standing them back up before traffic started to trickle in at 3.

Once it hit, it was heavy. Around 5, cars, trucks, minivans, motorcycles, and SUVs were streaming constantly in through the choke point at the airfield's access gate, the only way into the venue for ticketholders. I went to the entrance to our area and directed the cars to the other two soldiers I was working with, who guided them into neat lanes.

After a couple hours, our lot was packed, as were lots 1 and 3, and the traffic control point at the entrance had to start sending drivers to newly-designated "overflow" lots - huge swaths on the airfields main two runways. I hopped on the back of a golf cart with the master sergeant who'd briefed us, and we headed up to the top of the main landing strip, and back down to the point where we were to set up new parking lanes.

Before long, we could watch as traffic headed exactly the way we'd come, then one by one down the runway toward us. I ran up to cut them off about 100 meters from the end, stopped the line, and sent each individually to one of the guards at the endpoint.

The music was about to start.

CONTINUED.

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Zarqawi shot in lung

An Iraqi official confirmed reports of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi being shot in the lung:

Addressing reports that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda's Iraq operations, has been wounded, Iraq Interior Minister Bayan Jabor said, "Yes, it is true."

Courtesy of Take Back the News.

Could it be... are we... winning? Is it possible?

By the way, I couldn't help but think of Mark Wahlberg's character in Three Kings when I heard that Zarqawi had a lung wound. Remember how he needed to get that little vent inserted into his lung so it wouldn't collapse? Let's hope Old Uncle Z is out of those things.

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Southern Rock + Brogonzo = Sad Brogonzo

It's one of these days.

Not much going on here at the office. I'm putting the story list together for next week's edition, but that's pretty pointless, since there's approximately one person here to give it to - namely, the Finch, who's going to be out of town for the entire holiday weekend.

On the other hand, Yours Truly is going to have loads of fun Saturday when Lynyrd Skynyrd, rock's greatest-known cover band, and 38 Special come to Fort Knox to... rock the Casbah? I doubt it. I've been roped into this concert detail, and will therefore be directing traffic in the parking lot all damn day.

Needless to say, I'm not exactly pleased. Oh well.

For now, I'll leave you to whatever it was you were up to before you showed up here and get back to work myself. Mahalo.

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Civilians with rank?

Well, again, Wednesday has come, and as the sun goes down, the presses at the Elizabethtown News-Enterprise will be busily running another edition of the post newspaper off its rollers.

One issue that's become a bone of contention in the office is the ongoing military-to-civilian conversion going on. Here's a quick global breakdown of the idea:

Since, due to the ongoing war in Iraq, the demand for troops in troop-type slots is high, and recruiting numbers are less than inspiring, a program to replace garrison-type jobs once held by soldiers with Department of the Army civilians is in place across the Army.

Sensible, sure. Soldiers are trained and meant to do soldier-type jobs, which, if I can infer anything from the bucket of plastic green army men I had when I was a kid, usually involve carrying a rifle around.

However, practically speaking, it creates a few difficulties, since the process can't happen overnight. For our newspaper, that means gradually phasing out soldiers and replacing them - on a less-than one-to-one basis - with civilians.

In the newspaper business, these civilians are coming in at at least the grade of GS-7, which, I'm told, is "equivalent" to the rank of a second lieutenant in the military rank structure.

Perhaps you can see where the trouble is starting. There is a critical difference between a GS-7 and an O-1. See if you can guess what it is. Take your time, but show your work.

Ready? The difference is that a civilian, being a civilian, is not a soldier, and certainly not a lieutenant. Here at Fort Knox, we have - at least for the time being - the Armor School, where countless new lieutenants, fresh out of ROTC, OCS, and the Academy are studying to become tank platoon commanders. I see them at the shoppettes near the school whenever I go there to buy a fresh pack of Camels, and even though I know they know next to nothing about the Army, save for what they learned in the hallowed classrooms of West Point, I still render proper military courtesy to them, i.e., snapping to attention, rendering the hand salute, and giving the "greeting of the day," which, on Fort Knox, is "Good morning, sir."

For DA civilians, the system's slightly different. Suffice it to say, I've never been required to salute someone who doesn't have four pairs of BDUs hanging in his or her closet.

But someone's decided that there's a certain point in the civilian pay scale where civilians holding that pay grade take on the "rank" of an active-duty officer. How they arrived at that pay grade doesn't matter, but it should, since civilians can be hired at that level, including a couple of the ones who have started working in my office.

Working at a newspaper has never, to my knowledge, been a nine-to-five sort of gig, depending on your beat, and this creates problems as well. Since DA civilians cannot work more than 80 hours a week without incurring overtime, and since department heads are usually not allowed to authorize overtime - at least not for newspapers - that means that anything that happens after 1700 (5 p.m. for you non-military types) or on weekends is pretty much out of the question for civilians to cover.

Since we still have soldiers in the office, that doesn't mean the event isn't going to be covered.

What I'm getting at with this lengthy and self-indulgent rant is that the end result of replacing soldier newspaper staffers with civilian newspaper staffers is that the remaining soldiers get screwed, if I may use a technical term.

It's also a bit of a slap in the face to me, since to get this job, I not only earned a bachelor's degree in journalism, but also attended several months of additional Army training to qualify for my military occupational specialty - 46Q, Journalist. None of the civilians in the office I work in have a BA in journalism, and the associate editor I work for has about the closest thing - a BA in photojournalism. Not quite the same thing. Anyone who knows why the word is spelled "adviser" can tell you about that.

I'm not exactly sure what to do in this situation other than to suck it up and drive on. However, if any salty, long-termers have information, regulation numbers, or advice as to what to do in this situation, or if this business of civilians being treated like Army officers is bullshit or not, let me know. It's hurt the morale in the office, and I think the product - the newspaper - suffers for it.

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And here's my shameless bid to get traffic from the Mudville Gazette. Open Post.

Independence Day is coming - Burn a flag!

Michelle Malkin's found a plan hatching at Indymedia. They're planning a national flag-burning day for July 4. In their words:

So on this Fourth of July we call on you to express your feelings on their "Independence Day" by burning a flag in a nationally coordinated action. Together we will show the elite that we are everywhere and that we completely reject the false principals (sic) this holiday is based on.

False "principals," huh? You mean independence from a colonialist empire? Freedom from international intervention? I thought Independence Day was right up their alley -- well, except for the fact that it's American.

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Time for some new news

Good lord, what to talk about? We have such great choices -- judicial nominee filibusters, a stem cell research bill that's going to be vetoed, and Social Security reform. I'm uninspired.

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