I was curious about the possibility of men and women in the armed forces choosing to retire rather than face the prospect of serving under John Kerry as commander-in-chief. I therefore e-mailed a friend of mine from graduate school, who is now serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, to get a sense for what he’s heard. Here is his response:
I have heard a little bit of "If that turd Kerry gets elected." type talk, but I haven’t been in position to do much political observation around here. I have had to ponder that question myself - I am approaching my 20 year mark. I don’t know if I would want to serve under that guy. I managed to stomach 8 years of Bill Clinton - although he made sure I saw Bosnia close up - and only got really, really angry when I found out he had Monica Lewinsky under the desk fellating him while he was on the phone with a swing vote Congressdude from KY during the run up to the vote on the Bosnia authorization.
Obviously it’s dangerous to try to generalize from this, but his dilemma is worth noting here nonetheless.
I’ve heard that in the last century when our army was fighting some muslim extremists in the Phillipines our soldiers used ammunition soaked in pork oils to execute prisoners. The reason was that pigs are unclean to muslims and being touched by their oil kept them out of their heaven. This supposedly stopped the attacks against Americans.
Some people have been telling me that the oils used to preserve our current troops ammunition has pork products in it. Any truth to this?
I am currently a Reservist, with over 24 years total service, who has an enlistment up in August of 2005.
Between stop loss (I could not get out when my last enlistment was due to be up) and the fact that Bill Clinton would have had his signature on my discharge papers helped to motivate me to reup.
Pending a John Kerry victory I now have the prospect of Hanoi Johns signature on my discharge papers or trying to outlast him for four to eight more years. Not a pleasant prospect indeed.
Re: the pigs products, check out snopes.com to find out it is false.