When you are putting your life on the line for 'freedom' miles away from your country in the middle of the desert and the time you get to hear from your home is when they send the book of a religious totallitarian nut that believes in magic as 'presents' you come back and tell us that.
I wouldve used it to wipe my ass for the next few weeks.
Stesilaus
I got almost thirteen years in the Army, three tours in Iraq, been shot at, and almost blown up several times. I think I can tell when somebody does something pretty dumb over there. When we got care packages that was full of stuff we didn't want we didn't do something disrespectful like burn it and put it on a blog. We just handed the stuff out to the locals so they can use it during our next patrol. It has nothing to do with the political beliefs of the person who sent them, it was the thought that counts. According to several surveys done most troops lean to the right anyway.
So what sort of gifts WERE welcomed by the troops?
Tobacco, porn, magazines, novels, candies, beef jerky, more tobacco, dip, socks, letters from home, etc. Burning the books doesn't sound like it might have been the best of ideas, because they're probably out on an fob if it was in remote Afghanistan. And standing guard duty out there sucks. Boring as hell.
I'm not sure who O'Reilly is, so maybe that's part of my problem. I'm not clear on this: When is it a good thing that books are burned?
Palantas
``The motivation behind the order to burn them was not political...as mentioned in the original post, we are in an extraordinarily remote location. We don't have a post office here, so sending them back wasn't an option. Extra space is scarce and alternatives that a few mentioned, like recycling, are nonexistent...I'm aware of the historical implications of book-burning. I won't say I didn't take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp's writings from circulation, but the reason for doing so was military necessity.
The motivation behind the order to burn them was not political...as mentioned in the original post, we are in an extraordinarily remote location. We don't have a post office here, so sending them back wasn't an option. Extra space is scarce and alternatives that a few mentioned, like recycling, are nonexistent...I'm aware of the historical implications of book-burning. I won't say I didn't take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp's writings from circulation, but the reason for doing so was military necessity.
weezyfb
A military necessity, huh? :lol: OT is blessed to have so many authorities on military affairs. Anyway, I was expressing surprise at peoples' reactions to this, not that some soldiers had some fun making a bonfire.
[QUOTE="xaos"]Well, if they are going to send completely useless stuff, maybe that's for the bestairshocker
Books aren't useless.
On topic: Pretty disrespectful what the soldiers did. We never threw away anything we got when I was over there. If we couldn't use it it went to the S4 who distributed it to people who needed it.
They are over there so I can sit on my lazy ass to play video games, not having to risk my own life. They could have **** on the book for all I care.
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