A-Hole

There has been an article that has been brought up that I have decided I wanted to mention. There is an article on the Rolling Stone website about what has come to be known as "The Kill Team". You can read the article for yourself, although it may take you a LONG time. It's about 8 pages long, with some videos. The article is about a platoon of infantry guys part of the Stryker Brigade. I read most of it, but didn't have time (during that sitting) to read the whole thing. It was a couple days ago that I started reading it, and I went to read the rest today and I couldn't. For the last couple days, I have been thinking about the article, and talked about it to a couple people, but I also had a pretty disturbing nightmare about the shit I read. You see, the article is about this platoon that is/was under investigation for some....more than disturbing actions, photos, videos...and such.

The gist of it is that they shot locals for fun. There are other things that the article covers, but that's the main idea. I have all these notes that I took while I was reading that I wanted to touch on, but I...I don't even know. It just makes me sick and mad. Ok, the article (if it can even be referred to as such, being as long as it is) made me mad in a lot of parts. I'm already getting sick of typing the word "article" so I'm going to now refer to it as  the A-hole. The A-hole talks about these guys that all get high and dream of killing local nationals in Afghanistan. I would like to start off stating the obvious (that apparently isn't obvious to all) which is...these guys may be wearing the uniform, but everything they said and did was against what wearing this uniform means. They are heartless animals that somehow slipped through too many cracks in the system.

I know that being in a war zone effects many people different ways, but there are systems in place that are put there to protect people, whether that be soldiers, third country nationals, and everybody else. As other systems, there are cracks and there can be people that slip through. This A-hole touches on that specifically; the fact that all this stuff happened and nobody stopped them. I want to put in my two cents, saying that some of the stuff that is said to have happened, I don't believe. I just think that some of the stuff that had supposedly happened would have raised flags when it didn't. BLAH!

I don't know. I guess I don't really wanna talk about this as much as I wanted to. It just pisses me off. I am pissed off at those guys for being total douchebags, and for making people in the military look like assholes. We aren't all assholes. On that note, I would like to say that, through this deployment, I have met some amazing people. They say that when you are deployed with people, they become your other family. I didn't really understand until now. Besides the obvious factors of living together, sharing things, working together, and just seeing each other on a daily basis, there are the other factors like the emotional connections and the friendships that are created. When I was first assigned to this unit, I will admit, I was kind of bummed because I didn't know anybody. Now I feel very lucky to have met these people that I may not have ever met otherwise. There are so many people here that I don't doubt would have my back, and whether they know it or not, I would have theirs. And now it's late and I'm afraid I'm not making sense. Off we go.