Since Monday, I’ve been at this base.  I’m waiting for a military flight from Kuwait to Iraq.  I don’t know when I am leaving.  The past three days have felt like a week.  At six in the morning and nine at night, I show up at the terminal for a roll call.  They read a list of service members who are waiting for flights into Iraq.  When they call off a persons name, the person is suppose to sound off to say that they are still here.  If you don’t sound off, you have to reregister for a flight, and your name goes to the bottom of the list.

My friend, Nick, works at Ft. Meade, Md.  He says the Army has more in common with Office Space than most war movie.  If Oliver Stone really wanted to make a movie to discourage military spending, he should show the bureaucracy and the administrative nightmare the Army is.  Pain and suffering can be romanticized but mind number boredom cannot. No boy would think, “What a bunch of tough men. They must be really emotionally strong to wait like that.” Of course, no boy would pay to see that film either or buy the action figure