Read MG again

Read Marine’s Girl again, especially if you haven’t read this post, that she put up at 11 a.m. Tuesday. It’s a follow-on ICQ with her guy, from the one I linked to Monday.
Yesterday I was in Washington DC for the day. I have such strongly negative feelings about the policies that come out of that place, and their effects on ordinary people inside and (especially) outside the USA, that I almost have to force myself to go back there.
It turned out okay yesterday, because I was with some really, really nice people, doing wonderful things. Both in the afternoon, when I was discussing some possible professional projects, and in the evening when some dear friends from the 15 years I lived there hosted a small dinner for Bill and me.
I drove back home late last night. This morning I discovered a really nasty spam attack on the Comments boards here– lots of really vile porn, all over many recent Comments boards. So this a.m. I had to spend more than an hour deleting all those comments.
It makes me wonder even more what the point of this blog is. I suppose increased clarity on this will come, sometime.
Anyway, I can tell you that MG’s blog is truly a gift to the world. Lew, commenting here on the MG post I linked to on Monday, wrote, “I don’t think it’s real”.
Lew, I think MG is as “real” as it gets. I’ve been reading her wonderful reflections on life, and her ICQ’s with her guy, since ways before some really officious Marines Gunnery Sargeant harrassed her (on alleged “national security” grounds) into taking her whole blog down, back in November 2003. What was interesting then was that some higher ups in the Marines JAG division, or some other place relatively powerful like that within the Marines Corps, explicitly supported her right to continue doing just what she had been doing in the blogosphere. And so she has.
So please, all of you, if you have time, go on over to her blog and read the latest. (Why not leave her a nice comforting message there too, seeing as she’s fighting her own battles with cancer??)
If you really don’t have time to do that, at least be aware of this very important portion of her most recent ICQ record:

Marine: Any updates on getting me out of here?
Me: I talked to our friend this morning and relayed the bit you asked me to.
Marine: His response?
Me: He wasn’t very happy with what you said. I’m suppose to remind you that the program is still just being talked about
Me: and he doesn’t feel it will go ahead now that there has been so much negative talk about it.
Marine: “Death Squads” should have never been brought up. That it was at all is a problem in itself.
Me: I’m suppose to ask you why you are so against it. You can email me about it or cover it here and I’ll send it along.
Marine: Isn’t he against it too?
Me: I get the impression that he is although he didn’t say explictedly either way. It was your saying you would go AWOL that seemed to upset him.
Marine: I thought that might grab him.
Marine: Back in late Summer of ’03, I was pulled from my unit to teach martial arts and self defense to some Iraqi police recruits.
Marine: It was a big waste of my time as they didn’t want to pay attention and spent most of their time giggling at me.
Marine: After these guys “graduated” most of them took the training, pay, uniforms, guns and equipment they were given and just melted back into the population.
Marine: The ones that did stay on..I presume for a regular pay check are worthless and a danger to our people here because they can not be trusted.
Marine: Now say we give some Iraqis “death squad” type training, will I have any insurance that they just won’t turn around and use what I’ve taught them on some lady journalist or our other troops?
Marine: No, there would be no insurance. I’d just have to trust them. I’ve learned from many examples that they can not be trusted.
Marine: Any thing bad they did with that training would be on my conscious.
Marine: THAT is why I would refuse to do that. My first class of teaching Iraqis, was my last. No more.
Me: That’s clear.
Marine: If he needs any more than that, do copy the pages out of my journal from that time and send those along too. You have my permission to do so.
Marine: Maybe I should have put it another way as using AWOL is pretty strong but it gets the message across loud and clear that I will have no part of that scheme.
Marine: I’m pretty confident others would refuse too.
Me: No worries, we should have you out of there before they put anything like that into action, IF they ever do.
Marine: I’m not going to count on anything till I have discharge papers in hand.