Posts Tagged ‘Ft. Lewis Washington’

The news today made for a second Monday in the week.  Two sixteen year old girls found in the barracks room of a Ft. Lewis soldier—one of them dead.  It took the Army 36 hours (”because of the holiday weekend”??) to release this bit of news.  Obviously, two 16 year old females are not Army members.

They should not have been there at all.  No news has been released, but I rather imagine copious amounts of alcohol had a lot to do with one girl being dead and the other unconscious.  We go through the gates of Lewis a couple times a month.  They check all identification of all car passengers and if the car has no post ID tag, you go through only the front gate and get a pass.  I am imagining these girls went as passengers in a soldier’s car.  Why did some gate guard not wonder about the ages and what they were doing going on post? Oh yes, silly me, we don’t care about tipsy teenagers , we care about terrorists, right?  Neither of these girls looked “terroristical” enough to wonder about, one supposes.

Somebody’s little girl is dead.  Rest in peace, Leah King.  The other is “stable” in the hospital.  I hope she gets stable enough soon to tell what the hell happened, if she can remember at all.  No arrests have been made yet.  The crying has surely begun, however.  Justice will take longer.

Just my note to the troops, as a former troop, as a mother of both a daughter and two soldiers:  LEAVE THE JAIL-BAIT ALONE!  Don’t feed booze to ANY date to the point that she falls down.  You need more than a designated driver, you need a designated SOBER “Don’t be a frakkin’ idiot” person!

And to the Army—you already fucked around for 36 hours while some parent went up several walls wondering where a child was located.  Don’t even try to cover this shit up.  Someone was stupid, someone allegedly old and mature enough to be in uniform.  That means that someone is mature enough to take the responsibility and pay the price for a child being dead.

March 11th Update: The 19 year old boyfriend has been arrested for involuntary manslaughter in this case.  He apprently fed Leah Xanax and some other prescription pain killer that was crushed for her to inhale.  This resulted in her death.  He seems to have had a bit of a side-business going in illegal prescription drugs.

Let’s get right to it, shall we? Lt.General Charles Jacobi, commander at Ft. Lewis, is a self-aggrandizing asshat. There, now nobody can accuse me of subtlety. Why am I now ragging on the three star general formerly best known for glossing over detainee issues in his investigation in Afghanistan?

Because while the Army is so stressed for funds that units go to war un-armored, shortages of damn near everything exist and big KBR type contractors are getting rich, the good (for damned little) General wants your tax dollars to pay for 80 charter buses for a little affair of his on Ft. Lewis, Washington. You see, he wants a LOT of men present in ordered ranks from the various military components of the post, but apparently marching the men to the military dog and pony shows isn’t how it can be done these days.

So, the travel office has been told to book civilian charter buses to haul a bunch of no-doubt bored and disgusted troops to the affair. ON YOUR DOLLAR, not his. One employee at the travel office said he would not process the paperwork, he considers it a waste of government money, if not outright fraud. You see, most forms that will result in a bill have some sort of box to be checked about whether this is a necessary expenditure. This employee doesn’t think he could, in good conscience, check that little box since the only necessity is for General Jacobi’s ego-fluff. The paperwork was given to someone else and the non-compliant employee was told to keep his mouth shut if he liked getting enough hours at work to pay his bills.

So, gee, General Jacobi, supporting the troops means busing them all to a little afternoon dog and pony show at government expense and threatening jobs of disabled vets to keep it working like you want it?

Sorry, I just can’t salute that kind of bullshit, “sir”! What a crock of crap! Stop wasting soldiers’ time and taxpayer money! And he must want to save time and money, after all this is the same general who deferred the pleas of widows and parents of dead Ft. Lewis soldiers.

Whatever could I mean, you ask? Well, you see, Ft. Lewis holds a memorial for the troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan only ONCE per month. Families pleaded for that to change, since it is painful, for instance, to lose a loved one on the 4th of the month and not get to do the memorial for another three or four weeks. This was brought to Jacobi’s attention in May of 2007 when he took over command of Ft. Lewis. But there has been no change. Apparently, memorializing the dead is not a “necessary” bother for him, but his own little musical march in the June sunshine is necessary. Ft. Hood, Texas, on the other hand, recognizes that in time of war, military bases ARE the home-town community of the immediate family and friends and DOES do individual memorials. But no, Ft. Lewis and her three star ego will hold the cost line on this one.

What else can we expect of the General recommended for the job by George Bush? Supporting the troops is just code for “Send ‘em to the war you got, ready or not!”