perfidy

Roving correspondent "Geek Lethal," who claims he is too "busy" to blog these days (fie! pah! and ptui!) brought to my attention a seven-day running feature in Stars and Stripes (they're on day seven today). The magazine surveyed nearly 2000 soldiers from all services stationed in Iraq about morale, mission, and conditions, and are publishing the results with generous annotations.

I'm still working through it, and so far it's really interesting. We hear some of this stuff, but not nearly all of it, and it's instructive to hear what the soldiers in the field think. A lot of it is standard-issue bitching that soldiers have done since the mustering of the 1st Rock & Stick Corps, but some of the contrasts in conditions are very marked; for example, Air Force flyboys with a Pizza Hut, gym, and hot showers separated by barbed wire from a camp of Army reservists who live in tents and subsist on MRE's.

The big picture is better than what we hear sometimes in the press (quag!mi!re!), but neither is everything working perfectly. The Marines and Air Force have relatively high morale, while that of the reservists, again, is fairly low. Some confusion is evident in the ranks as to why they are doing what they're doing, but the overall picture is reassuringly close to what I figured it would be. Basically, in army-speak it's Situation Normal.

Highlights: Day 1 covers methodology and overview; Day 4 discusses the new role the reserves play in military strategy; and day 5 covers in part the need for flexibility in the face of shifting goals.

Overall, it's a fascinating (albeit long) read. Go look: it's worth your time.