ARCHIVES - 1996 to FOREVER

Folks, our army and marines and other armed forces are just that... armed forces. They are armed so that they can kill. They are trained to kill. And they are placed in a situation that encompasses every war that has ever been fought... kill or be killed.

And, as humans, they can make mistakes. And when they do, they do as most other humans do... cover those mistakes up.

In other words... kill the witnesses.

It happened in WW2, it happened in Korea, it happened in Viet Nam and it's happening now.

So why the surprise?

Did anyone think that this war was different, or that Our Boys were different?

That would be gross stupidity... but it's, heh, "common knowledge" that our boys are indeed different.

War... is now, and always has been and always will be, war. Sure, killing the ememy is the goal, which in itself is pretty bad... civilized people don't settle their differences that way, after all.

But then there's the innocents, or presumed innocents, that get in the way of the bullets.

And then there are the mistakes.

It's hard, I heard an infantry man say long ago, to tell the good gooks from the bad ones... so if it doesn't feel right, I pull the trigger.

He's watched friends get killed because of the goodness in their hearts, he said, and that wasn't gonna happen to him.

It's really hard to counter that when nine-year-old kids and old women are carrying AK-47s or hidden grenades.

They have their version of war, too.

OK, something about me... what this journal is about, of course.

Not too bad of a day... except for the usual physical toll.

I was the scan room guru, and it was fun, as usual.

And I missed lots of veins.

Normally, the scan room guy doesn't put in IVs, they're usually put in before the patient gets there. Today was kinda different... and really, I hit more veins than I missed, but still....

One of the other techs asked me to help on a patient that he had missed three times, the usual limit. I hit the vein, but I couldn't thread the teflon sheath... same problem that he'd had. So I aligned the sheath at 90° from what we had thought was right and proper... and got it to thread. Weird... but some people are like that. I told the patient that they needed a tatoo to show which way the vein went, heh. She laughed, but she said that she'd remember that for the next guy....

And that's about it for this Friday... I want to spend some quality time ™ with Karen this weekend, the annual Jazz festival (Coleman Hawkins) is this weekend, and it might not be too hot for me to attend some part of it.

"The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent.
If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent.
If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent.
Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?"
-- Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.)