[HTML1] A wounded Army vet jailed for saying he felt like “tearing Washington, D.C. apart brick-by-brick” over his medical care says he is not a terrorist. Christopher Gillette’s classroom rant led to a 90-minute lock-down on the Texas Woman’s University. He was arrested later at a Dallas VA hospital where he went for treatment and charged with making terrorist threats. From behind bars, Gillette told WFAA-TV and KXAS-TV that he has had thoughts of overthrowing the government, but they have nothing to do with the school. “The First Amendment to the Constitution — I can say that,” he said. “I…
Browsing: express yourself
We’re pleased to report that our friends at the Graffiti of War Project are progressing by leaps and bounds since we last checked in on them and their cool idea. That is to say, they’re collecting your war zone photos … of lonely latrine scrawls… of memorial walls… and of love messages on tanks. Jaeson Parsons, the project’s head dude and an Army vet, sent us an e-mail reporting that they’d broken the 1,400 mark on Facebook (now 1,500) and that images and encouragement are flooding in.
Japanese troops can’t help falling in love with Maj. Manuel Sam Wong. The Yama Sakura 59 war game was now or never for strategic intelligence officer, whose Elvis impersonation is a special brand of cultural exchange, reports 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment. Wong, with I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., became the devil in disguise, trading his ACUs for a sequined white jumpsuit and his oak leaf for a sideburn wig. “Elvis is known throughout the world,” said Spc. Gerard White, also with I Corps, who met Wong in Iraq in 2009. “So, if you have an American soldier…
Several thousand American and Japanese troops are simulating missile attacks, guerrilla warfare and a full-scale invasion of Japan as part of a major”Yama Sakura” war games through Feb 3. About 1,500 U.S. troops and 4,500 Japanese military personnel have flooded the southwestern island of Kyusku, but Yama Sakura is mainly a command post exercise executed through computer simulations, rather than real-world deployment of troops. The Canadian Press reports Japan’s increasing concern about its defenses around the Okinawan islands because of, “incursions into its sea lanes by Chinese warships,” and possible aggression from neighboring North Korea. Japan is reportedly boosting its…
The day after Thanksgiving, we called Charles “C.J.” Whittington, the former soldier who’s gotten a lot of attention for an essay he published in his college newspaper about his “addiction to killing.” We’d interviewed him before, but we wanted to resolve a question about his service record and his medals. The essay contains some graphic language about killing someone with a knife and the slur “raghead.” His school, the Community College of Baltimore County, responded by ordering him off of campus and out of classes until he gets a clean psychological evaluation. Some readers said he didn’t sound like someone…
[HTML1] Brutally honest and deeply disturbing, former infantryman Charles D. Whittington Jr.’s essay about his addiction to killing and war can charitably be called an anguished cry for help. The Baltimore Sun posted its interview with Whittington, 24, in which he reads the essay in a soft, still monotone at odds with the rage and pain evidently brimming inside of him. Whittington’s essay (pdf, p.12) has gotten him banned from the Community College of Baltimore County until he gets a psychological exam.
Want to catapult your iron-pumping, MMA-fighting, tribal-tattooed, land-navving, knot-tying self to fame? Well, it looks like the Discovery Channel’s looking for you.
Army Regulation 670-1, “Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia,” states “While in uniform, personnel will not place their hands in their pockets, except momentarily to place or retrieve objects.” But screw all that.
Army Times has an ongoing request for feedback about Army Knowledge Online, and we’re getting quite an earful about its various faults. The main criticisms we hear are that AKO’s outdated and not as user friendly as commercial email, like Gmail. One user wrote us and said, “AKO is an antiquated dinosaur that is difficult to access and navigate with much ease. Get rid of it.” And that’s not all.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50RFJfUzNsY[/youtube] On Tuesday, Sal Guinta will become the first living Medal of Honor recipient from the current wars. Journalist Sebastian Junger, who wrote a book about Afghanistan, worked with photographer Tim Hetherington to create this video about a man and war and valor. It’s gripping, raw and a must-see for Veterans Day.
