New Things

So a lot has changed. I got promoted rank-wise, and I got very promoted job-wise. A few readers out there are Facebook/E-mail friends with my actual persona and I ask them to keep it "locked up" for now. I was asked to join the CoIST team (Company-level Intelligence & Surveillance Team).

What is CoIST? For those in the know, it's basically an S2 shop at the company level at an incredibly smaller level. Here is a link: http://www.army.mil/-news/2009/06/19/23048-coist-staffs-play-crucial-role-on-todays-complex-battlefield/. I was asked to join the CoIST team because I am both very intelligent and very hard working. At CoIST school we worked about 14 hours a day without breakfast or lunch and I still left every evening feeling like I could have kept working without being satisfied with my work.

I am also compassionate in a way that not many guys in the company/battalion/brigade/Army/planet are. I don't think we should kill everyone that has brown skin because of 9/11: I am very interested in the SWEAT-MS (Sewage, Water, Electricity, Academics, Trash-Removal, Medical, Security) of the places we deploy to. I am very passionate about connecting with Iraqis and Afghanis on a level where we trade information/compliance for these basic amenities. I think, like GEN Petraeus that like in Iraq, this is the key to success in squelching insurgencies and ensuring that the US and her allies are successful in the mission at whole and most importantly, bringing people home. It's crazy to think that I am deploying to fight in a country that we had first went to war in when I was in high school. I will be fighting in a country that we had first invaded when I didn't even know what a boner was in high school. Weird.