11/12/2003 09:54:00 AM by Rob

These are the ki(n)ds of people we have in our army?

I watched every second of the Pvt. Jessi (this is how she spells it, I guess the extra 'e' would make it too intellectually challenging for her on a daily basis) interview. Wendy kept asking me why everyone was making such a big deal about her, when there have been over 300 American soldiers killed so far in Iraq.

"Because she's cute and blonde," I said. "This is what sells here in America."

This I can deduce: she's cute, and blonde, and in a world of hurt. She is also not above making money off of her trouble. The guy that wrote her book is a shyster, and I think he made up the rape charge to sell books. She was at one point hopelessly naive, and probably did not have to turn her back away from an academic scholarship to join the Army. She and her brother thought $1,100 dollars a month was a fortune. She may be feisty, but I really don't feel any safer knowing that she was "defending" my country. She may or may not know how to party hearty, but I'm pretty sure that at this point she isn't a virgin, let alone Joan of Arc.

She is either too dumb to lie, or incredibly, cynically smart, because she came across as quite the victim in her interview. She never fired a shot, she hit her knees and prayed when the attack happened, and she wasn't a hero, and she resents the fact that the government and the media conspired to make her one. All of this sounds like the right thing to say, and makes it real hard for people like me to rip her anymore.

I do hope that she does have a good life from here on in, I hope that she doesn't start wanting more than she already had when she first left Appalachia to join the Army, and I hope that her marriage, at 20, to her will-be 21-yr-old Army husband works out. It seems that very few military marriages are truly happy ones, and even fewer when they start so young in life. You can think of it two ways: one way is to realize that you will never be under more duress than you were in that hospital in Iraq, and thus you handle life's little issues in stride; or you can go all prima donna on us, and decide that you have handled your fair share of pain for a lifetime, and thus demand perfection, and will not accept anything less.

In case you haven't figured out, I am fascinated with this girl, on a psychological level. (She don't do it for me on other levels, BTW. Too small)

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