Conditions in the US armed forces

Although no one in my immediate family was/is in the military, other people in my extended family were and are.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/08/you_can_go_strangle_yourself_with_that_yellow_ribbon

Long article, by a Marine who served four tours in Iraq, on conditions in the US armed services. He is in favor of reinstating a draft. I can't say that I am, but I would almost be in favor of it if I thought it were the only way to get people in power to pay attention to what's going on in the armed services. (He thinks it would.)

Trigger warning, discusses violence, harassment, PTSD.

Excerpt:

For those who cannot listen to an argument without attacking someone's personality or politics, here is my background up front. I am a white male. I'm a middle class kid who grew up working on my grandfather's potato farm in Southern Idaho and lived in suburbia while attending badly run and academically useless public schools K-12. I'm a Generation Y, ivy-league educated, FDR liberal, environmentalist, atheist vegan. I graduated with a BA in English and History in 2002 from a private college I busted my ass to get into on an academic scholarship. I enlisted as a private in United States Marine Corps after 9/11 but I wanted to be a jarhead before that for these reasons: 1) I could not afford graduate school without the GI Bill; 2) I wanted to repay the government and country that gave my grandfather free farmland and an education after his war in Korea; and 3) I wanted to be there for my friends. I was a grunt and a scout sniper. I served four voluntary tours in Iraq. On the last two tours, I burned into my inactive reserve time and took someone else's place so they wouldn't have to go. I'm currently using the New Deal-GI Bill to pursue my graduate studies and I am a small business owner. But guess what? I'm average. This was just a job and a means to an end just like most the guys I served with. Despite the physical injuries I sustained and the PTSD I will live with forever, the lies I was told by military and civilians alike, I do not regret being there for my Marines and my Iraqis.

New book list meme!!

NPR top 100 F/SF

Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

From NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139248590/top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books
More than 60,000 ballots were cast in our annual summer readers' poll. Here's a list of the top 100 winners. For even more great reads, check out the complete list of 237 finalists.

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien (An all-time favorite)
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