Reply #19: Actually, there's a perfectly good reason to do it

[jmowreader]

When I worked Hurricane Andrew, we got a lot of ice from the northeast. Why? asked I to the clueless FEMA woman in our compound, why would we bring ice from Pennsylvania when ice is made in Georgia? She explained that it was easier to get ice from a Pennsylvania plant than from a Georgia plant because, in August, it's easier to talk a Pennsylvania ice company (or any northern state, of course) into selling great quantities of ice to the government than it is to talk a Georgia ice company into doing the same thing.

Oh, humorous war story about our rows of portapotties. President Bush (the one who was elected, not the one we have now) came to town to have lunch with children at our refugee camp. They chose OUR refugee camp because there was a school across the street from it for the photo opportunity, and because our camp was just so spiffy and squared-away because we had interrogators running it. Our battalion commander decided he didn't want any soldiers in the camp when the president was there, so he sent us all back to our tents and told us to go inside where they couldn't see us. (We had US Marshals and Secret Service guys in our camp the whole time we were running it, and one of the Secret Service guys commented that the president was disappointed because he wanted his press delegation to see soldiers helping real Americans.) Our idiotic colonel stayed in the camp because, of course, he wanted his picture in the paper next to the president. So in comes the president's Secret Service Detail, followed by Poppy Bush. Ol' Colonel Bob placed himself strategically next to a line of shitters. When Bush came within view, Colonel Bob jumped out and stood there with his hands on his hips like fucking Superman. The Detail didn't know who the fuck he was, so two of them drew guns and another two grabbed Colonel Bob, threw him in a shitter and shoved it over with the door facing down so he wouldn't pose a threat to their principal. Bush's retinue collected up the children he was going to eat with and retreated to the school, and a handful of us went to get the colonel out of the shitter. We got it upright and opened the door. Naturally, Colonel Bob was covered in non-precious bodily fluids that had been made specially foul by prolonged exposure to Florida sunshine. In our battalion was one Infantry captain who hated Colonel Bob--and Colonel Bob hated him equally. The Infantry captain took one look at our shit-covered fuehrer and said, "yeah, that's how to impress the president."