Shadows and 2nd Chances

As Chuck and I walked to dinner tonight, he points and says “look!” He was pointing at the Sun. We could look right at it because there was so much sand in the air to block out its blinding light and just looked like a bright moon. It was 5:30PM and the sun was not even on the horizon yet. Ahh the joy of Camp B. I think the high today was 125 or something close to that. One of the offices we work with (not the trailer I usually work in) has 2 small window units to cool the place. The machines just can’t keep up. The staff asked for KBR to come and look at it and after a quick inspection the response was – yep they are working properly. They are only made to cool the rooms 20 degrees cooler than the outside. So they get to work in 105 degrees vs 125. Something is just not right about that.
As I closed out my last case today I felt a sense of accomplishment. I know the job is far from done, and these hearings will go on long after I am gone, but I felt proud of what I had done. Today I think I was a little more lenient than usual. I’m reading a book about the insurgency here in Iraq (don’t worry that will be a full blown blog once I finish the book) but there was a story from the book that I thought about all day. The anecdote was about Gen Petraeus and once during his career he was accidentally shot by one of his troops in training. You might think that the soldier who caused the discharge of the weapon would have been severely reprimanded and the lower level commanders between Petraeus and the soldier also punished. Well he didn’t kick them out of the Army – in fact he challenged them with things that drove them to higher standards. He gave them a second chance. That phrase rattled around in my head all day. Sometimes you just deserve a second chance. Don’t get me wrong – I know many of our fallen soldiers and their families will never get that second chance because these guys took it from them, but with at least one guy today. I said – he deserves a second chance.