Rep. Paton on the Cover of Tucson Weekly

Here's a great article about Rep Paton. 

Before I left Fort Bliss, Texas, to start my 36-hour trip to Baghdad last September, I got some encouraging words from a chaplain: "You're going into a storm, lieutenant, where there is little shelter."

He was more of a fire-and-brimstone sort of fellow than Father Mulcahy from M*A*S*H, I guess.

The flight took us to Leipzig, Germany, and then on to Ali Asalem, Kuwait. After we loaded onto a bus, a little Arab man with a tour-guide microphone told us it was Ramadan, so no one was to be seen drinking water, smoking or doing anything more than looking serious; we didn't want to offend our Kuwaiti hosts. To emphasize that point, we were ordered not to open the curtains to see the world outside of the bus. The ugly American in me made me peek anyway. The world outside looked a lot like the uglier parts of Mohave County, without the sidewinders.

A few hours later, I was aboard a C-130, lit by the glow of a red emergency light. I could see the Air Force cargo crew dozing with their iPods on. We took several hops across Iraq until we landed in Baghdad, sometime after midnight.

Read the whole thing...

Comments

[vet66]

Welcome to the party Rep. Paton. You will not suffer fools well anymore! After you experience 59 minutes of boredom followed by 1 minute of sheer terror, you will never be the same.

Well done!

[ron]

What a great article - very well-written.

I have printed it out and forwarded to several people already.

thanks, Greg

And, "Thank you" Lt. Paton.

[Matt]

Thanks for passing this along. It makes me glad I voted for LT Paton.