AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE

IMAGINE that you are a service person on a United States ship probably aged in your late teens and you've been ordered to fight a possible war in a far off country against a man who allegedly has an arsenal of chemical weapons added to which the man responsible for the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon has also threatened your nation again and those who stand with you. You then sail across the Atlantic and your ship drops anchor in Palma and you find that even the President of the Balearic government wants you to leave eventhough the nation you are visiting is part of NATO, whose military equipment is made in the USA, and whose Prime Minister is a staunch ally of your own President. This is probably what sailors aboard the USS Oscar Austin are feeling at the moment. They are just foot soldiers in a global battle. If President Antich wishes to make his anti-war sentiment felt then he should write to George W. Bush because he is ultimately responsible for the presence of the destroyer in Palma. Its crew are just pawns in a much bigger picture. If Antich wants a fight his fight is with the State Department and the White House not the crew of the Oscar Austin. They just do what they are told. We talk about the innocent people of Iraq who may die if war breaks out, but what about the innocent people aboard the Oscar Austin who like the people of Iraq are also involved in a dispute which ultimately rests with their President and Saddam Hussein. I think is absolutely disgraceful that the crew of this warship are being used as part of some sort of anti-war stunt and I sincerely hope that they don't judge the Balearics by the antics of its President.