Will I re-enlist? Hell no.

Featured on MichaelMoore.com:

From: Joel Bottem
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2005 5:41 AM
To: soldiers@michaelmoore.com
Subject:

Dear Honorable Moore,

After several years out of the military, and many months of hearing the media reporting how bad the National Guard and Reserves needed people, I signed up for 1 year. It is an option the National Guard offers to Prior Service personnel. It took me a year-and-a-half after 9/11 to convince my wife I was needed, and that I had more to give to the service of our country.

I joined for the 1 year, singing up as a mechanic with the 951st Maintenance Company out of Camp Murray, Tacoma, Washington. With just 3 months remaining on my contract, my unit gets activated, and I am put on a "stop-loss." My executive officer laughingly told me President Bush has turned my "try-one enlistment" into a "try-two-and-a-half." I am now attached to the 152nd Maintenance Company, from Maine, serving in Baghdad, Iraq.

To add insult to injury, when our maintenance company arrived into Kuwait, we were informed that the unit we were to be attached to in Iraq no longer needed mechanics, so we would be doing "force protection." So we have an entire maintenance company of approximately 240 soldiers, aside from maybe 20 personnel, pulling guard duty, while KBR mechanics make $140K and up to do the work we were brought over to do.

I just turned 40 in July, my birthday was spent pulling guard duty on an ammo holding area very near Baghdad. Will I re-enlist? Hell no.

Thanks for all you do!

Joel Bottem
Currently in Iraq, not Seattle where I should be

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"Sometimes I do what I want to do.
The rest of the time, I do what I have to."
Tommy Flanagan as Cicero,
The Gladiator