Burning garbage
by digby
Get ready for a big boo for another active duty soldier:
U.S. forces stationed in a remote area of Afghanistan recently received about 20 copies of Bill O’Reilly’s book “Pinheads and Patriots.” Their orders upon receiving the tomes: Burn them, according to a tumblr account maintained anonymously by a soldier.
Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington – Patriot; George Soros – Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap. Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander’s orders.
Posted on Monday along with photos of the burning manuscripts, the post quickly went viral, prompting the blogger to clarify the reason for the book blaze:
The motivation behind the order to burn them was not political. As mentioned in the original post, we are in an extraordinarily remote location. We don’t have a post office here, so sending them back wasn’t an option. Extra space is scarce and alternatives that a few mentioned, like recycling, are nonexistent.
Evidently quite a few people objected on the grounds that burning books is a bad thing to do, which I generally agree is true.(I do have to wonder how many of them stomped on those Dixie Chicks CDs back in 2003 …) But I believe the guy when he says that they couldn’t do much with te things except burn considering where they are. It’s not like they’re Bibles — or even as valuable as old, out of date Afghan newspapers. These are Bill O’Reilly books. Why in God’s name are people sending garbage to a war zone?
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