When I was in junior high, patches were pretty sweet.  Everybody had denim jackets, and everybody wanted them to have patches.  In my time, I’ve proudly displayed patches from Ski Santa Fe, from Yellowstone Park Service Stations, and from County Line Hunting Club, which were places where I recreated, worked, and shot animals from time to time (in that order).  This light fare from the Times is also about patches, but of a different kind.  Black ops patches, which shine a dark light on a dark corner of the nation’s government.

One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. “To Serve Man” reads the text above, a reference to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. “Gustatus Similis Pullus” reads the caption below, dog Latin for “Tastes Like Chicken.”

Part esprit de corps, part gnosticism, part patriotism, these patches are pretty awesome to look at.  And in some ways, they reveal that black ops people are people, too.

In an interview, Mr. Paglen said his favorite patch was the dragon holding the Earth in its claws, its wings made of American flags and its mouth wide open, baring its fangs. He said it came from the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees developing spy satellites. “There’s something both belligerent and weirdly self-critical about it,” he remarked. “It’s representing the U.S. as a dragon with the whole world in its clutches.”

I think it’d be pretty awesome if I were to do something, one day, that merited a patch like that.

New movie Stop-Loss tells the story of a soldier who decides he’s not going back to war. A recent article in the Washington Post tells the story of 16,000 American soldiers who made the same decision.

Phil McDowell joined the Army after 9/11. He served his tour in Iraq and became a sergeant, but he also became disillusioned about the war through personal research and bitterness over the apathy he found back home.

When the Army rescinded his discharge, McDowell joined an estimated 200 Iraq war deserters who have fled to Canada with no promise of asylum. “It would’ve been easy to go to Iraq and have it done with again. But being a sellout to my own beliefs—I just felt it was wrong on so many levels,” McDowell told the Post.

As Senior Airman Preston Reeves told BBC, “Tragedies do happen in war.” MSNBC reported in 2006 that nearly one in 10 American solders who served in Iraq was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The military death toll just passed 4,000.

But McDowell thinks the government lied to him about the reasons for going to and staying in Iraq. To mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Slate Magazine asked a number of writers who originally supported the war to answer the question, “Why did we get it wrong?” One soldier wrote, “I came home in September 2006 frustrated with the strategic direction of the war and alienated from the country that sent me there.”

In an article posted last fall, Slate examined the appropriateness of military dissent among generals when they disagree with the Commander in Chief: “What should the generals do? Disobey? Rally resistance from within? Resign in protest? Retire quietly? Or salute and execute the mission?”

Likewise, what do enlisted men do when they come to the conclusion that their country is wrong? They swore an oath to support, defend, and obey. Do they stand by that commitment when they no longer agree with the decisions being made?

“Individual service members can’t be allowed to make policy,” Lieutenant Commander Travis Moger, a Navy Chaplain and combat veteran who served with Marines in Iraq, told WoW. “You can’t wage war by referendum. Every member of the military knew when he volunteered that he might have to go to war, even an unpopular or unnecessary war. We live in a post-Vietnam America. There is little excuse for someone believing that there was no chance they would ever have to serve in a protracted, problematic conflict.”

McDowell confessed to the Post that the question still haunts him: “What does it mean to desert the Army and abandon your country?”

An Army soldier has claimed, in a white-hot lawsuit filed Wednesday with a defendant list including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, that the Army violated his right to be an atheist and is a breeding ground for Christian fundamentalists who routinely engage in this sort of behavior.

The suit, brought by Spc. Jeremy Hall, has been pending since September. Attorneys dropped it in February so they could bolster Hall’s case with a new claim that Army officials blocked Hall’s promotion after he sued. Media have been mostly quiet on the re-file, but in September a spate of news pieces (by MSNBC, The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor, among others) asked if soldiers were “being force-fed Christianity.” (Join the debate on WMB.)

According to an Associated Press account, Hall “alleges that Gates permits a military culture in which officers are encouraged to pressure soldiers to adopt and espouse fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and in which activities by Christian organizations are sanctioned.”

There are reports that the Army improperly allowed baptisms in one of Saddam Hussein’s swimming pools and that some of its senior officers participated in a fund-raising video for a Christian group while at the Pentagon. The military refuses to comment on a pending legal affair, prompting the Army’s backers to contend that press coverage, for now, is de facto one sided.

Hall, formerly Baptist, says his troubles began when he tried to convene a meeting of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. He says a superior officer broke up the meeting, told Hall he was a “problem,” then added, “Problems get removed.” Hall later filed suit, raising his profile to that of atheist martyr. AP says afterwards, a platoon sergeant told Hall that the military denied his promotion because he would be “unable to put aside his personal convictions and pray with his troops” and couldn’t bond with them.

Hall had to return from Iraq six weeks shy of completing his tour because his battalion commander believed he was in danger. The media reported that several Christian bloggers began saying Hall should be “fragged”—killed by friendly fire.

Michael Weinstein, a former Reagan administration lawyer who runs the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has taken up Hall’s case. He says he has received about 6,000 complaints like Hall’s since 2006. MRFF says these Christian “dominionists”—the kind who see the Iraq war as a modern-day crusade —make up 20 to 30 percent of the armed forces and rule the rank and file through intimidation and connections that go all the way to the top.

The January/February issue of Details ran an in-depth piece by Ben Paynter called “The New Holy War,” chronicling a deliberate, evangelical-fundamentalist “religious crusade against nonbeliever servicemen.” A full-page shot of Hall’s dog tags, erroneously reading “ATHEIST,” underscores the idea that nonbelievers may frequently be marginalized.

Yet, as critics point out, Paynter taints good reporting with his own confusions about Christianity—misusing the word “dominionists” to describe this type of militaristic Christian, then pronouncing in shock that “many in the movement believe in the literal truth of the King James Bible.”

Sixty-five years ago this week occurred one of the largest Allied maritime losses of life during World War II, the sinking of the USAT Dorchester, which was sunk by a German U-boat in the icy waters of the North Atlantic in an area known as “Torpedo Alley.” Of the 902 men who left New York for England, only 230 would survive the ships sinking.

But the story of the heroism of four chaplains aboard the ship - one rabbi, one Roman Catholic priest and two Protestant pastors - would also survive the tragedy. As men scrambled to the deck, many without their life vests, all four chaplains surrendered theirs to other men on board. And survivors of the sinking recall the image of the four chaplains on the bow of the rapidly sinking, linked arm-in-arm in prayer before the ship slipped into the deep just 18 minutes after the torpedo struck.

The heroism of the four Dorchester chaplains has been commemorated in stained glass in a chapel at the Pentagon, a US Mail postage stamp in 1948, and a special Congressional Medal of Valor awarded to the mens’ families in 1961. NPR’s All Things Considered radio program dedicated a May 2001 segment to “The Sinking of the Dorchester,” and in 2004 the Hallmark Channel aired a documentary on the lives and testimony of the four Dorchester chaplains.

On November 30, 2007, I completed OCS and was commissioned as a United States Marine Corps Officer. The training was intense and challenging, as evidenced by our diminished numbers. Our Battalion started with 456 candidates, but only 295 graduated. Of the 46 females in my platoon who started, only 17 graduated. I feel privileged to be among those who graduated and were commissioned a few hours later at the Marine Corps Museum located in Quantico, Virginia.

The responsibility of being an officer of Marines was not lost on us amid the celebration and congratulations by our instructors. We have been entrusted with the lives of others. Our decisions will have significant consequences, both good and bad. Our priority and continual mission from now on is taking care of Marines under our command.

For the first time our title “candidate” was exchanged for “2nd Lieutenant”. For the first time we were called United States Marines. For the first time, we were saluted by enlisted Marines. It seemed strange that our instructors, enlisted Marines with 10-20 years experience in the Marine Corps, were saluting freshly commissioned Lieutenants with 10 weeks experience. What all of us are blatantly aware of is the fact that although we are shown the respect due to officers, we are not yet qualified to lead Marines or expect them to follow. What have I achieved during these last 10 weeks? I have earned the right to be trained.

My next adventure from here is 6 months at The Basic School (TBS). This is where all Marine 2nd Lieutenants are taught how to be leaders of Marines (Platoon Commanders). Thank you for all of you who read this blog and even sent me letters during OCS. It is a privilege and an honor to live in a country where we can have this kind of discussion and exchange of ideas.

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” (Thomas Paine)

If you would like more information on OCS or becoming a Marine Officer, visit www.Marines.com and click on the “Request More Information” link.

What do you do if your team has been invited to play in a bowl game nearly 5,000 miles away and two days before Christmas? Well, if you’re East Carolina Pirates fans, you buy up the tickets allotted to your school for the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl against Boise State and give them away as Christmas presents to military personnel stationed away from home on the islands.

Our last week of hard training is finally over, and we completed our last test on Wednesday. We concluded the physical training day with a three hour battle of three-on-three pugil sticks, or padded sticks that simulate rifles with bayonets. (Males fight males and females fight females.) By the end of the day we were exhausted but in high spirits. Our graded events had come to a close and we knew we had met the requirements to graduate. We just had one more difficult, but untested, event: A twelve-mile hike with our 60 lbs pack.

While most families were preparing their Thanksgiving meal, we were eating an MRE at 5am and getting ready to step off for our last hike. At first, it seemed stupid that we would do this last hike when it seemed like OCS was ending. Why make us go through this untested event and provide one more opportunity for candidates to get injured? But that was the importance of completing this hike together. Could we stay motivated and continue to give 100% even when our grades and evaluation did not depend on it? Could we push ourselves without needing motivation from our instructors? Could we look out for each other and encourage our peers?

Most of us successfully completed the hike. One of the most embarrassing things you can do as a Marine (or soon-to-be-Marine) is fall out of a hike. A few did just that. Although I thought this was an untested event, officers still evaluated us. The next day, they dropped some of the hike drops from OCS and did not allow them to graduate.

Those of us who did make it through were rewarded after 4 hours of hiking by long hot showers. Once we were finally clean, we marched to the mess hall for an amazing Thanksgiving meal served to us by our Commanding Officer, a USMC Colonel. Two of the many leadership principles we learn are to look out for the welfare of those under our command, and to set the example. The Colonel demonstrated both of these principles throughout OCS. Rather than relaxing on Thanksgiving Day, he arrived at the mess hall to serve over 300 candidates and talk to each of us individually. He asked us how our feet were feeling after the hike, did we get enough to eat and if we were ready to graduate. He demonstrated one of the key elements of looking out for the welfare of your Marines: Eat last, once you have served everyone under you.

The lesson was not lost on us. It was one more reminder of our responsibility as officers. The higher one ranks, the less one should be thinking of oneself. Once we get to the fleet, our highest priority is accomplishing the mission while looking out for the welfare and safety of the Privates and Lance Corporals under us.

This week we had our final test: the Small Unit Leadership Evaluation (SULE). It tests our physical fitness, communication skills, leadership ability, academic proficiency, land navigation, aptitude in taking and giving orders, decision making process, command presence, ability to motivate peers and composure under pressure and time constraints.

To deprive ourselves of sleep, we camped out Tuesday night and received homework to complete by the morning. The wake-up call sounded at 1:30 am and we stepped off at 3:00 am for a 9-mile hike with our 60 lbs packs. We completed the hike just as the sun rose and spent the rest of the day doing field exercises where we practiced leading a squad (13 Marines) in attacking different objectives. We also practiced receiving and issuing a 5-paragraph order – a form of issuing a mission to one’s subordinates that includes the enemy’s situation, the mission that must be accomplished, the purpose for the mission, the way it will be accomplished and all the administrative and logistical details. We practiced communicating one of these orders to 60 of our peers and then leading 12 of our peers in carrying out the order. At the end of the day, we received another 5-paragraph order that we would use the following day for our SULE evaluation. We slept a couple hours in our tents that night and got up at 3:45 to start the longest day of my life.

We have been incredibly fortunate over the past two months with absolutely beautiful weather. That all changed at 4:30am on the most important day of OCS. The temperature dropped 25 degrees and it started pouring rain. We spent the next 11 hours in the rain with no jackets or gloves. There were 11 people in my squad and each of us had to accomplish a mission by issuing an order to our squad and supervising the execution of the mission. We received an evaluation and then orders to run to another point on the map. We ran about a mile in between each objective and then would have to wait for the squad leader to get briefed by the evaluator. Being cold and wet for that long is pretty miserable. Some candidates had to get taken away by medical personnel because their core temperature dropped significantly. It was definitely the most miserable I have ever been in my entire life.

The situation was a great example of what is expected of Marine officers. The first concern (51%) for an officer is mission accomplishment. The second is troop welfare (49%). Although everyone was freezing cold and losing focus, we had been given a mission and must complete it despite our conditions and discomfort. The weather does not conform to our schedule and adverse conditions are no excuse for mission failure. I thought the day would never end, but it finally did. As soon as we arrived at the barracks, the rain stopped. Go figure

The next morning, we took a bus ride over to The Basic School, where 2nd Lieutenant Marine officers train for 6 months after they complete OCS. We had breakfast with a 2nd Lieutenant and asked all of our questions about his experiences and how to prepare for our time at TBS. Instead of busing us back to OCS, helicopters picked us up from the mess hall and flew us around the base, then landed right at the door of our barracks. It was my first time flying in a helicopter and it made up for the previous day. Only 14 days left.

On November 10, 1775, at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, the United States Marine Corps began. Even though we are in training at OCS, Marines hold this special day so reverently that they allow candidates to experience it as well.

We read General Lejeune’s Birthday address and the birthday address of the current Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Conway. The most radical difference of the day is that officers gave us an HOUR to eat lunch. Our “chow hall” was transformed with red and gold decorations, pictures and brochures celebrating the 232 years of worldwide service by Marines. Everyone ate together, from candidates all the way up to the commanding officer of OCS. We ate steak, lobster, shrimp, cheesecake and a host of other food that we certainly do not see at any other time during training.

We also participated in the tradition of the cake cutting ceremony. We cut two pieces of the birthday cake and give the first to the oldest Marine present, honoring the dedicated service of that Marine. We give the second to the youngest Marine present, signifying the wisdom, knowledge and experience being passed from one generation to the next. The Marine Corps places a huge emphasis on learning from the past and honoring the dedication of individual Marines. We learn to appreciate Marines like “Chesty” Puller, who commanded Marines at the freezing cold Chosin Reservoir. Officers encourage us to possess the tenacity and intensity of the Marines from Belleau Wood who were named “Devil Dogs” by the Germans. We respect and honor the memory of two best Marines in history, Dan Daly and Smedley Butler, who each won two Medals of Honor for their bravery in combat. At every Marine Corps ball across the world on November 10th, the cake cutting ceremony memorializes these Marines.

It was motivating to think that in 19 days, I will be in the company of these great men and women who have given their lives to serve their country over the last 232 yeas. United States Marine Corps Officer is a title that brings with it great honor, but greater responsibility. I pray that I am prepared for the challenge.