**
Dr. Eowyn posted: "Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan Bill Briggs reports for
NBC News, May 31, 2013: Marines at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan will
lose a key daily meal starting Saturday, causing some to forgo a hot
breakfast and others to work six-plus hours without refu" Respond to
this post by replying above this line
New post on *Fellowship of the Minds*
<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/> No more hot
midnight meals for Marines in
Afghanistan<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/no-more-hot-midnight-meals-for-marines-in-afghanistan/>
by
Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/>
[image: APTOPIX
AFGHANISTAN]<http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/camp-leatherneck.jpg>
*Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan*
Bill Briggs reports
<http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/31/18592339-the-drawdown-diet-marines-steamed-by-loss-of-hot-meal-at-afghanistan-base?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=2>for
NBC News, May 31, 2013:
*Marines at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan will lose a key daily meal
starting Saturday, causing some to forgo a hot breakfast and others to work
six-plus hours without refueling on cooked food*, according to Marines at
the base and Marine Corps officials.
*The midnight ration service — known there as “midrats" — supplies
breakfast to Marines on midnight-to-noon shifts and dinner to Marines who
are ending noon-to-midnight work periods.* It's described as one of the few
times the Marines at Leatherneck can be together in one place.
The base, which is located in Afghanistan’s southwestern Helmand Province,
flanked by Iran and Pakistan, *also will remove its 24-hour sandwich bar. *It
plans to replace the dishes long offered at midnight with pre-packaged
MREs, said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Cliff Gilmore, who has been deployed in
Afghanistan since February.
The moves, though unpopular with many Marines on the ground and their
families back home, are emblematic of the massive drawdown of American
troops in Afghanistan and the dismantling of U.S. military facilities. More
than 30,000 U.S. service members will leave Afghanistan in coming months as
the U.S. prepares to hand responsibility for security to Afghan forces in
2014.
While no Marine at Camp Leatherneck agreed to speak on the record, *many
are privately angry* about the hit on base morale.
"This boils my skin.* One of my entire shifts will go 6.5 hours without a
meal. *If we need to cut back on money I could come up with 100 other
places,” one Leatherneck-based Marine wrote in an email this week to his
wife and shared with NBC News. (The Marine declined to speak on the
record.) “Instead, we will target the biggest contributor to morale. I must
be losing my mind. What is our senior leadership thinking? I just got back
from flying my ass off and in a few days, I will not have a meal to
replenish me after being away for over 9 hours.”
Until Saturday, Leatherneck’s dining facility will offer its customary four
meals per day. *After June 1, the menu drops to three daily meals and,
eventually, there will be only two hot meals served*, Gilmore revealed in
an email to the impacted Marines, adding: “Any time a dining hall meal is
eliminated it will be replaced from a plentiful stock of MREs (Meals Ready
to Eat — or any one of several creative acronyms our Marines have come up
with.)” [...]
The tactical reason for the cooking scale-down is that the people who are
assigned to “support services” — such as food workers — “need to go home
before the people who provide the security which enables those services,”
Gilmore wrote. “This is a natural outcome of the drawdown process unrelated
to sequestration or the ongoing budget issues back in the States.”
Back home, spouses and friends of the troops in Afghanistan are criticizing
the loss of hot meals as a poor logistical choice that will impact the
service members' overall nutrition, energy and spirits.
“MREs are an alternative for when you can’t get to healthy food. They're
supposed to be for desperation,” said Babette Maxwell, founder and
executive director of Military Spouse
Magazine<http://www.victorymediainc.com/aboutus.aspx>,
the wife of a Navy pilot and an advocate for service members and their
families. “These guys have six to nine months left on their deployment.
These are highly athletic and highly physical people, toting guns, not
working any less now than before — and not working out any less either.
Now, they’re short a meal and they don’t have any healthy alternatives.”
According to the Marine Corps, a typical MRE may contain chili with
beans, cornbread, cheese spread, crackers, a toaster pastry, a
“dairyshake,” red pepper, a spoon, a flameless heater and a “hot beverage
bag.”
To fill the hot food gap in Afghanistan, a group of U.S.-based military
advocates and military-family members recently launched a Facebook
page<https://www.facebook.com/BreakfastForBagram> —
called “*Breakfast for Bagram*" — to spur food donations that will be
mailed to troops all around Afghanistan. The page states: “We are here to
help collect and send non-perishable breakfast type foods to the deployed
troops on the 17 bases in Afghanistan that are not currently serving
breakfast 'hot chow' and Midnight chow due to the budget cuts.” [...]
At home, some military family members nonetheless called the change a
mistake.
“Psychologically, midrats is probably the most important of all the meals
because that’s the big social time — where first (shift) crew is coming off
and second (shift) crew is coming on,” Maxwell said."That's where you get
the esprit de corps, the camaraderie. It's not just the food you're taking
away, it's their social sustenance.”
[image: Memphis
Soul]<http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/memphis-soul.jpg>
Meanwhile, on April 9, Pres. Lucifer and FLPOS Michelle Antoinette sang
along with Justin Timberlake and other performers during the White
House’s tax-payer
funded celebration of Memphis
Soul<http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/09/sneak-peek-into-white-house-celebration-of-memphis-soul/>(see
pic above).
And although FLPOS's 50th birthday party isn’t until next January, plans
are already underway. The Daily Mail
reports:<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2290937/MoS-Diary-Adele-lands-biggest-gig-Michelle-Obamas-50th-birthday-party.html>
‘America’s First Lady will be holding a huge celebrity-packed party for her
birthday at the White
House<http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/11/more-sequester-fallout-michelle-obama-can-only-get-adele-and-beyonce-to-sing-at-her-birthday-party/#>next
year and, as she adores Adele and Beyonce, she has asked them both to
sing,’ says a source.
Priorities, priorities!
It's all about priorities!
H/t FOTM's Miss May (aka maziel).
*~Eowyn*
*Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/>* | May
31, 2013 at 2:11 pm | Tags: Babette
Maxwell<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=babette-maxwell>,
Breakfast for
Bagram<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=breakfast-for-bagram>,
Camp Leatherneck<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=camp-leatherneck>,
Lt. Col. Cliff
Gilmore<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=lt-col-cliff-gilmore>,
Memphis Soul <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=memphis-soul>,
midrats <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=midrats>,
MREs<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=mres>,
US Marine Corps<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=us-marine-corps>|
Categories: Michelle
Obama <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=429843>, Middle
East<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=3250>,
Military <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=33806753>,
Obama<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=376320>,
Obama's America <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=12285619>, United
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