posted 12-07-2001 10:41           

First some background:

My sister has a (now ex) boyfriend who's a tard. He's not really retarded, but he's definately not operating on all cylinders. He's done some really dumb shit. (He's the type of person who would repeatedly leave foil on food when sticking it in the microwave and not notice the popping, just walk off and such. He's a dentist and one time he cut my sister's tongue with the drill when fixing a tooth because he turned his head away to watch something on tv or something. I don't remember the details. He's also a total pussy, says he hurt his back and can't lift more than 10lbs.)

Now, onto the first part of the story. He's from Iraq... and has a long middle eastern last name. He also holds to his country's beliefs and guess which side he's taking in this war stuff... pretty much everything since September.

So, Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, he's at some hotel. He orders all this stuff from room service and they tell him they're really busy, so he starts getting really rude with them. Food comes 90 minutes later and some of it's cold, so he's really pissed and starts yelling at the room service people to give him new hot food and really offends them so they hang up on him and he keeps calling back.

Next morning, he goes down to the front desk and plops his duffel bag down on the front counter and tells whoever's there (I don't know who...) "You know, I was treated horribly by the service here last night and I have to say, if I had a bomb in this bag (pats bag), I'd gladly blow you all up right now." With all the scare right now... and him looking/having the name like he does... they called the police, fbi, bomb squad, etc. Since it was Wednesday morning/afternoon, he had to spend thanksgiving weekend and wait until Tuesday to see a judge. He kept trying to call my sister all that weekend but she wanted nothing to do with him.

Yesterday, I heard they set his bail at $500,000 and the sentence for what he did is 1-5 years in jail.

posted 12-07-2001 13:41            

Until I separated from the Air Force today (yay!) I have spent the last three years in charge of the computer system we use to train military linguists for all four services. Before students can do this part of their training, they need to have a security clearance because basically everything that we train them with is classified. Our building has security measures implemented so that if you don't have a clearance, it won't let you in.

This is the first exposure that most of these kids have to working in a secure environment, and we try to drum into their heads the basics of dealing with this kind of material all the time. There are some pretty simple rules like, don't bring in cell phones, PDA's, laptops, etc. basically anything that could either record and/or transmit the classified info in the building.

Well, we had this kid, a real punk, who decided to bring a cell phone into the building. He was aplogetic, and they let him back in. Then he brings it in a second time, at which point we reccomend that he be booted out of the Air Force, as he has a real problem dealing with authority and rules - not a good combo for military service. The little jerk had the nerve to get lippy with me when I told him to get his cell phone the heck out of my building, and then told the security forces that our unit's security manager told him it was legit to bring a cell phone into the building. Our commander decided to let the little weasel stay. Oh well, you do what you can.

So the kid graduates and goes on leave before heading over to his first assignment in England and we try to forget the whole thing.

But then, we get a call from the police in Salem, Mass saying that they have our boy in custody. We ask what for, and they inform us that he went out to visit a buddy in the dorms of Salem State (which are under construction, lots of sawdust around) and posted a sign saying "Beware of Anthrax - The Management". The next day (while we're still recovering from laughing so damn hard and giggling at the picture of this loser in the paper and debating on who his boyfriend will be in prison) the Attorney General comes out and says anyone caught pulling an Anthrax hoax is getting twenty years.

The cappers for this were: the kid made a statement to the judge about how he's worried that this will have an impact on his military career (yeah, it's called you don't have one anymore and the Air Force will probably try you for the same offense, since double jeopardy doesn't apply to folks in the military), and his girlfriend (still a student here) asked that the newspaper article be taken down because it upset her to see her boyfriend going to the pokey.