There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.

The Air Force was confused about what it wanted me to be when I grew up. I applied for an ROTC scholarship out of high school because I wanted to be an astronaut. None of my teachers had ever broken the news to me that I couldn’t fly into space, so the third-grade dream remained.

I volunteered to deploy to Iraq. I was one of the few soldiers who were not on the mandatory deployment roster - close to 3,000 Hawaii soldiers were.

We have been keeping our Iraq coverage going and that is a more important story. It has U.S. soldiers there, people are very interested in it, and it lends itself better to breaking news.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

The Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers program and a variation of the Thrift Savings Plan, the Military Savings Plan, being opened up to active-duty military personnel were the result of AFAP initiatives.