Let inmates serve
their time in Iraq

Let's see if I've got this straight: The question is whether to send a guy convicted of a home-invasion robbery to prison or to fight in Iraq with his Hawaii National Guard unit?

Hmmmm ... on the one hand he will sit in a comfy prison cell (at a cost of about a hundred bucks a day to Hawaii taxpayers) with regular meals, soft bed and relatively few mortar rounds coming his way ... or he can put his life in peril, serve his country and prove to Hawaii that he's not the punk everyone thinks he is.

I don't know. I've got to go with door No. 2.

The situation involves Shaun Rodrigues, 24, who has been out on bail awaiting sentencing since his 2002 conviction for breaking into a house and tying up and robbing a couple of old ladies inside. It was a stupid, chicken-poop thing to do, and under normal circumstances I'd be all for him spending the next 20 years in prison. But these aren't normal times. We are at war. And I don't see the point of keeping some of our proven violent, antisocial types on the sidelines. Put them in the game, coach. Not just Rodrigues, but any inmate willing to trade soft prison time for a possible up-close and personal encounter with a roadside improvised explosive device.

Rodrigues was convicted of a "home invasion." Perfect fighting material. Anyone with the term "invasion" in the description of their crime should be shipped off immediately to invade Fallujah. Thieves, killers, burglars, insurance swindlers, illegal campaign contributors (especially illegal campaign contributors) ... it doesn't matter what they've been convicted of as long as they can be trained to point a rocket-propelled grenade in the proper direction.

DOESN'T ANYONE remember the movie "The Dirty Dozen"? Lee Marvin rounded up some of the toughest criminals in military prison and sent them behind enemy lines in World War II before D-Day. The Germans got one look at Charles Bronson and ran out of their jackboots. Anyone we have in a Hawaii prison who looks like Charles Bronson should advance to Baghdad forthwith.

The namby-pamby civil rights types might say it isn't fair to use prisoners as soldiers. Huh? It's OK for a law-abiding 18-year-old kid right out of high school to go into combat, but it's unfair to send some creep who's been stealing women's purses at Ala Moana Center?

Besides, all military service by prisoners would be voluntary. You go serve your country and, if you live through it, you get a little time knocked off your sentence when you get back. It's a great deal. And I think some of our inmates would benefit from having a loaded gun pointed at them for a change.

Judge Virginia Crandall will rule on Monday whether Rodrigues goes to Iraq with his Guard unit or goes to prison. I hope she's thinking of Lee Marvin when she climbs into her black muumuu.