At war
As a U.S. Army intelligence officer, Rep. Jonathan Paton is responsible for helping gather information on Iraqi insurgents threatening U.S. troops. He is shown in Baath Party Headquarters. Mr. Paton will be in Iraq until February.

Soldiers stationed overseas say they miss the little things the most, the things they wouldn’t give a second thought to back home, but, when they are taken away, become the things of fantasy. Rep. Jonathan Paton’s little thing is pork.
“What I’ve been dreaming of — and this is kind of a sick fantasy — I’ve been dreaming of, like, a pig roast,” he said in a telephone interview Nov. 14 from Iraq.
An Army lieutenant, Mr. Paton is stationed in Baghdad until February. Iraq being a Muslim country, and pork being verboten to its followers, he hasn’t had any of the porcine foodstuffs he took for granted back in Arizona. He and his fellow soldiers were served pulled pork one day, though the experience wasn’t what he was hoping for.
“It was so awful,” he said. “It’s not any kind of pork that I’ve ever had.”
Instead, he’ll ring in his return home by roasting a pig, just as he’s dreamed about. Before deploying in September, Mr. Paton purchased a Caja China — a roaster designed for whole pigs and other large quantities of meat — and told his friends to give it a test drive while he was gone.
“I dream about it. It makes me happy just thinking about it,” he said, sounding as if he were salivating into the phone. “When I come back, we’re going to fire that thing up.”
Though his daydreams are filled with food, his daily activities are slightly less trivial. As an intelligence officer, Mr. Paton is responsible for helping gather information on Iraqi insurgents threatening U.S. troops. He says it has put his legislative life in perspective.
“People are depending on me for success, and if I screw up, it could be a mess,” he said. “It’s a bit different than the Legislature.”
‘Mortar’ fire is constant
And there’s never any doubt that he’s in a war zone. Mortar fire is constant — it could be heard in the background during the interview — and Mr. Paton says he’s been shot at while on missions. Even standing in the camp, the sights of the war are all around.
“I’ll be outside and I’ll see helicopters going overhead and they’re dropping stuff on the bad guys,” he said. “You never forget that the war is going on.”
The days are fast-paced and run together. Knowing which day of the week it is can be difficult, but Mr. Paton says that blurring of time has made his service thus far blaze by.
“The frenetic pace of the Legislature will seem like a break,” he said, laughing.
Beyond that, though, he says his service has made him feel more connected with the soldiers who live in District 30 and are stationed at Fort Huachuca. It’s also given him an insight on how to deal with problems that arise in all facets of life.
“I’m much more interested in getting to the root of a problem a lot quicker,” he said. “I think it’s making me a more decisive person.”