Officer joins family cruise: An Army officer got a respite from the Middle East and was able to go on a long-planned cruise with his family.

Publication: The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News)

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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Miami Herald

Byline: Charles Rabin and Jennifer Babson, The Miami Herald

Dec. 19--KEY WEST -- Merry Christmas, Lt. Col. James Paul Thomas -- thanks to the U.S. government? For now, it's a mystery if Uncle Sam played Santa. Thomas, a 54-year-old Army officer whose retirement has been delayed because of the war in Iraq, was off for a cruise on an ocean liner Sunday with his family, but a quirk in federal law almost kept him stateside. Thomas boarded the Carnival Glory in Key West just before 1 p.m. He is expected to disembark Saturday where the voyage started in Port Canaveral. That's technically a violation of the Jones Act, a federal law enacted in...

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