Nice post Mark.

The war is of course on, and it’s possible to see everything in downtown Baghdad. Kinda freaky to imagine what it is to have to change your route to work or the store because you’d be passinig a likely target. I suppose that the advancements in weapons tech are good in that we no longer raze entire cities, but it almost makes for an almost surreal situation where the war is just down the street at the intertsection of x and y. I feel for the Iraq troops on the front lines, and feel for a population that must be terrified out of their minds.

In ’94 after we launched into Iraq (cruise missles to support somethign or other), almost the entirety of out battle group could be seen on the same horizon, an event that never happens as we’re normaly spead over tens of miles. We fired off at like 4 or 5 am, and the next day, as we were realatively huddled, was an odd one. We obviously took a defensive type posture, and then just waited. Reality was for us that our battle group could readily handle anything, so, it’s not waiting with concrete fear for your life. But waiting for action of that nature is odd. I cannot imagine what it is to know that it is without a doubt comming, you wont see it, and if your in the wrong place, you will simply die.

It is an unfortunate day.

A final thought. Two nations are at war, one is being bombed and the lives of it’s citizens are disrupted to the point that things effectively cease. The other has the oscars, tournaments, and reunions of the batchelor to watch and doesn’t care to me mired in the details of the war they are involved with. I might have an unusual degree of intrest in these kinds of things, but I can’t say if I find it discouraging to the point of offense that we are so fucking nonchalant about this. When we loose people here we get whipped into an irrational frenzy, and when we get what we want, and are actually involved in the taking of lives, we can’t be bothered to pay attention. Fucking pathetic.

Another observation: We strike Iraq, immediately there’s a report that 600 US troops are huning Al Qeida in southern Afghanistan, then Bush makes his speech and mentions in passing that this might not go as fast as some have figured (though I thought they were the only ones assuring anything…), and now we have a senior Al Qeida operative that *may* be involved in a huge plot against us here and *may* already be in the US. Does this strike anyone else as fishy? First go to war in a ‘resolute’ fashion, then say “oh, well we’re doing great on that other issue too,” then remind everone ‘why’ we’re doing this by mentioning somthing of no timely value or substance? My god…