Freed
Jill Carroll was released in
I sent an email to a friend in
This is years after major combat operations ended.
The war is not over. We are not in a post war period. We are in a state of war, a sustained state of war with an ambiguous and undefined end. A clear resolution is not at hand. Last throes was almost a year ago. The Iraqi people who are trying to make a difference since the tyrannical days of Baathist rule are still suffering. So are the Coalition forces. There is regular conflict that results in the average of 50 to 60 Iraqis being killed daily and steady death rate among the Coalition. We need to win this war. We have to. And we can't do it by "killing all those sons of bitches...drop a nuke on them and finish it off"*
* Overheard at one of my bartending shifts at the SBAC. Also overheard were several war vets who thought that the war was "no good", "we have not business over there" and a "mistake". That was the pleasant thing about the SBAC. There were a lot of opinions floating around that place considering the homogenity of the place. There were men who had lost legs in Korea, stormed beaches in WWII and general combat experiences. We would say the pledge of allegiance before every meeting. One time after 9/11 we even played the star spangled banner. This was not the odd part, the tape player had a busted speaker, so you could barely hear the main part of the song, instead just the crashing symbols every thirty seconds or so, and then the occasional deep bass. We stood there hearing these odd noises with our hands over our hearts and saluting the old flag in the corner.
An interesting note is that guy who wanted to "nuke" them did not serve. He was relatively younger and was kind of a bum. He was on disability and would hang out at the club all the time. He didn't do much. Other guys supported the war, but there was not a feeling overwhelming support even by the supporters.
I always loved to hear stories about how they would line up all the young men in downtown
1 Comments:
Wait a sec, I thought our mission was accomplished there.
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