A Trapdoor In The Sun

Normally, I do not like to post entire articles on my blog. But this is a very good read..as well as a great viewpoint of what is really going on in Iraq, through the eyes of a soldier. Link - The American Conservative Nation Breaking A soldier discovers that training the Iraqi army is not President Bush’s priority. By Joe W. Guthrie I didn’t grow up with dreams of spreading democracy. I was an all-American kid from a small southern town who went to college on a baseball scholarship and joined the National Guard to earn some extra money. During graduate school, recruiters persuaded me to join the Army through ROTC so that after graduation I would enter as an officer. I bought their pitch and believed our newly elected president when he promised no more nation building. My dad told me, “It’s a great time to join the military. It has done an excellent job of repairing itself after Vietnam.” I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in December 2002 and, after paratrooper and additional o...

I briefly want to thank all the people that have stopped by here and at my other blog to check up on me. I'm fine, just going through some intense life changes at the moment. When I was a kid, I remember once going to San Francisco with my grandparents for a long weekend. I was facinated by the cable cars that rolled up and down the slopes. dwawn by thick underground cables that seemed to continuously move in one direction. "What happens," I though, "when the car comes to the end of the route? It can't just stop." It turned out, as we walked down to of the endpoints on the Powell-Hyde St. line, that some of the cars were turned around.. or in a new direction.. on giant turntables. It wasn't easy work. The car conductor would have to get out and physically turn the whole turntable, car included, with help from the grip man. Then the car would set out on the new tracks. In a new direction. I've reached that turntable in my life, so to speak. Where my ...