Monday, January 31, 2005


(c) Roger Leo

Humvee roof gunner with his M240, ready for patrol.

"Dispatches," by Michael Herr

"Of course coming back was a down. After something like that, what could you find to thrill you, what compared, what could you do for a finish? Everything seemed a little dull, heaviness threatened everywhere, you left little relics lying around to keep you in touch, to keep it real, you played the music that had been with you through Hue and Khe Sanh and the May Offensive, tried to believe that the freedom and simplicity of those days could be maintained in what you laughingly referred to as 'normal circumstances.' You read the papers and watched television, but you knew what those stories were really all about beforehand, and they just made you angry. You missed the scene, missed the grunts and the excitement, the feelings you'd had in a place where no drama had to be invented, ever ... You wondered whether, in time, it would all slip away and become like everything else distant, but you doubted it, and for good reason."

Sunday, January 30, 2005


(c) Roger Leo

Ist Cav soldiers prepare before going outside the wire in Baghdad.

Strange bedfellows

After Sunday's elections, Shiites will likely control Iraq. The U.S. will likely support them. The Shiites will likely ask the U.S. to keep its army in their country. The U.S. probably will.

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein's supporters -- mostly Sunnis -- continue to use terror and force to maintain a grip on power. They feel it slipping away, but won't go quietly.