The War

Lately, I've been thinking about The War. Not the war in Iraq though it crosses my mind almost daily too. It's hard to not think about it when there are articles like in today's Washington Post. I remember a few years ago when a military official said that the Pentagon did not keep count of civilian deaths in Iraq. It's seems the military is now counting the dead as a metric to see if the surge is working. Grim business indeed. But, lately I am also thinking about THE WAR the Ken Burns documentary on PBS. Mostly I think of my Aunt out in the mid west. Eighty Four years old and still sharp as a tack. She enlisted in the Navy in World War II and was station in Norfolk. She preformed inspections on planes that were repaired and sent back into duty. She tells the story of getting into a recently repaired plane during the war with her clip board to do an in flight check of the repairs on some plane. Only to have the plane crash into the bay. Luckily, she and the crew were rescued. But, I also think of her in our last conversation about a month ago when she said. You know I want to throw everyone on Capitol Hill into the Potomic River. I told her I know the feeling.

Coming home!

It was easy to ignore the mainstream media for the past nine days. But, reality hit me early on arriving in National Airport. While waiting for my luggage I noticed an old woman with hearing aids and a middle aged woman possibly her daughter being escorted into the baggage claim area by three armed military police escorts. I thought that these woman might be here to attend the funeral of a family member killed in Iraq at Arlington. I wanted to go up to them and somehow express my condolences. But, before I could the three military escorts had picked up the woman's luggage and were whisked out of the area. My only hope that is that I was wrong. That possibly the funeral these woman would be attending was for some elderly World War II vet who had managed to have a long and wonderful life after his service. But, I feel with the Iraq war still going on the chances of that were slim.