I'd like to start a diary, that I can reference in open threads via link (in other words keep it going) where people can place their recollections, imagery, news reports, interviews, all manner of recollecting and thinking about the long year and more that is not over yet.
I am seeking two things, a place to record those instances that have stayed in your mind, been turning points for you, and frankly, have a place to put these thoughts. My mind is on overload.
So I will begin, what follows is some of what haunts.
In the run up, on March 6, Bush gave the famous "sedated" presser. That description was all Shales of the WaPo felt safe to say in print. What a horror it was. We were about to follow him to war, it was incomprehensible to me, I began to wake in the mornings thinking we would not do it, then read a bit of news and of course... we would. We did.
It was compounded for me, within a few days, by a very sensitive profile done by Nightline, of the troops massing in the desert of Kuwait.
Several very affecting young men were interviewed, in particular a classic young Appalachian region face, a young man who hoped as the invasion began as a foot soldier he would not be abandoned by the mil leadership. Is there a way one can convey in letters a word for the deep strangled sigh one feels looking back at that interview? It haunts me, I worry he is dead. Enough are.
Clips from the weeks immediate post 'drive to Baghdad', of soldiers in terrible living circumstances, billeted in towns from Baghdad to Umm Qsar, sleeping on floors, no access to plumbing, the heat, small children attaching themselves to the soldiers in the classic way of war. An extended clip of a Civil Affairs detail, struggling to do what they can, with long lines every morning, people needing help.
The senior officer saying if he had but a little of a massive cache of American dollars discovered in a Baghdad bank, he could help, but the money flown to Kuwait and any money he applies for in long bureaucratic SNAFU. Then, the Civil Affairs detail is up rooted anyway, job unfinished, sent up the road, closer to Baghdad.
The tiger, starving, shot to death in the Baghdad Zoo by drunken soldiers. Classic metaphor.
A story Fisk ran as a follow up to one of our "precise" bombing raids in Baghdad, going out to a poorer part of Baghdad, seeing the desecration and a child emerging from it who offers tea.
In summer, in the rolling desert heat, a long clip of a night raid in Balad, and something, something, I don't know what, about the film that makes me stand up in dread and think the word, reprisals. If we were not there, we soon would be. At the very same time, I began to hear the phrase out of DC:
Failure is not an option.
And, strangely this odd phrase from the TV (I didn't know the speaker):
It is not Vietnam, there is no jungle.
The full year of Fallujah. Only one of many but locus classicus.
Richard Clarke's apology and his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. The particular emphasis he places on vowels and the deep distaste in his voice when he speaks of Mr Bush's "excursion" to Iraq and away from the genuine and needed war on terror.
For whatever reason, this seemingly lesser story of abuse hit, and it unleashed the tears for what we have done, all of it, every minute from the years ago push forward, elective. Or perhaps I should say selective.
It is the 50th anniversary of Dien Bien Phu and I stumbled on this interview with the now 92 year old General Giap yesterday, on CNN:
GIAP (through translator): President Ho Chi Min said this is a golden milestone in the history of Vietnamese struggles against foreign invaders marking the fit of the old colonialism running down the hill to the tune of failure.
GRANT: Dien Bien Phu was a victory, not an end. Ahead lay the Americans and two more decades of fighting. Then like the French, U.S. troops were gone.
GIAP (through translator): For Vietnamese people after the Dien Bien Phu victory, we liberated Hanoi and half of the country to build the northern part into a strong base and go shoulder to shoulder with the people in the south, in the 20-year struggle against the Americans.
GRANT: The old man-of-war now looks at America in a new battleground, Iraq, and wonders about the lessons of Dien Bien Phu, lessons for America and Iraqi insurgents.
GIAP (through translator): When a nation is determined to fight for independence and sovereignty, stand up to fight and know how to unite themselves all together. They will surely deflect (ph) any foreign invader, no matter how modern the weapons are, no matter how strong they are financially and militarily.
We have got to break the cycle. Unless it has already broken us, it is too soon, I cannot really tell yet.
Please add your thoughts, what remains in your mind of this terrible excursion.