Thanks... again and again and again and....
This Thanksgiving, the thing that will stick the most with me is while watching football, we'll surely see the thanks to and from the troops videos just before commercial breaks.  You know, the ones that have a young Army Sergeant in Iraq saying hi to his wife and kids, and another where a public figure thanks the troops for their service.  This is the eighth year in a row we'll see these videos here at home. At the same time, I can't help but think that some young grunt is watching these videos for maybe the fourth or fifth time from a TV that the USO set up in the warzone.  And, while he'll strap on his rifle and go whenever called, part of him is thinking "How many more

Kaziah Hancock: Portraits Of The Fallen
Kaziah Hancock is a Utah artist who paints portraits of fallen American heroes.  She was driving home in early 2003 and heard the story on the radio of a fallen soldier from Utah.  It was at that point she decided she would do a portrait of every fallen soldier.  Of course, at the time we had a total of about eighty casualties. At the time it was still supposed to be a very short war. "At the time, we had only been in Iraq for a short while, and we had lost 80 people," she said. "We were still expecting a short war." Hancock called a friend who owns an art gallery that regularly f

What color is the sky in Palin's world, or is she BSing?
I never thought Sarah Palin could say something that would leave me totally speechless, but this time, she's done it.  Reports Politico: Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday accused President Barack Obama of not acknowledging the sacrifices made by the men and women in the U.S. military. "There's been a lack of acknowledgement by our president in understanding what it is that the American military provides in terms of, obviously, the safety, the security of our country," Palin said during an interview with Fox News's Greta Van Susteren. "I want him to acknowledge the sacrifices that these indi

Options On Afghanistan
As Richard has noted, President Obama is expected to announce this next week his decision on Afghanistan.  General Petraeus has cautioned that this decision should be well thought out and that President Obama was right to take some time.  IN 2006, President Bush took four months to make a decision on the surge strategy in Iraq.  With that in mind, I wanted to take a look at some of the possible strategies that have been discussed. The first assumes that we have the f

Afghanistan Decision Next Week
And it appears we have a decision: President Obama has conducted a final meeting on his military review for Afghanistan, administration officials said, and he is planning to explain his decision in an address to the nation next Tuesday. "After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision, and he will announce that decision within days," Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday morning. McClatchy is reporting that the decided upon number of troops is