[This comment was posted on another blog I edit here. Due to space-time continuuum disconnects I wasn't able to ask the original commenter for permission to repost it here yet, but I know her well enough that I suspect she wouldn't mind. I suppose I could give it an intro and set up a context for it here, but then again -- is there really any need to?]

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It wasn't enough to attack a mosque. Now pilgrims have been attacked too. & some say it isn't a civil war?

I have to work 12 hours and I woke up in the middle of the night with insomnia because I'd heard Bush use the term "battlefield" twice, with no apparent emotion. There would probably BE no battlefield if not for his stupid decisions. Maybe he thinks we'd be battling in the middle of Nebraska cornfields if we weren't in Iraq. Yeah maybe that's it.

I started remembering being 12 years old and travelling across South Dakota with my mom & 3 younger siblings, to visit my dad at the VA in Rapid City. On the way, our bus had to stop for hours on the highway, because of a burning car. When we got to the VA, my dad had come out of electroshock and he didn't know me. I got presents that were supposed to be from him but I knew they were picked out by volunteers. People used to say "Roger can't hold down a job. He's shellshocked."

Thanks, Bush. You were never on a battlefield and even your hero dad only shot from the air, but he still had the sense not to start a ground war in the middle east.