tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6811719312494990925.post8713121829682606395..comments2008-05-14T16:01:11.499-07:00JLBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10987058554014193721noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6811719312494990925.post-34789637990194032772006-11-11T06:33:00.000-08:002006-11-11T06:33:00.000-08:00sorry, missing word:<br /><br />SAID before America's first urban battle since Hue: ''Everybody realizes that it's something that will affect the rest of our lives.''anne barnardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6811719312494990925.post-41724961730746620202006-11-11T06:32:00.000-08:002006-11-11T06:32:00.000-08:00Perhaps I unconciously sped-read ahead to the metallic and military word "turret," or perhaps it was truly spontaneous, but: I immediately pictured the "State" into which the hapless hero fell as a confined yet hefty and lumbering metal box. Like a Bradley. Like the one I spent a week in, with five teenagers who had fallen in there, two years ago this week in Fallujah. Hard to see out of, clumsy, with a tough but not entirely impenetrable hide. Confining for those inside and deadly for those outside, protective but not deft. Some nights the kids inside would get out and sleep in Iraqi houses, watch the ammo dumps blowing up in the distance and talk about their latest body pierceings.<br /><br />For a moment of Veterans' Day silence, visit www.cjr.org/iraq, a just-published oral history of the Iraq war so far as told by journalists who covered it. Go to Photo Gallery #4 and see the pieta-like photo of a fallen soldier from that battle, one I had met, taken by my friend Stefan Zaklin. The captain, who died in someone's cluttered kitchen when insurgents fired at him as he entered, before America's first urban battle since Hue: ''Everybody realizes that it's something that will affect the rest of our lives.''anne barnardnoreply@blogger.com