Friday, January 4, 2008

A Drunken Night In Iraq, A Soldier Is Left Behind. he sun had not yet risen in Taji. A young Army soldier lay alone in the dirt. She was alive, but barely. Her ribs had been crushed; her spleen, ruptured. Her right side was marked by the angular tread of a tire. Pfc. Hannah Gunterman McKinney was 20 years old, the brown-eyed mother of a toddler son, when she was spotted in the headlights of a passing Humvee on a perimeter road at one of the largest U.S. military camps in Iraq. Thirteen hours later, in Redlands, Calif., Barbie and Matt Heavrin, who had three children in the military, learned they had lost their elder daughter to "injuries suffered when she was struck by a vehicle," as the Army first described it. But there was more to the story. For the Heavrins, the events of Sept. 4, 2006, inside the wire of Camp Taji emerged bit by bit. McKinney's last hours, they would learn, involved alcohol, sex and a decorated reservist who was responsible for looking out for junior enlisted soldiers such as their daughter. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 9:05:01 AM    comment []

Peter Smith: In Iowa - A Return To Blessed Normalcy. Well that's it. Iowa has caucused. The show is over. They're done down there. No more photo opportunities over coffee at the Main Street Cafe. No more press buses rolling through town, snarling traffic at the stoplight. No more slick New York types interviewing Grampa via satellite. And, best of all, no more political advertising - at least until fall. For the better part of a year there, Iowa was stuck - and, (being Iowa), the whole state was too polite to tell the politicians and their entourages where to get off. Unable to find anything nice to say, Iowa had to stuff it. Iowa had to indulge its inner Norwegian. So Iowa smiled and listened politely. Iowa endured the unending commercials, suffered through the frivolous debates, and put up with the incessant polling. From our vantage point up here in Minnesota, it was fascinating in that way that other peoples' misfortunes can be fascinating. It was like looking out the front window and seeing that the neighbor across the street has accidentally answered the door for a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses. You feel a little sorry for her, but deep down you're a little amused - and really glad it wasn't you. Iowa is arguably the normalest state in the union. Long on pragmatism and common sense, Iowans understand the value and virtue of getting along with one another. But there they were, under siege from the polarizing forces of weirdness, forced to endure months of angry rhetoric about issues that just don't feel normal in Iowa - or anywhere else. How strange it all must have sounded down there: "Mr. Candidate - If a transgendered Mormon-Hispanic stem cell entered the country illegally and bought a house in Altoona with a subprime mortgage, should congress enact a law raising taxes to bail that stem cell out and requiring it to speak English and go to war with Iran? And if you were elected president would you sign such a law?" Safe in our homes north of Albert Lea, we were aware of your anguish, Iowa. We were aware and yet oddly frozen, watching in horror, unable to act. But now it's over. The winners have won. The losers have spun. Now it's, "On to New Hampshire, and let's win there." Your long, statewide nightmare has come to an end. The surreal circus has pulled up stakes, folded its tents, and slipped away into the night. And you can get back to the business of being Iowa. Hey, Iowa... Welcome home. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 8:07:41 AM    comment []