"I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others.

"I sweat, and I am tired. My back aches from the loads I carry. Young American boys look to me to direct them in a manner that will someday allow them to see their families again...and yet, I too, am just a boy....my age not but a few years more than that of the ones I lead. I am stressed, I am scared, and I am paranoid...because death is everywhere. It waits for me, it calls to me from around street corners and windows, and it is always there.

""There are the demons that follow me, and tempt me into thoughts and actions that are not my own...but that are necessary for survival. I've made compromises with my humanity. And I am not alone in this....

And to think, I volunteered for this...."

Please join me over the fold as we say good-bye to two soldiers who are gone too soon, one of whom wrote the words above.

Remember

Christina Rossetti

Tonight we say good-bye to three brave young men who have left us much too  soon. Please join me on the other side of the fold to pay tribute to them.

Today, we remember three young men who lost their lives in Iraq. Two were not yet old enough to vote. The third was so devoted to his country that after completing service in the Navy, he enlisted in the Army. Two were paratroopers from Fort Bragg, who died in separate incidents. All were victims of improvised explosive devices, and all three leave behind grieving families and friends. Please join me below the fold to say good-bye.  

Tonight, we honor and remember one young soldier who died on August 16 in Iraq. Please join me below the fold as we pay our respects to Pfc. Willard M. Kerchief III, 21, of Evansville, Indiana.

In 1776, Tom Paine wrote these immortal words in The Crisis:

These are times that try men’s souls, The summer
Soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis,
Shrink from service of their country; but he that
Stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women.

Today, we honor four fallen soldiers who deserve our love and thanks for their service and sacrifice for our country. As is so often the case these days, all four should have been safely home in June, but tragically their tours had been extended.

Please join me below as we honor these brave men.

Today, we remember two young service men who died in Iraq, and another who lost his life in Afghanistan. Please honor these individuals -- Lance Cpl. Bobby L. Twitty, 20, Sgt. Shawn G. Adams, 21, Pfc. Zachary R. Endsley, 21 -- along with their families, friends and units by reading on.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Today, we come together to honor yet another soldier who has died while serving his country in Iraq.

ENOUGH!, the protest movement announced by Wes Clark Jr. last week, is such a great idea -- basically just getting together with other people who've had enough of this administration and spending one hour every Sunday from noon to one in a high-visibility spot with a sign or T-shirt that says "ENOUGH!" It's simple and straightforward, and doesn't require a huge time commitment.

AND I CANNOT GET ONE SINGLE PERSON TO JOIN ME!

Okay, it looks like the left-leaning loons at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)and Defenders of Wildlife are at it again. This time the cause du jour is polar bears. A few big oil companies, including Shell, plan to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, right where the bears, seals, whales and some kind of bird that no one’s ever heard of live, and that’s going to ruin their habitat. Well, boo frickin’ hoo.

I’ve been a Democrat for a long time. Ooops, I mean I was a Democrat for a long time. But the past few months pushed me over the edge. After signing a whole lot of petitions and repeatedly emailing and calling my representatives, all I had to show for it was an inbox full of condescending, computer-generated, auto-f*&cking responses.
    Okay, fine, Washington’s a busy place and I wasn’t expecting hand-written "thank you" notes. But I was expecting change. Wasn’t that the whole idea of the 2006 elections – holding the administration accountable, "draining the swamp" and all that? But all that’s changed is that now both parties are lifting their legs on voters. The only thing left to change was me. So I did. I changed my party affiliation from Dem to "decline to state," the California equivalent of Independent. Before anyone accuses me of helping put that sh*t-eating grin on Karl Rove’s face, keep reading.

Okay, I'll be honest. This diary does not contain one single brilliant idea for getting rid of the scum in Washington. And there are recipes, but they're not going to make your mouth water. But if you keep reading, you'll learn how simple it is to to clean up the kitchen, as well as the rest of the house, without screwing up whatever’s left of the environment or jeopardizing the health of your family and/or pets.

Right  now, Americans waging war on germs use a staggering 300 million pounds of antimicrobial products every year. But being so squeaky clean could be a big mistake.

It’s time to raise hell, people! And this time go straight to the top. Thanks to the USDA, food and beverage manufacturers have been getting away with blatant violations of the Organic Food Protection Act, and that needs to stop. The key issue is this: the proposed rule to allow 38 non-organic ingredients in food labeled as "USDA organic" has not been officially approved, so there might be time for us to end this obscene nonsense.

So there I was minding my own business, when I ran across this headline at the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) website: "Another Sneak Attack on Organic Standards. USDA to Allow More Conventional Ingredients in Organics."  Normally, there’s a 60- to 90-day window for public comments on amendments like this. In this case, though, we, the people, have been given seven days, five and half of which are already history.  

People, can we stop with the FDA bashing already? There’s a perfectly good reason why the agency investigators haven’t had time to inspect the squillions of food and ingredient containers being imported from countries where health standards are only suggestions. They’ve been busy protecting us from something truly frightening – cherries. Or to be more accurate, cherry growers. We consumers may have been blissfully unaware of the dangers lurking in the produce aisle, not to mention tarts and pie fillings! But not the crackerjack team at the FDA. Not long ago, they sent stern warning letters to nearly thirty cherry growers, ordering them to stop making health claims on their websites or the agency would be forced to get a court order and/or seize their products.