But it’s turning to twilight now, and I was looking at pictures, and writing. I got some pictures back in the mail: mom, just before she died, when she was that awful nursing home, in the last photo anyone took of her. Dad, in his awful tam o’shanter. The miles and miles of empty highway under that pewter Iraqi sky. I read how Iraqi women are basically going to be put under the thumb of the sort of people that we’re supposedly determined to defeat. and I just thought: I helped to do that. I helped do that to other women.

Once upon a time I believed. Well, I believed that no president would ever so decieve his country. I cannot believe this was done in good faith, because that makes it almost worse: if it were good intentions, wouldn’t the thing to do then be to rectify it as soon and as aggressively as possible?

I saw a picture of some guy holding up a sign at Camp Casey, outside Bush’s dude ranch: HOW TO RUIN YOUR FAMILY IN THIRTY DAYS: BY THE BITCH IN THE DITCH (Cindy Sheehan) it said.

It just felt like I had been sucked dry all of a sudden. These people are our enemies, not the Iraqis, not even Al Qaeda. It’s not give and take, it’s not even; tell the truth about GWB and it sounds so awful it has to be a lie. Where are the Arkansas National Guard for the Truth group to expose George Bush’s service? Where are the liberals mocking the soldiers with little purple heart bandages?

I took an oath and these people are trampling on it, on me, on every service member. I swore to uphold and defend, not destroy and deceive.

The bald-faced cynicism of the Administration takes my breath away. Back during either the first or second time we declared victory over the terrorists in Iraq, Bush handed a carefully stage-managed note to his special girl, Condi: “Let freedom reign.” Typically, it was a misquote.