The boys around here call it "The Black Lagoon"; a paradise. Only they say nobody has ever come back to prove it.

I somehow missed that Garry Trudeau had been running a little milblog called The Sandbox.

There are some really moving stories written by our troops in Afganhistan and Iraq talking about what they face day to day chronicled there.

This bit by LT Carl Goforth writing about a return from Iraq really choked me up-

"Saturday morning landing in Cherry Point, North Carolina. The cheers and clapping bring the plane to a roaring good touchdown. Flight crew laughing and clapping right along with us. After unloading and loading our gear several more times on the flight line, we board buses for the hour ride to Camp Lejune.

Families are there waiting. We coordinate to make sure new Dads get off the buses first. And there we are: exhausted, soaked in sweat, and smelling up the bus like a petting zoo.

Nobody cares. Buses roll up. Wives are holding their cheeks, crying and trembling in their beautiful summer dresses. Dads rush off first with laughing and running children jumping into their arms. Moms join the fray. A few parents make it too, and they stand patiently in the back waving little American flags. I hang back a minute or so, just taking it all in. A Rockwellian moment comes to life outside my little bus window.

And right here, right now: all somehow seems right in the world."

More than anything I wish that story could be repeated 140,000 plus times in the months ahead.

We didn't come here to fight monsters, we're not equipped for it.

Shortly after I started this blog I was told by a friend that he didn't enjoy reading it much because I can be "shrill."

I'm really not sure how to respond to that. A lot of people seemed to automatically tune-out of a political discussion when one of the parties becomes emotionally involved on any level. They aren't going to stick around to weigh the merits of the arguments at that point.

But in a larger sense I wonder why anyone with a functioning brain cell isn't shrill when they look at the state of our country and our government. I was upset when Bill Clinton lied to us, even though it was in response to a question he shouldn't have been asked. Today we have people at all levels of this administration who lie about everything. Repeatedly.

Wouldn't that make you a bit shrill? It did Bill Clinton during his Fox interview with Chris Wallace.

In response to Clinton's impassioned take-down of his critics within and without the administration they responded in the only way they know how: they lied.

Condoleeza Rice met with reporters yesterday and dropped this gem:

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

No?

On January 21st, 2001 Richard Clarke sent a memo to Rice begging her to convene a principals meeting on terrorism attached to which was this Clinton administration document entitled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al Qida: status and prospects." It was declassified during the 911 hearings.

The last two paragraphs of the opening summary read:

The United States' goal is to reduce the al Qida network to a point where it no longer poses a serious threat to our security or that of other governments. That goal can be achieved over a three to five year period, if adequate resources and policy attention are devoted to it.

Towardthat end, the United States has developed a comprehensive and coordinated strategy that employs a variety of tools including: diplomacy, covert action, public information and media, law enforcement, intelligence collection, foreign assistance, financial regulation enforcement, and military means to affect al Qida to its core."

I encourage you at least skim the document and ask yourself if you find it "comprehensive."

Then consider yourself shrill.