It’s April Fools and it is cold and it is payday and I think I am one of them. I am listening to the news about the van filled with women and children approaching a checkpoint. The media play on this, at least the English language version, is relatively sympathetic. Allowances should be made. The […]

It is the second full week of the war. Gen.Tommy R. Franks had his press conference yesterday morning. Tommy seemed calm and steady, not filled with bragadoccio like Stormin’ Norman Schwartkpf. Tommy spoke to the press at the remodeled vehicle repair building in Qatar yesterday about the war plan. He said the pundits were screwed […]

I was on edge all day yesterday, and I’m pretty sure I know why. It is the media coverage I turned to the TV last night to channel 57. I was tired, suffering from vicarious combat fatigue, and later, basketball overload. There is too much information. The last time it was like this was at […]

I am headed for the office this moist rich Saturday morning. I did not got my full shot of news all at once, instead it trickled in around the sides, filling up with the caffeine. Snippets instead of a tapestry and I cannot bring myself to turn on the television this early. It is the […]

Daniel Patrick Moyanhan is dead. He was a shoeshine boy in his time and a four-time senator and one of the most original thinkers who ever tinkered with social policy. He was a lot o other things, too, but we will let that go and celebrate his life. We joked about that in our Harvard […]

I am up and a half hour into the war. I have reviewed the NY Times and am current with the BBC and swelling up with information from National Public Radio. There was a massive fight-fight on the front of the Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, hundreds of Iraqis are reported killed in action. No U.S. casualties […]

Yesterday marked 26 years since I raised my right hand and swore an oath to the Constitution. It marks the last pay raise I will receive from the Department of the Navy I have served this quarter-century, and it is appropriate that my request for transfer to the retired list is at the Bureau for […]

I slept better last night, maybe just weary and maybe just happy it is all happening at last. I woke up a little early, battered but sound. It is Friday, and with luck I can relax around the edges of the weekend if I do the scheduling for the senior staff to cover the weekend […]

After I heard the news shortly before ten o’clock local last night I called my sons and told them it had begun. I told them to be alert, and I asked my younger boy to pass that along to his Mom. The other shoe dropped. There is word this morning that three SCUDs flew into […]

I slept badly last night, and I awoke heated and sweaty under the covers. I threw the covers off and embraced the coolness of the darkness, realizing it is 18 hours to the end of a deadline. I turned on the radio and heard that taxi fare from Baghdad to the Jordanian border is now […]