Tom, somehow you find comfort in the fact that the "insurgents are getting their asses kicked". Yeah, there's the same feeling you get hearing news like that as when you watch an old Charles Bronson movie about someone getting revenenge against bad guys but the movies don't cover the aftermath 10 years later. Every one of those insurgents getting gunned down have wives and children who, despite our moral high ground, mourn the loss of the father/husband and hate the people that did it. Death is simply not something to celebrate on either side.

In every war we've fought, including the ones we've lost eventually, we had huge superiority when it came to the body counts. What would you consider a victory in the latest battle with the insurgency in Iraq? Sadr dead or imprisoned? Yeah, short term solution but what does he then become in a culture so easily impressed with martyrdom? The one thing I took from these letters from the soldier was that we're once again in a war where we can't readily distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. I can't imagine a clearer example of hell on Earth.