My kids miss me when I'm away, but I don't mind living out of a suitcase. The U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Iraq... it's such a thrill meeting people of different cultures, learning about and from them. It's changed my perception about life, humanity and spirituality.
At the end of the day we want to bring stability and hope to Iraq. That's the only way to defeat terrorism.
The Kurds had always had a bad time. They were oppressed by the Ottoman empire. Then, at the end of the First World War, they were promised a homeland, but the new Turkish state refused to give them any land, while the British went and created the new state of Iraq and sent aircraft to bomb the Kurds there into submission.
'The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq,' by Hanna Batatu. Few may wish to take on this massive, obscure work, but it changed my life, and I love it.
I was in a mountain biking accident and broke my sternum about three months before my unit was supposed to deploy to Iraq, and it's such a close-knit community that the idea of not getting to go is hugely jarring, so I tried to get put back in training and wound up injuring it worse.
I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11.
Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program, it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least.
It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we went to war in Iraq, that it is enough that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
The war in Iraq has been extremely divisive here at home, and has also divided the world community.
Our failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq thus far has been deeply troubling, and our intelligence-gathering process needs thorough and unbiased investigation.
