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Taking a small break in wrapping up our move out of our San Mateo house yesterday, i bought myself a copy of the San Jose Mercury News and immediately flipped to the sports page (of course). After getting my fill of Sunday's NFL happenings, i perused the front page and was drawn to an exposee on the battle of Fallujah. I started reading and quickly found it was a piece written by an American reporter following Alpha Company, a squad of Marines sent into the insurgent city. You can find the whole three part report online here. It's a real eye-opening piece about exactly what our soldiers are being put through. It's remarkably free of political comment, focusing on the backgrounds of the individual soldiers and their attitudes toward life in the military and their rebel enemies. The article doesn't pull punches ... racism and brutality is represented within our ranks much as it was during the Vietnam war. However the writing definitely provides much needed perspective for those of us thousands of miles away debating whether we should be fighting this war at all.
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