I’m in full battle gear and I’m sweating my ass off. It’s gotta be at least 110 degrees and it’s not even daylight yet! We’re going out to man a checkpoint north of the city and we’re all kinds of skittish. The day before, two of our outfit were blown to bits, one of them my best friend. And three others were so messed up they had to be evacuated to Germany for treatment.

I should never have enlisted, but sitting in my dorm room on that Tuesday morning watching the towers fall, I felt I had to do something. But I didn’t get to go to Afghanistan. No, I get deployed to Iraq to fight a murderous thug that had nothing to do with 9/11. And now the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that we don’t know who we’re fighting.

Because replacements for those killed and wounded…