Five years ago today, President Bush stood in front of a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished." I remember the cautions about how we were in for a long war, but the Iraq campaign was considered done.

Five years ago yesterday, I enlisted for 8 years in the Washington State Army National Guard.

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I think it was five beers in total. Not much when I was in college, perhaps, but I'm older now and out of practice.

We talked about the Army, and Afghanistan, and the people we brought over, brought back, and left behind. We ate some excellent steaks. We heard the stories again, and we told the stories again, and we didn't interrupt when we heard one we'd heard before, because we know that the secret is in the telling, not the hearing. We asked the questions that shouldn't be asked, and we left unvoiced the questions that others ask, because they've been asked and answered before--water under the bridge.

I saw the valleys and the mountains, and I smelled the gun smoke and I heard the zipzipzip of incoming rounds and I felt the Humvee rock on its springs as the F-18s released their concussive payloads, and I saw again the local nationals who have bet it all on our notoriously fickle public policies, and I felt the SAW hammer at my hands, the ratatatatatatatatataPING as the casings ricocheted off the roof of the truck and then off the front glacis plate. I felt the frustration of 11 time zones of separation from my beloved. I heard the haunted tones from comrades who were seeing their own visions from OEF VII.

And I wondered whether we are draining painful blisters when we reminisce about the defining moments in our lives, or whether we are merely picking half-healed scabs...

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Anyone interested in the state of science in America today really ought to go see this film. Anyone who believes that science is nonpolitical REALLY ought to go see this film.

I give it 9 out of 10 DNA-seeding space aliens.

Should circumstances land me a sentence of community service some day in the future, I am totally going to use this argument. "Your honor, I have to protect the Internet from stupid people."

Via a mailing list I'm on, an interesting article about a book describing unit and organizational patches--not the boring official ones, but the ones that people tend to make for themselves--and what they can say (sometimes inadvertently) about their mission and resources:

The book’s title? “I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me,” published by Melville House. Mr. Paglen says the title is the Latin translation of a patch designed for the Navy Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 4, at Point Mugu, Calif. Its mission, he says, is to test strike aircraft, conventional weapons and electronic warfare equipment and to develop tactics to use the high-tech armaments in war.

“The military has patches for almost everything it does,” Mr. Paglen writes in the introduction. “Including, curiously, for programs, units and activities that are officially secret.”

Within the article is another link to a Space Review article which talks about similar things in the realm of satellites and Other Technical Means.

See also the slideshow at the NYTimes article.

Clearly, I have a lot of work to do. Our team logo doesn't have nearly enough cryptic symbolism in it.

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Warning--this video is not for the faint of stomach. This is SGT (now SSG) Smallville's finest hour, when he single-handedly bludgeoned an Afghan rattus to death in our temporary barracks while the other American soldiers present laughed and took pictures. In addition to the graphic carnage, there is some soldierly language.

[Video embedded in full entry.]

They finally found SSG Maupin. A PFC when he went missing in Iraq in 2004, his remains have finally been recovered. While it was somewhat galling to be out-promoted by a dead guy (and yes, I realize how petty that sounds), I think that practice is absolutely appropriate--you do not count an American soldier dead until you find the body. And even then, approach with caution and give it a poke or two.

In From the Cold has the money quote:

In response, we'd say that you can’t put a price tag on final resolution for the families of missing military personnel. Sergeant Maupin and Major Woods went to war with the expectation that their country would do everything possible to bring them home again. We have the same obligation to all military personnel who remain unaccounted for, with no regard for the expense, or how long it takes.

Amen.

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