A Slow Friday Night in Chilly November.

Not much to blog about today; my family spent the afternoon at my wife's company "Autumn Festival" - some really cool costumes were to be seen and the different departments went all out to decorate their areas.

I spent the morning in search of the last can of spray-on black haircolor.

What else? Oh...the Al Qaqaa explosives scandal blew away in the face of logic, proportion, and the words of the man who probably removed the stuff for the Army...if there was even any U.N. recorded material in the facility.

John Kerry, for want of a campaign theme, resurrected Bob Dole's famous "Wake up!, Wake Up, America!" rallying cry.

Dole didn't come across as so hysterical, though.

I'm missing something. Ah. The comeback of Osama bin Ladin. How careless of me.

I refer you to Belmont Club, where I find myself once again in complete agreement with Wretchard.

Make sure you follow the link back to Roger L. Simon in Wretchard's comments. I don't believe the figure in the video is OBL either. And if it is, it wouldn't matter to me at all.

We are in a war. You, me, the guy down the street you can't stand, your mom across the country, some 20 year old specialist at an FOB in Iraq...all of us. What happens in a war is killing, dying, and eventual victory or defeat. For the last eighteen months we have marked time here in the United States due to the requirement of the commander in chief to campaign for his office. I regret the lost opportunities and the frustrating drag of empty days and ceaseless hyperbole but I accept them just like I used to accept cold powdered scrambled eggs on February mornings in Korea, right up on the DMZ. There are things that have to happen. Bush taking the necessary steps to win this election has been vital to accomplishing his goal of transforming a quarter of the world's population from barbarism and deadly threat into neighbors we can live with. I accept that.

I've been too busy to hit more than my core blogs and media sources tonight. It sure seems like a lot of people are at loggerheads after the Assman the American Jihadi video/OBL Al Jazeera shows. Some think we are going to get hit tomorrow, other's think it's a hoax perpetrated by muslim fellow-travellers not connected with the Al Q organization. Still others attempt to assign political weight to one side or another in how these presentations will effect our electorate.

Ballocks to the lot of you. I buried my first personally known victim of terror in 1983. As the years rolled by and the scope and barbarity of attacks increased I waited for the day when I would once again lose someone who wasn't just a name in text or a video image on TV. Khobar Towers, The African Embassys...I watched the enemy lean into the wire a little more each time. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, myself, my wife, and our two daughters were four hours out from boarding an airplane from Salt Lake to Boston's Logan Airport, enroute to Burlington Vermont. I watched the second aircraft strike the WTC and saw the same pictures everyone else did...and felt like I was watching my family die.

When Bush was sworn in, he asked just one thing of me. He asked me to be a citizen. This was long before steel tarrifs or judicial obstruction or this war we are fighting. To be a citizen is not to benefit from the largesse of government or to be shielded from life's challenges - it means to stand with other citizens and accomplish greater things than we could ever do on our own. Citizenship is not a passive quality. It is a responsibility incumbent on the individual to do their part for the greater good.

There is a challenge before us - to change the world we live in in ways thought impossible even three years ago. We cannot do it as squabbling egos scrambling to get a larger piece of the available pie. We must accept, and embrace, our part in the struggle and sacrifice sure to come. Will we be attacked this weekend?

No fucking clue here, buddy ro.

None at all. I do know that after the shooting stops on a battlefield the proper thing to do is evacuate the wounded and dead and then resupply, reorganize, and proceed to accomplish the mission. We are all on the battlefield, and yes Virginia, it's a shooting war with dead, wounded, and hills to be taken. The last eighteen months have served to obscure that reality for some. Not for me.

I've lived the same life since '83. I hope I can stop sometime in the future. It won't be soon - and we'll just pay more in the long run by electing a commander patently incapable of leading the fight. We'll see where we stand on Tuesday.

Until then, have a Happy Halloween weekend.