Iraq | Iraq
Jul.19.2009
When I walked into his room, I knew he was dying. His face looked gaunt, as if the muscles that once pulled a frown, and parted a smile chased by laughter had dried up. Yet, he managed a weak smile when he saw me in uniform.
As I approached the side of his bed, I smelled his death as if it clung to...
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Jul.09.2009
“Bright Yellow Sun”
Of my countrymen I dreamed, All of us looking At each other In different ways Beneath white clouds On a tiny blue planet Rotating around A bright yellow sun.
Me, my fellow Americans And all creatures: Laughing, crying, Hurting? And Loving?
We spin And the rotation Is felt From...
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Jun.08.2009
Landing at New York's JFK airport felt normal enough. I had flown several times over the span of the previous two years. Before then, I never stepped foot aboard an airplane.
Required to wear my dress uniform, despite my formal discharge from active duty, was not bothersome. Although I'd heard of...
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Jun.03.2009
Homefront is the first book to tear off the yellow ribbon and expose the raw and complex experience of waiting for a lover to survive a war.
June 3, 2009 – NASHVILLE, TN – Homefront, featured on WNPR’s “Faith Middleton Show,” is Kristen Tsetsi’s critically-acclaimed semi-autobiographical debut...
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Jun.01.2009
The act is so depraved so violent, so sickening, one shudders at the thought of what else percolates in the minds of those perpetrating it. Some of the details get lost in the translations, but evidence coming out of Iraq in the form of photographs and first-hand accounts make the torture at Abu...
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Jun.01.2009
Several days after the Iraqi banker training commenced, a fourth member of the American training team arrived. His name is Bob Willett, and he was delayed by a hurricane bearing down on his Florida home. His arrival breathed fresh life into the affair, for by then the other two men and I realized...
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May.28.2009
In the autumn of 2004, I was invited along with three other American subject-matter experts to travel to Jordan for a couple weeks to train Iraqi bankers at the Amman Marriott. We'd bombed Iraq 18 months earlier. The situation in Baghdad was grave. And so the sages at USAID (U.S. Agency for...
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May.05.2009
When congressional Democrats convened, on Monday, to authorize another $94.2 billion for war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, they rejected the president's request for $50 million to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. In what may be the first of many signs that the honeymoon between Congress...
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Apr.20.2009
Megas Alexandros and the Royal "We" (Meros A)
How does an empire treat the citizens of conquest during the battle for occupation, the occupation and after the fall of the empire? Isn't it possible to gauge the degree of civilization held by the empire by answering these questions?
From...
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Apr.19.2009
While President Obama held his Sunday news conference, and touted the virtues of talk over combat, saying that diplomacy "strengthens our hand," the bombs rained over the Waziristan region of Pakistan killing at least three people, and injuring several others.
One source, in Pakistan,...
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