A Holiday without Kids

Yes it was a little more relaxed, but it was a lot less fun. Both daughters were away with their own lives this year and we spent the time with in-laws. I'd set the expectations bar so low it was easy to step over, though I did keep a keen eye on the clock to see if we had achieved the minimum allowable visitation time. Gotta get back and check on the dogs you know!
They probably felt the same way about us.

One daughter's friend, an officer in the Navy stayed with us on her way to Maine for a visit with another friend. It was great to see and talk to her but she had to suffer the fate of being the surrogate daughter for a day. She's a great human being and really has her head on straight about what's to be valued in life.

With the New Year coming up most folks will want to say a bitter sayonara to 2008 - but I look back fondly from a personal standpoint. Our first grandchild from one daughter and an engagement announcement from the other, bringing another great guy into the family. Both daughters achieved great things in their professional lives as well. 2008 wasn't so bad, except for how the media collapsed under the weight of it's own bias.

A Baghdad Christmas Celebration

Replete with Santa, celebrated by Muslims and Christians alike. It's been decades since this was attempted publicly.

Even before I can ask Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf a question, he greets me with a big smile. "All Iraqis are Christian today!" he says.

Khalaf says sectarian and ethnic violence killed thousands of Iraqis. "Now that we have crossed that hurdle and destroyed the incubators of terrorism," he says, "and the security situation is good, we have to go back and strengthen community ties."

All military men and women should be very proud of what they've helped bring to Iraq. It is a shame that as part of the election campaign the last 2 years that it was necessary to belittle our efforts and portray the efforts in Iraq as "failed policies" . They're anything but that.