You haven't been forgotten.

I have had a loss of life in my family.
None of us have ever recovered from it.

The other greatest casualty is truth.
We seem to have become accustomed to it.
All we can do is mourn.

And I'll remember how my brother's life was utterly turned upside down by his last deployment, which was unethical of the military to foist on him, and which resulted in the end of his barely begun marriage. The kid will never be the same, his bitterness is profound.

God bless our friends and loved ones, those living and those passed.

The Oil Drum's mission is to facilitate civil, evidence-based discussions about energy and its impact on our future. We near the point where new oil production cannot keep up with increased energy demand and the depletion of older oil fields, resulting in a decline of total world oil production. Because we are increasingly dependent upon petroleum, declining production has the potential to disrupt our lives through much higher prices and fuel shortages. The extent of the impact of this supply shortfall will depend on its timing, the magnitude of production decline rates, the feasibility of petroleum alternatives, and our ability to curtail energy consumption.

Many have noted how we seem to stand alone in a fact and logic based search for facts regarding the BP Deepwater spill, with some quite experienced oil industry types on board. This is a simple re-purposing or change in focus of what we do, week after week, struggling with a much larger intractable problem.

There are dark clouds gathering on the horizon. They are the clouds of six hugely troubling global trends. Individually, each of these trends is a potential civilization buster: 1) Climate Change; 2) Peak Oil; 3) Collapse of the World's Oceans; 4) Deforestation; 5) The Global Food Crisis; 6) Overpopulation...

President Horst Köhler of Germany resigned on Monday amid a barrage of criticism for remarks he made a week ago during a surprise visit to Afghanistan.
It is the first time that a German president has ever resigned.

[...]
Mr. Köhler, a former director of the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, shocked Germans earlier this month when he said that the country's soldiers serving in Afghanistan or other peacekeeping missions were deployed to protect German economic interests.

But, in his contentious remarks, Mr. Köhler said: "A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes."

digby

As dibgy said:

Oooops!

During the gas attacks of WW I, entires corps of men screamed and died in agony as their lungs got eaten away by corrosive chlorine gas. Blister agents burned soldiers' skin and killed them clawing at their suppurating flesh as it rotted from their bones.

Men went made during the endless trench bombardments and during years of seemingly endless attacks and counterattacks, as little as several hundreds of blood-soaked mud were ultimately gained as the futile prize of war.

WW II was horrible, but for sheer monstrous inhumanity nothing compares to the rat-infested corpse-filled rotting trenches of WW I swept by chlorine and blister agent gas attacks and constantly bombarded by high explosive shells that ripped soldiers' faces off and shattered their arms and legs.

But I also extend my sympathy and my compassion to those whom our "brave boys" have raped, bombed, and slaughtered--people who did nothing to us, nothing to deserve this. Where is their memorial day?