Isn't War Fun?

Read the ongoing story about Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller, a country boy from Kentucky, in Am I to blame for his private war?

Maybe it will make you think a little bit more about the real victims of the Great War on Terror on both sides.

Excerpts:
"'Blake Miller is a flipped-out, 22-year-old former Marine who was involved in a major battle,' Armstrong said. 'He's been through a lot, seen a lot. I can't endorse the quick fix. It's a common pattern that vets are in and out of therapy for years.'

"They drove me to the secluded mountain top outside Pikeville to show me the spot where Miller had asked Jessica to be his girl, just days before he shipped out to Iraq. They laughed, embarrassed by the story. Miller sipped root beer and Jessica Nehi orange soda."

"It was 9 November 2006, two years after I took the famous picture of Miller and a year after he left the Marines. In his empty apartment, Miller took his wedding picture from the wall and replaced it with a Meritorious Mast, a certificate detailing his valour in combat. He drank beer for comrades living and lost. He spoke the names of the dead: Brown, Gavriel, Holmes, Ziolkowski.

'I didn't cry then and I won't now,' Miller said. 'I just can't.'

"Miller lives in a refurbished trailer behind his father's house. Two TVs provide constant background chatter. The refrigerator is bare. A hound called Mudbone spends most days tied in the yard."

Definitions of cannon fodder on the Web:

• An expression used to denote the treatment of armed forces as a worthless commodity to be expended. Fodder is food for livestock - the livestock ...martiallaw911.info/glossary.htm


• soldiers who are regarded as expendable in the face of artillery fire wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn


• Cannon Fodder is a short series of two war (and later science fiction) themed action computer and video games developed by Sensible Software, initially released for the Commodore Amiga. Only two games in the series were released, but were converted to most active systems at the time of release. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon Fodder


• Cannon fodder is an informal term for military personnel who are regarded or treated as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where soldiers are forced to fight against hopeless odds, such as occurred during trench warfare in World War I. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon fodder