Yesterday we had our first real snow storm of the year and it's been butt-cold outside … I had to walk across town in the wind and driving snow for my last doctor appointment before my trip (I've given up the Beast, aka my car, to a friend who needed to travel to Montana … hope you made it OK, E … don’t take no guff from the beastie!).

The local paper had a feature last week of photos and quotes from 2003. And surprise! There I was, in the middle of the page! A picture of me before my arrest for civil disobedience outside a local naval base last March. The caption referred to me as an "Anti-war activist." ~sigh~ Why do they always have to refer to me as being "anti-war"? Why can’t I be "pro-peace" for a change?

What struck me even more was the quote above my picture … from the commanding officer of the USS Bridge, right before its departure from the base bound for the Persian Gulf. "War is the ultimate failure of international diplomacy," he said, "but there are times in history that international diplomacy has failed and, for the greater good of mankind, war has been necessary." The reluctant warrior atop the anti-war activist.

I remember being in Baghdad before the war. The U.S. hadn't had an embassy in Iraq since … oh, help me out here … 1990 … 1991? There was an "U.S. Interest Office" I think that was what it was called … out of the Polish Embassy … but that was closed before I left Iraq … a month before the war. I personally don't remember a lot of diplomacy before the war … at least not from the U.S. I just remember a lot of rhetoric.