GWOT WTF?

What I really like about The Sandbox is the first-hand perspective. The mix of reflective personal anecdote with accounts of the atrocities that are so hard to comprehend. This post was particularly good. It's somehow comforting (while at the same time troubling) to know that even the soldiers on-the-ground have trouble making sense of things:

I think for a second of the people who didn't live to see this sunset; people out playing with their kids on a balcony, or stepping out of the door to grab something from the store down the street. One second they were here, and the next they weren't. I think of fresh bread and an arm lying in the street, and I am glad for the company of my soldiers, next to me in the tight metal womb of our truck. We ride back to the FOB, smoking and joking, and it is good to still be alive.