"It sucks to see your friends blown up."

So said the private security contractor who sat next to me on the plane from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham. He was on leave for a week to see his father who was in intensive care in the hospital, and tomorrow, he'll be back on the tarmac at 0400 to fly back to Afghanistan. He also said, "I'm almost starting to get used to it." This seemed like a perfectly decent fellow, but who has been under too much pressure for too long. And I take that as a symptom of the never-ending conflict.