Meg said think about the drink. It's not for every guest. It sat six years collecting cheers, twelve bottles of the best. Deirdre said the drink is linked to love forevermore. That night I took the whiskey out the door. I drank one toast, at most, to Meg O'Malley. I drank one toast, at most, to Deirdre Shea. I drank one toast, at most, and pay the Holy Ghost that Meg and Deirdre both forget my face.

Thanks, Brinstar. This stuff arrived out of the blue. I'm sure everyone here is nice. But the conversation appeared so randomly, it looked like spam.

Don't send me this spam.

What is this crap? Don't send this to me.

As others are pointing out, the edit options have gone crazy. Can't do the quick bold, italic, links or photos now. I'm sure you can fix it. Also, a search of posts calls up only one page (20 posts) and has no link to a second (or third, etc.) page if there were more than 20 posts that fit the search. That has to be fixed. The new "publish" button on the right initially was a little confusing (being used to the "save" button below), but actually, that's better because scrolling down for every "save" was a pain.

Capt. Travis Patriquin was more than a slide show. He was a soldier who put his ideas into action. He reached out to the Sunni Arabs of Anbar and demonstrated that Americans could be trusted. He spoke Arabic and learned quickly what the local Iraqis needed to know and needed to see. It is true, as Skyler points out, that we’re all a little too eager to discover simple solutions and ask why they hadn’t been tried before. We’re also a little too ready to dismiss the healing and informative nature of time itself. What couldn’t work in 2004 worked a little in 2005, and much better in 2007. And yes, the unexpected “surge,” with the confidence it built, may have been the string that pulled everything together. But Patriquin’s slide show served its good purpose. It gave many American GIs, just arrived in Iraq, a new way to look at their relationship with Iraqis. “How to Win in Anbar” may look simple, and it many ways it is oversimplified, but it reminded our troops that this is not an “us” versus “them” war, that there is much more going on. When Patriquin was killed by that roadside bomb on Dec. 6, 2006, Sheik Abdul Sittar, leader of the Anbar Awakening, wept. Patriquin “was an extraordinary man who played a very, very important role,” said Sittar, who then named a police station in Ramadi for his fallen American friend. On Sept. 13, Sittar also gave his life for the Awakening. Both Patriquin and Sittar are heroes of the liberation of Iraq.