Free Republic

FORT BLISS, Tex. - In the end, the young soldiers went with a fresh, unopened, purse-sized pack of Kleenex on every other seat, atop the programs, and several big opened boxes placed strategically on the cool tiled floor of every row in the vast building. They had tried every other imaginable combination -- a small pack on every seat; only the large boxes on the floor; lining up the top edges of the little packs with the lower edge of the program, and then with the upper. It was the same with the nine empty pairs of combat boots, set...

Nikki Johnson doesn't like to hear the conflict is almost over -- not with her sister a prisoner of the Iraqis FORT BLISS, Tex. - The Iraqis, giddy with the first breath from under the yoke, were properly jubilant: They, after all, have a country to build. But for the ordinary Americans who make work, tend, staff and feed their young to the great military machine which -- whatever else it has done or may yet do to varying degrees of world approval -- will give the Iraqis that glorious chance, the dramatic fall of Baghdad yesterday was greeted with...