poignant

It's weird how smells can bring back memories so vividly. They can also bring back emotional and physical feelings.
Right now its 7:15pm and I'm still at work. I have that weird fatigue from crunching numbers and designing for 12+ hours straight. The cleaning ladies are vacuuming and sprucing up the office. The air has this sweet tangy smell of a specific cleaning agent. It smells exactly like the cleaners we used while deployed...i was working long hours then too. It evokes all these forgotten emotions and vivid images of me and my shop in the desert. I got another email from Jeff who's deployed. Listening to his stories brings back more. If i close my eyes, it's like I'm there.
Last night Katie and I watched a Frontline story on Iraq and US foreign policy on Iraq. It covered our reasoning for disposing Saddam. I was already deployed when Powell resigned due to the shattering of the pillars that supported our basis for war. Hindsight is 20/20 and people are so keen on questioning the validity of the chickenhawks insistence on initiating the war. I don't think it matters, its too late to uninvade. The only course is the honorable one, to support Iraq until it can support itself. "You break it, you buy it," or so goes the Pottery Barn rule. And until there's adequate security, good friends of mine will be there.