Michael Yon's Latest Dispatch - "Ernie is Dead"

Sometimes night is brighter than day, as these new tents appeared to the camera just after midnight.

Michael Yon's latest dispatch is out. I have just started it, yet it already appears to be monumental. Please read it all.

Many of the soldiers streaming into Iraq will spend a scorching summer with no air conditioners or running water. They will stink like soldiers; there will be no ice cream. There will be grit and filth, mosquitoes with malaria, foul smells from the burning garbage of the cities, snipers, and terrorists who will try to flatten their buildings with truck bombs. The soldiers will see things that age them a decade or more over the course of a single summer. Many will die here, others will lose limbs and a few will go crazy. They bring the final hope for Iraq.

A future President of the United States might spend his or her 25th summer in downtown Baghdad, Ramadi, or maybe out in Diyala Province or up in Kirkuk, watching full moons rise and fall over the cities, hearing dogs bark in the night. Maybe the distinct POP will puncture the darkness, as an American sniper kills a man nearby who was carrying a shovel next to a road at midnight.