I’m in the desert at night, three in the morning on a flat, arid plain of Iraq. The dumbest irony in the world is the fact that the desert is cold at night. Heat makes people desperate, justifying most cases of insanity. I always imagine people in the desert clamoring over dunes and delirious with heat exhaustion. The cold means clarity. It means precision and sharpness, because energy cannot be wasted in the cold. What I have to do must require some level of insanity, because there is no other justification for it. Yet, my precision is vital. Can’t make mistakes in taking out my target out here, because there is nowhere to hide. I keep flipping the detonator switch over in my hand, staring out at a starry sky, tiny lights poking through holes in a sheet of night. I remember the roof of our

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited October 14, 2006).]