Then and Now

I heard about the attacks driving to work. It was a beautiful Colorado autumn day and I was driving with the windows down listening to what would have been Democracy Now, broadcasting from a former firehouse blocks from where the towers stood (an mp3 of the broadcast is available here). When I got to work, the president of the company had a five inch black and white television set up on his desk and everyone gathered around to watch the news reports. Since our company had offices in New York, all locations were shut down (except for Colorado locations). We all went back to work, but because there was no air travel we couldn't actually ship anything. We all sat around and listened to the radio and didn't know what to do.

Five years later. Let's look at my crude map of Iraq (which has nothing to do with the attacks of September eleventh) and see what's under al-Qaeda control.

This according to The Washington Post:

...[Col. Pete] Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.

I still don't know what to do.