kellinator | Is it real enough yet?

I just dropped by CNN.com and was greeted by this headline in the red bar at the top of the screen:

"BREAKING NEWS: Heavy shelling reported in Fallujah. Details soon."

I sat there looking at the screen and for the first time in my life, I got the sinking feeling that this was how my mom must have felt watching Vietnam play out.

I remember how terrified I was when Iraq invaded Kuwait, how fearful I was of the United States going to war. And then the war actually happened, and we all know how that went, and I think part of the nation, perhaps, began to assume that all wars would be like that, and now we're learning the hard way that they're not, they're really not.

It's a bad situation that keeps getting worse. I wondered if last week was the week the war finally came home, between the publicity generated by the Pentagon's attempt to cover up photos of flag-draped coffins, both Doonesbury's B.D. and Get Fuzzy's Rob's cousin losing a leg in Iraq, and the tragic death of Pat Tillman. Well, it's finally coming home to me. All the emotions I've been feeling over the war -- anger, disgust, sadness, anxiety -- are currently being dwarfed by one big emotion:

Fear.