Sandman's Journal

Last January I wrote about hitchhiking 700 miles from Santa Fe, NM, to a show in Bisbee, AZ, and getting a serendipitous ride from an ABC News correspondent named Miguel Marquez. Miguel has covered many big stories: the Michael Jackson trial, the Schwarzenegger election, and the Saddam Hussein trial in Baghdad. Well, he was recently reassigned to cover the Iraq debacle, and since then he's been sending me and others his weekly reports. When the U.S. dropped a bomb on Zarqawi and posse, Miguel's crew was the first to arrive on the scene. In fact, I believe that Miguel was the one to report that Zarqawi was still alive (when other reports were saying he'd died immediately).

Here are some excerpts from his last letter:

"I hope things get better here. Not only because young Americans are dying by the dozens, some of them in horrific ways, but also because Iraqis are dying by the hundreds, if not thousands, and they are living in misery. Everyone who can is leaving the country."

"The Iraqi government is weak and knotted in confusion. Ministries often contradict other ministries. The Prime Minister's press office consists of a guy with a cell phone."

". . . filling up the car up can take 12 to 24 hours of waiting in line."

"In short, [the Iraqis'] whole way of life has been turned upside down and there is no end in sight. The grand promises of freedom and democracy have been ground down into the remnants of a thousand car and suicide bombs."

On top of all that, he reports that the temperature is "well over 115 degrees everyday."

War is hell . . .