One of Peter’s former coworkers is coming over for some video games and dinner, and since he cooks (not compulsively like I do, but properly) and he’s had some of my stuff, and since this is my first one, I feel like I can go nuts. So, the menu:

And whatever veg our guest brings.

Meanwhile, I leave you with a Thanksgiving tale about our troops, a positive one about living, working (as opposed to dead or incapacitated) members of our armed forces in Iraq, doing their job well with care for civilians, despite coming from the British press:

Telegraph Blogs: Foreign - Happy Thanksgiving, by Toby Harnden (US editor)

This Thanksgiving, spare a thought for the American troops stationed in Iraq. As I tuck into my turkey in Mount Airy, Maryland this afternoon, I’ll remember this time last year when I had my dinner in a snipers’ post called OP Hotel in Ramadi, provincial capital of what is euphemistically called “restive” Anbar province.

telegraph%20thanksgiving%20ramadi.jpg
American troops celebrating Thanksgiving

This was the position from which Staff Sergeant James Gillland shot dead a sniper from 1250 metres away.

As he shovelled potatoes, stuffing and gravy down his throat, a young US Army sniper (pictured) from Gilliland’s “Shadow” team described to me how he had yet to record a single “kill”.

But sometimes, he said, the most important decision a sniper makes is not to fire a shot. He recounted how he had been watching a gathering of military-age men and others in downtown Ramadi when he saw a man with a video camera leaning out of a car.

Read the rest of it (and take note, ruefully, of the way “Jihadists websites and YouTube” are put in the same line) (and hey, hop over to the linked article about the dead sniper, when you’re done).

Update:

While we’re thankful, this makes me thankful:

Lovely. Just lovely. Curtsies to CDR Salamander.

Date: Nov 23rd, 2006 · Comments RSS · Tags: War and Peace