In the Navy

Some may tire of Spack's determination to blog each and every DOD death notice from Iraq, but yours truly reads everything and notices that today's batch includes Seaman Charles O. Sare of Hemet, California, age 23. That's right, Seaman Charles O. Sare, meaning he's in the Navy, specifically the Naval Ambulatory Care Center in Port Hueneme. He managed, however, to get killed by "enemy action while conducting combat operations in the Al Anbar Province, Iraq."

Anbar, we'll note, is rather far from the ocean. What's happening here is that as part of the ongoing efforts to cope with Iraq-related manpower problems while denying that such problems exist, you're seeing more-or-more efforts to find Navy personnel who can be dispatched into the basically non-Navy context of the Iraq War. That's probably the smart play insofar as one wants to continue this war (which one really shouldn't want), but it's yet another reminder of the damage persisting in this futile policy is doing.