WASHINGTON AT WAR. It is easy to forget there is a war going on when you are in Seattle, a city with a disproportionate number of vintage-clothing stores, vinyasa studios and places to get lattes in mugs. There are so many distractions -- and so little talk of Iraq. In Washington, D.C., at least, the sporadic drone of Black Hawks is a reminder that we are, as President Bush puts it, a "nation atwar."
Yet nobody needs to be reminded of this fact in Tillicum, Washington, where many residents work at nearby Fort Lewis (roughly 50 miles south of Seattle) or have served in Iraq. Signs of the war are ubiquitous here -- ranging from an Army jeep parked behind Fox Hole G.I. Surplus to a yellow-and-white flag in front of 7 Sisters Barber Shop that says: "We Support Our Troops/Come Home Soon." The cost of the war, too, is felt acutely in this part of the state.
A picture of a soldier, Spc. Eric Salinas, appeared in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Salinas, 25, had been photographed during an October 2006 memorial service for a friend who died in Iraq. In the picture, Salinas has a tear in his eye. Last Thursday, Salinas was himself killed -- by a roadside bomb near Baghdad that also claimed the lives of two other soldiers from Fort Lewis' 3rd Stryker Brigade. Seventy-nine servicemen and women from Washington have died in Iraq this year, according to the Post-Intelligencer, making it "the deadliest year ever for Washington troops."
--Tara McKelvey