Notes From the Road

This morning I talk to Jo, a neighbor at the La Veta Inn. Initially Sonnet had difficulties with Jo for smoking and late night drinking with her husband and 25 year old son who are in town to play golf and party. Otherwise she is from a small town outside Denver where the newest VA hospital is being built. Her brother served three tours in Viet Nam before being hit by a semi on a Florida inter-state (he survived and is in a wheel chair). "He was treated horribly on his return" she says. Our discussion turns to Iraq and the Bush government. She once supported the war and would have been proud to see her son there. No more. On Queda and Iraq, she says: bullshit. "We should have stopped in Afghanistan or maybe Pakistan" and "I can see my house on the Internet. Why can't Bush get Bin Laden?" She believes we should have gone in and done it right or "get the hell out of there." She also connects Iraq's failure to Iran, which could have nukes. "I cannot believe that I would see Viet Nam again. It (Iraq) is becoming the same thing." On the next President? She hates Hillary Clinton and says what our country needs is a black woman: "now she would kick some real ass."