I woke up on my back and felt secure, the cool sheets wrapped tightly around my body. Mechanically, I reached for the remote and turned on the news to discover an air raid in Baghdad. I despaired as I watched the bombs engulf the sky. It seemed like a sickening mimicry of a Fourth of July celebration, and then I understood just how true my thought was. I realized that I�d never truly seen a live war before; that I was probably the witness to someone�s death. I wondered if, out of the millions of people watching that same broadcast, anyone was also thinking about the death of those involved. It would be so easy to forget of the people involved or to refuse to acknowledge their sacrifice. It would be so easy to watch the plume of smoke rise from what was once a human creation and call it �A US Victory�. No, no, not a US victory, I thought, but a US necessity. Or so I had been told. I wondered at how much I knew of the whole situation verses what I had been told. I had been told everything, practically had my opinion told to me. I believed US action was a necessity and that the Iraqis would be better off as a democracy, but why did it have to be this way? Why did everything have to be this way? I glanced up at the �Happy Birthday Laura� sign taped to my wall and the streamers that were strung across my room, left by my friends the day before. Suddenly, they seemed inappropriate, and I threw off the covers and tore them down. However, I could not reach the fishing line that had once suspended them. I left it zigzagging across my room, bare, in a sad mockery�even with the fa�ade thrown away, the framework will always be there.