Notes: I was reading a January 16th Associated Press wire story about the transporting of the third group of Al Qaeda prisoners to Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay when something caught my eye. A Marine spokesman in Kandahar, Lt. James Jarvis, said that "one of the 30 prisoners was sedated because he expressed a fear of flying." To my surprise that humanized that particular prisoner to me.

While we've been at war with an enemy that has been at war with us long before we had truly realized it, I've not felt much about them as people. Al Qaeda has a perverted, doctrinaire expression of Islamic fundamentalism with the goal of destroying America and returning the world to the 8th century. Consequently, I've agreed with the majority of Americans that the United States must show a steely resolve in defeating Al Qaeda. Still, it was this prisoner's show of a human trait shared by many people -- a fear of flying -- that humanized him to me. 01.20.02