Sounds like Victory

Congratulations to Billmon's Whiskey Bar, incidentally, for posting what seems like a very apt DoubleQuotes pair at http://billmon.org/archives/001650.html. I won't "format" them as one of my DoubleQuotes since I wasn't the one who found them and put them together -- but if I had found them myself, I'd certainly have included them here:

From where I sit in Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well . . . In the distance, I can hear the repeated impacts of heavy artillery and five-hundred-pound bombs hitting their targets. The occasional tank main gun report and the staccato rhythm of a Marine Corps LAV or Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle's 25-millimeter cannon provide the bass line for a symphony of destruction.

Lt. Col. Tim Ryan, Tacoma News Tribune, January 18, 2005

You smell that? Do you smell that? That's napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell — you know that gasoline smell — the whole hill. It smelled like . . . victory.

Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, Apocalypse Now

I find that final phrase of Col. Ryan's, the bass line for a symphony of destruction particularly interesting -- the conjunction of warfare and music gets me every time.

Thanks, Billmon...