I know I mention Cryptome, a website on intelligence and privacy matters, an awful lot here.

I’ve used it for years because with very few bells and whistles, it provides source documents on a wide range of issues related to secrecy and government oversight of our lives.

It also tries to fight that secrecy by publishing little-seen documents from a lot of sources– things that many folks would prefer be left unseen.

Right now, they’re running a series of photographs they’re calling “the Fallujah/Iraqi Kill zone.” Some are battlefield photos, but the more recent ones — and the ones you really ought to see — are the photos of the funerals of the soldiers, and of wounded service people at hospitals, getting Purple Hearts, etc.

For all our rhetoric, we forget, sometimes, what the human face of war looks like. It looks like these photos of young men and women in their dress uniforms, coupled with photos of their bereft families and friends touching their coffins. It looks like the corpses of Iraqis in the streets of Fallujah, and the look of fear — and yeah, some elation too, now and again — on soldiers’ faces in the battle zone.

I don’t want to be a bummer on Thanksgiving Eve…but you might want to take a look at these pictures when you can, and think long and hard about what you’ve got to be thankful for. It brings the shortness of life home; it puts into perspective some of what’s being done, ostensibly in our name, by kids who may not ever make it home. Some of them are there because they believe it’s the right thing to do; others got there because the military seemed to be the only choice for them…

I don’t know. I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say here.

It just seems to me that wherever you stand on our country’s overseas actions, there’s something human to be recalled here that is best served by making these dilemmas real. Look at some of those faces, and think about what you would say to them, if you could.