saw a great helicopter hovering over Baghdad with blades so large and long that they cut through the sky over all of Iraq. The sky was disturbed, the whirling clouds dark, and no living creature took to the air.

I saw people, few at first then joined from one and the other side by more, the souls of those who passed as casualties of war. Their number included men, women, children, Iraqis, Americans and others. The crowd grew but I could not extimate its size because the curtain between there and here revealed only a limited view. Their faces betrayed a single question---"Why?"

I saw the gods of humanity from across the ages represented by large masks alternately appearing, overlapping and fading as they revolved around the Earth dwarfed before them. The masks, at first glance, appeared alive but were not. Their eyes were empty, but betrayed through their slits a common light which itself, only, was alive.