As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan.

Day-to-day life is as simple as it is routine - though my days are often long and very busy.

I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.

There is far more to transitioning in the public eye than money, public relations, and logistics.

I think it's actually kind of sweet how there is a reciprocal effect that our stories can have on each other.

I lived a few miles outside of a tiny town in central Oklahoma. I would often run amok though the fields of wheat, the patches of trees, along the railroad tracks, and on red dirt roads. This had a profound effect on my view of the world - vast, open-ended, full of opportunity, and ready for exploration.

I really don't care how I am perceived by people on the outside.