We love interviews here at VDB, the longer and deeper in the weeds the better.

And it is our policy to present those interviews in transcript form, so that you hear the ebb and flow of the subject’s ideas, the cadences that mark their speech. And along these lines, Cathy Resmer has a brilliant cover piece in the current Seven Days: a long, chilling interview with three Vermont veterans of the Iraq war.

One of the vets, a woman who served as an Arab linguist for military intelligence, was tasked with following the communications coming out of Baghdad in the wake of the invasion’s first bombing raids.

“As we started bombing Baghdad and Iraq, I was basically listening to the people we were bombing . . . [to] conversations, when they were calling their family members, to try to reassure them that they’re OK, and they’re safe. Or they’re not OK, or they’re not safe.

“Their voices are kind of stuck in my head sometimes. And sometimes I start to wonder how many of them are dead.”

Well worth your time today, especially as the House and Senate move their supplemental spending bill to the President’s desk, for a much trumpeted veto.