[mikester]

I'm sure his written apology was accepted.

I remember witnessing my first missing man formation. I was about 8 or so and we were stationed at Hurlbert Field on the Florida panhandle.

Dad had just returned from some big how do you do in Iran apparently. I asked him what was going on and he explained that some men hadn't come back from his last "trip" and that the formation was in their honor. "Because we lost them, we honor them with the missing man formation."

Of course we had a discussion about who didn't come back. One of my friend's dad was on the flight crew of one of those C-130s - he didn't make it back.

Regardless of the politics of the mission; from that point on seeing the missing man formation breaks my heart.