I'm gonna go fiddle with rockets some more I think, but in the short term I'll mention a few quick news stories. I think I can only think of a small handful of friends that have recently lived through any kind of serious warfare as a civilian — this story (more) is worth reading to get an idea of what the experience is like.
On the other hands, living in Iraq also means that there's a chance that no matter what you do, you might get killed by American troops just for being in the wrong place (your home) at the wrong time (when children were protesting outside a school that they wanted to return to) — as you know, at the “Fallujah Massacre” as it's now being called, the US troops simply opened fire on the entire crowd, spraying bullets at random, killing and wounding about fifty people (more, more), not just in the crowd of protestors, but also in surrounding homes.
Other that that, there's still no evidence that Iraq has any WMDs (more), the US continues to slash its own civil rights by now imposing permanent gag orders on any trials related to the war on terror (more), and the British continue to complain about having to work with butcherous and callous US troops, describing them in rather harsh terms (more):
He counts his unit's kills meticulously, each one a tick in black pen on his khaki helmet ... Perched in the turret of his tank, just behind the barrel that is hand-painted with intimidating war cries such as "kill 'em all" or "I'm a motherfucking warrior", he talks only to those Iraqis with the temerity to approach: he feels vulnerable without a 60-ton Abrams girding his loins. It is impossible to read anything in his eyes because they are always obscured by mirrored sunglasses.Every Iraqi is a potential troublemaker, a possible target. If one fails to stop at his checkpoint, his response will be to open fire. If more than 50 gather to chant anti-American slogans, he will likely flood the street with soldiers. If he so much as suspects that the crowd has weapons he may well consider a full-scale counter-attack.
His President insists that he was never a member of an invading force, that he was a liberator and is now a peacekeeper. Yet much of the time he is loathed, despised and spat upon by those Iraqis for whose freedom he fought. He and his comrades are among the most hated men in the Iraqi capital.
Not that lying is a surprise when it comes to the US government (more), but this is an interesting turn of events: the courts knowingly used false evidence to convict Timothy McVeigh, and Ashcroft personally intervened to keep the defense from finding out about it and personally ensured that the execution went ahead even knowing that the trial had not been conducted legally (more, more, more). Now, I'm not saying McVeigh isn't guilty — but I am saying that it's fucking terrifying when a government is willing to execute its citizens using fraudulent trials.
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