A new thing bothering me about Haditha

Not the *only* thing, obviously...

As we all know, originally many of the civilians who were killed at Haditha were reported by the troops involved as having been killed by a roadside bomb.

So...you know, practically every day, you get the report on the number of Iraqi civilians who are killed by that day's insurgent bomb.

And now, every time we hear that, we have to wonder whether it's true.

:argh:

The Plaid Adder

Chimpident keeps saying is that the terrorists do these things to
break our will.. that they get televised... and that we shouldn't pay attention
to it.

From Robert Fisk....

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/272620_haditha04.html

<snip>


I remember clearly the first suspicions I had that murder most foul might be taking place in our name in Iraq. I was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city's senior medical officials - an old friend - told me of his fears. "Everyone brings bodies here," he said. "But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we'd get a piece of paper like this one with a body." And here the man handed me an American military document showing the hand-drawn outline of a man's body and the words "trauma wounds".

What kind of trauma? Indeed, what kind of trauma is now being experienced in Iraq? Who is doing the mass killing? Who is dumping so many bodies on garbage heaps? After Haditha, we are going to reshape our suspicions.

So much for that big "civil" war we're supposed to be "preventing" by staying there forever.

but it's one of the most important.

While there I got to see IED's being laid (I fired at people placing to make them scamper away from the bomb), got to see them go off and had to deal with the aftermath.

I also got to see people run out to the road and in a panic flail their arms around to get us to stop and then point out where an IED was that we would have never seen and would have been killed by. I have always wondered what ever happened to them.

Sometimes, I feel like the guilt is going to suffocate me. I know that Bush's invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with WMDs, or bringing democracy to the people of that poor country. I was horrified when I realized that nobody in Congress was going to stop him from having his war, and that nothing Saddam could have done would make a bit of difference.

Now, though, as this massive failure goes on and on, I feel guilt for my country. We learn as we get older that we were never as good as we pretended to be, but at least most of us tried. The facade has been ripped away, and the corrupt and arrogant man who pretends he has the right to be president is causing untold death, hardship, and grief to millions.

We have become a brutal society, while we hold ourselves up as better than the rest of the world. And the president thinks torture, and denial of civil rights, and holding people in prison for years without being charged, and still presume to talk down to other countries. How can I overcome the guilt I feel, as an American, for what is being done in my name?