The Republic of T.

Mercy Killing

Still more on how we're winning hearts and minds in Iraq.

Two U.S. soldiers could face murder charges in a military trial in Baghdad for shooting and killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager who had been mistaken for an insurgent by American troops, The Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site. . The newspaper said on Thursday that the two army staff sergeants had admitted that they had shot the Iraqi boy as he lay moaning on the ground but that they had said they did so out of mercy.

… The two soldiers told U.S. officials that they had killed the teenager to "put him out of his misery," the paper said.

But Iraqi witnesses, including a relative of the boy who had pleaded for U.S. troops to help him, were said to be enraged by the killing.

The teenager was shot as U.S. medics rushed to treat a half dozen or so of those wounded on Aug. 18 when the garbage truck was fired upon and bust into flames.

Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban, 29, of Carson, California, and Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, both of 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, face military court proceedings in Baghdad to determine if there is enough evidence for court martial, the newspaper reported.

If convicted, they could receive the death penalty.

I'll say it again, when the history of the war in Iraq is finally told, any American with a conscience will be deeply ashamed of what's been done in our name and on our dime.

Via AntiWar.Com.

Holy War, Anyone?

From Raed in the Middle, who asks "who's taking these pictures?" I think that's less important than the message the pictures send.

In Our Name

A picture from Fallujah, of what's being done in our name.

This little injured boy lost his father to US bombing, hospital officials said. More pictures available here.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

OK. Truth be known, I think I have a pretty cool job. Even the title is cool: "Blogmaster." There's definitely something to be said for getting paid for doing something you enjoy.

Well, I wanted to take a minute here to congratulate Lane of Eat Your Vegetables on being the latest to get an incredibly cool job.

So you may have heard that Apple announced the launch of the iTunes Music Store in Canada sometime in November. You may remember that i recently got my dream job.

2+2 = Lane working for Apple running the iTunes Music Store in Canada.

Pretty good, huh?

Is that hot or what?!

Congrats, Lane!

We Got Six

A family of six, that is.

Rescuers dug the bodies of six members of one family -- a couple and their four children -- out of the rubble of an Iraqi house bombed by U.S. warplanes on Wednesday, witnesses said.

The house was destroyed during air strikes on the insurgent-held town of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.

A Reuters cameraman filmed the dead bodies being removed from the rubble of the house.

U.S. forces say their strikes are carefully targeted against fighters loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a self-declared ally of al Qaeda who the U.S. says is hiding in the town.

But Falluja residents say they know nothing about Zarqawi -- some even doubt his existence -- and that the air raids regularly kill civilians and destroy homes.

Hearts and minds, folks. Hearts and minds.

Via AMERICAblog.

Getting What You Pay For

There are reports floating around that Italy paid the equivalent of $1 million to the captors of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta secure their release, and Italian officials have only spoken of "difficult choices" concerning citizens held hostage in Iraq. Meanwhile a French mediator claims to have reached a deal to secure the release of two French journalists. Since the kidnapping bonanza has taken off in Iraq, countries with military or civilian citizens working in the country are facing some hard choices. Negotiating with kidnapping terrorists? Paying ransom? Let the blogosphere hand-wringing begin.

So what's a country—especially one that didn’t help create the opportunity for kidnapping franchises to grow in Iraq—to do when it has citizens held hostage in Iraq, and threatened with a gruesome death that will most likely be broadcast to the world via the internet? If your choices are paying a million dollars (or allowing Muslim schoolgirls to wear headscarves, or withdrawing your troops from Iraq, etc.) or ending up with headless corpses on your hands, what do you do? It sounds like the ultimate catch-22.

Nightline Tonight

I get a regular email from the folks at Nightline, and this caught my eye when it landed in my inbox.

TONIGHT'S FOCUS: There are pictures from 9-11 that have never been shown. Other pictures of wars, of terrorism, are available on the Internet, but have never been shown on television. How far should we go? What should the viewer see?

There's a dirty secret that every journalist who has ever covered a war knows: it's far worse than we ever show. The real images of war, what really happens, rarely, if ever, make it back to you, the viewers or the readers. Why? We feel that some images are just too much to take. That no one would watch, that no one could bear to watch. And what to do about terrorism? None of the television networks showed those horrific tapes of hostages being beheaded. But they are available on the Internet, and by all accounts, are quite popular. Why? Why would anyone want to see something like that? Do you have to see the pictures to truly understand how horrific death is?

I've been wondering for some time why the U.S. media only shows the results of war in soft focus. If you get your news entirely from U.S. media, it's entirely possible to firmly believe that the war in Iraq has cost little or no civilian lives, because those deaths aren't reported or recorded. And, likewise, it's all too possible to still have no understanding of the anger directed at America from various places in the world, because we haven't seen the pictures and heard the stories they have. Much like the president, we get our news from sources more inclined to pitch the news according to what they think our sensibilities are.

Of course, the images are out there online for those who want to look. And, yes, I've looked. Not out of a fascination with morbidity, but because I want to see what's come of my government's actions and policies abroad. I think, as an American, I need to see those images and hear those stories to understand how the rest of the world sees us.

I'll be tuning into Nightline tonight, and I'll be interested to see just how they handle the subject, and just what they decide to show or not show.

What We're Doing

Via Karmalised.

It's easy, sometimes to forget part of the story of what's going on in Iraq. We hear so much about U.S. casualties, now over 1000, and we have mixed feelings about them. What we hear less of in our own press is the civilian cost of what we're doing in Iraq.

The caption for this photo: An Iraqi man comforts his wounded son at the Falluja city hospital, September 9, 2004. U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with suspected foreign militants close to Iraq's border with Syria, leaving nearly two dozen rebels dead, while U.S. war planes struck west of Baghdad for a third straight day. Photo by Mohammed Khodor/Reuters

The title of the article that accompanies it: Children Among 8 Dead in U.S. Air Strikes on Falluja

Carrying The War Home

I dont' want to let the day pass without posting something about a story I came across at work, about what happened to Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lucey after he came home from serving in Iraq. Take some time to read what happened to this young man, and how the system basically and tragically failed him. After you read it, multiply his story by several hundred, or even several thousand, and add it to the rest of the cost of the war in Iraq. Then ask yourself why.

Iran & Iraq

It occured to me this morning that I should probably blog about a story that I'm working on because it's big news out of Iraq. The whole mess seems about to get much, much bigger.

Senior intelligence sources in the U.S., as well as officials in the Middle East, claim that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has made a strategic decision to confront American forces in Iraq's Shi'a heartland. Those senior intelligence sources (a total of five separate individuals who either now serve or have served in key intelligence positions) base their belief on evidence showing that Iran has armed Shi'a groups in southern Iraq with sophisticated weaponry, has provided political and military guidance to Shi'a groups, has made and maintained contacts with Sunni resistance leaders in "the Sunni triangle" in central Iraq, and is pursuing a program of escalating confrontations between Shia militias and American troops. Among the weapons shipped to the Shi'a militants are sophisticated anti-tank rockets and anti-aircraft missiles, according to these sources.

"The rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration has convinced Iran that military conflict is inevitable and rather than await an attack at a time and place of America's choosing, the Iranians will try to inflict significant damage to U.S. forces on Iraqi soil by means of the Mahdi Army and other Shi'a groups," an informed intelligence source told This Is Rumor Control. Senior officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency would not comment on these reports, but a former senior intelligence officer said that the conclusion was "a no brainer." As he noted: "If you had U.S. troops on your doorstep and George Bush calling you a part of the axis of evil you would take steps to protect yourself. And it would be better to protect yourself on Iraqi soil than to have to do so on Iranian soil. That is what they are doing. Are we surprised? We shouldn't be."

I'm just the messenger here, but I think this story has pretty big implications. Look for it to hit the mainstream media. Soon. In the meantime you can find the rest of the story over at This Is Rumor Control, but what it boils down to is that Iran is now fighting the U.S. in Iraq. Given Bush's saber rattling, it seems that Iran may have decided to strike preemtively against U.S. forces. Can anybody blame them?