Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
We couldn’t protect the Iraqi people, the children and old people who died because of accidental fire as we liberated them.
We couldn’t protect the unique and precious Iraqi antiquities even though the soldiers were begged for help and the US government was warned about the dangers of their loss.
We can’t protect the religious and political leaders or the UN (though we seem to do a good job protecting the executives from Halliburton); nor can we protect the women who can no longer go out without covering their heads after being reduced to second class citizens.
We can’t protect our own soldiers, and we fire on the local police mistaking anyone with a gun for a terrorist.
Now, we can’t even protect the rare and endangered animals held in what’s left of the Iraqi zoo.
This story – soldiers who decided to visit the Iraq zoo after closing time to have a drunken party shot and killed a rare bengal tiger after it attacked a soldier who put his arm through the cage bars.
How can we ‘control’ terrorism if we can’t even control the behavior of the service people – and I don’t want to hear the crap about boys far away from home blowing off steam. This isn’t the behavior of fine service people, but the behavior of louts and thugs. This is what war does to fine service people when they don’t understand why they’re fighting, and they just want to go home. This is what happens to fine service people when they’re in a country surrounded by people who hate them; when they’re led by an man who lies about when they can come home, and cuts their pay and benefits while granting huge sums to good old buddies back home.
Commanders of service people are responsible for their actions, and the buck starts and ends at George Bush.
We are killing that country, piece by piece, soul by soul, day by day.