"If it were up to me, I'd kill the Americans and drink their blood."

Owen Matthews in Newsweek:

Hussein Hassan was hurrying to get home. His wife, Kamila, sat beside him in the family Opel; their five youngest children, 2 to 14, were squeezed in the back seat with a 6-year-old cousin. They had been at his brother's house, but now curfew was 15 minutes away, and Tall Afar's streets are no place for a family after dark. Hussein turned off Tall Afar's main traffic circle onto Mansour Boulevard. Rakan was first to spot the soldiers in the deepening dusk. They were waving their arms and raising their assault rifles. The boy jumped up in the back seat. Before he could open his mouth to warn his father, a storm of gunfire struck the car, killing both parents and covering the children with their blood.  ...

[T]he children ended up with their eldest sister, Intisar, 24, and her husband, Haj Natheer Basheer, 50, in a tiny, rundown house in Mosul. Haj Natheer says he visited the base in early March with Jilan and Samar. He says Captain Seibold broke into tears talking to the children. Natheer thought it was a charade, and launched into a diatribe against the occupation. The translator finally warned the Iraqi to be quiet or risk getting locked up. "They are only tolerating you because the kids are here," the translator said. Natheer hasn't seen the Americans since. Captain Seibold declines to comment on the incident.

The unit's chaplain, Capt. Ed Willis, says there's no reason to feel guilty: "If you kill someone on the battlefield, whether it's another soldier or collateral damage, that doesn't fit under 'Thou shalt not kill'."

Oh well, if they didn't want to get shot, they shouldn't have attacked us on 9/11.  Anyway, no one could ever have predicted that invading and occupying a country like Iraq would result in untold thousands of unintended civilian deaths, or teenagers who long to drink American blood.  We all thought it would be a cakewalk, and we'd be greeted as liberators.

(Via Republic of T.)

Comments

[Ruth]

When I read the article I was struck by this paragraph: "Back on base, the men filled out sworn statements. Apache's officers and NCOs hurried to reassure them. "Put yourself there," says Maj. Dylan Moxness. "You're an 18-year-old kid from Tennessee. You don't even understand why these people don't speak English anyway, you're shouting 'Stop!' and the car's still coming at you—you've got to fire.""

Okay, some extremely slight, microscopic bit of empathy for the 18 year old kid, maybe... but christ, to use this as an excuse? Why do the soldiers have that attitude? Because that's the attitude they're taught to have, the attitude most Americans have. The arrogance exemplified by that statement just left me speechless.