If I were a young Iraqi boy living in Baghdad...

[burythehatchet]

What would I do?

I don't know for sure but I do know that every fucking day I remained alive I would devote the day to trying to kill Blackwater employees.

[ChenZhen]

1. Mercenaries are the best kind of scapegoats

Mercenaries are single-handedly responsible for the destruction of Iraq, the deaths of almost 1 million Iraqis, that displacement of 4 million more, the destruction and carnage of Falluja, the attrocities of Abu Gharib, and everything else bad in Iraq. They are our bad apples.


Its fun to hate mercenaries. You can hate mercenaries, and still "support the troops". Because of such, mercenaries are the best kind of troops.

[goodhue]

2. Indeed

But they aren't that helpful when confined to green zone

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14527473

Blackwater personnel are still in the country, but for now they are not escorting U.S. diplomats. This means that diplomats are, in effect, stuck in the four-mile-square fortified Green Zone.

[alstephenson]

5. We have U.S. diplomats in Iraq??? Wow.

I had no idea. I don't see much diplomacy going on. Oh, except for Condi playing nice with Maliki for the Blackwater thing. She doesn't need to actually BE in Iraq, of course (no good shoe stores there).

[11 Bravo]

3. I doubt it.

Anyone, Blackwater employee or not who gave you a candy bar or a cigarette would be your best friend. I have seen a Vietnamese child hug the same GI who just zippoed the kid's hootch, just because the grunt gave him a lousy C-rat.

[The Stranger]

4. Humanizing the occupied. "If you and I and our best friend were Iraqi children . . . "

. . . would we be tormented, traumatized, tortured, scarred for life'"?