FUCK THIS WAR

Newsweek has released an in depth investigation into the horrors of the bloodbath at Haditha. For those of you not familiar with this recent controversy, do yourself a favor and read the article linked above. Here's an excerpt I found particulary revolting:

In December, NEWSWEEK interviewed some Army soldiers going home as conscientious objectors. To fight boredom and disgust, said Clif Hicks, who had left a tank squadron at Camp Slayer in Baghdad, soldiers popped Benzhexol, five pills at time. Normally used to treat Parkinson's disease, the drug is a strong hallucinogenic when abused. "People were taking steroids, Valium, hooked on painkillers, drinking. They'd go on raids and patrols totally stoned." Hicks, who volunteered at the age of 17, said, "We're killing the wrong people all the time, and mostly by accident. One guy in my squadron ran over a family with his tank."

Hicks's own revulsion peaked while he was on patrol in January 2004. He came upon a bloody scene in a Baghdad housing project, where some soldiers had mistaken celebratory shots fired at a wedding for an attack, returning heavy fire and killing a young girl. "I looked in the door and she was dead, shot through the neck, Mom there, Grandma there, all losing it. Then I started thinking, this is really f---ed up, this is horribly wrong." Hicks stopped taking his malaria pills, hoping he'd get sick and shipped out. He says that infantry soldiers sometimes stick their legs out of the Humvee under sniper fire, hoping to get a nonlethal wound.

Hicks claims that "there's a lot of guys who steal from the Iraqis. Money, family heirlooms, and then they brag about it. Guys would crap into MRE bags and throw them to old men begging for food.



AND THIS EXCERPT JUST PISSES ME OFF:

The saddest and ugliest story was told to a NEWSWEEK reporter by a 12-year-old girl named Safa Younis. When the Marines entered her house that morning, she fled with her mother into a bathroom. A soldier followed them, shooting, she says. When the soldiers left, Safa tried to talk to her mother, but she was covered with blood. "Mama, Mama," cried the girl, until she realized that her mother was dead. So was her father, whom she found lying near the kitchen door. And her aunt, and her five siblings—all shot to death. "I was sorry for staying in the bathroom. I should have died like them," recalls Safa, who now lives with a cousin. "The Americans are murderers, criminals. They have no mercy."