He sounds like a witness for the prosecution to me. "The guys saw me and went crazy".

"He does not care about civilians"...again sounds like the poster boy for why we need to leave Iraq!

I keep hearing about "all the good things happening in Iraq"...what?

What could possibly be worth what these people have gone through over the last 3 years, that will be worth a decade more of?

disaster goes on

Pentagon: Iraq Insurgency Strong Into 2007

It was a fascinating interview at a bunch of levels. The pro-war and anti-war people each got their talking points if they want to quote selectively. The marine says his buddies went crazy. He says the good news is being ignored. And so on. I think that stuff cancels each other out. Besides, the guy was unconscious during the massacre. He doesn't have a clue what happened. He's no one's witness.

What interested me were other aspects of the interview. One was the kid's background. They asked him why he joined the Marine Corps, and the answer was essentially that he didn't have anything else to do with his life.

Not too satisfying to either side, is it? The chest-thumpers of the Milbogosphere didn't get the stirring patriotic crapola they're always spouting, and the pacifists didn't get some sort of fang-dripping bully who gets off on blowing people up. What both sides got is reality: Just another aimless kid, which is the age-old story.

He wasn't anguished about the killings of the civilians. Didn't care one way or the other. O! The horror! But don't feel too good too fast, chest-thumpers, because that section of the interview was the most revealing of all. Go take a look at WHY he felt no anguish. Okay, partly it was the medication he said he was on. But also there was the issue of what he had seen before.

He'd seen much worse at Fallujah, he said. This was no big deal. The civilian interviewer was too much of a blockhead to tug at that thread. Maybe someone else will, but somehow I doubt it.