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From Greg Palast again... I want to believe the last sentence of this is true. I don't really want the world to be divided into "good" and "evil." I'd really like to believe that the person who did this really believed he was driven to it. I don't want our soldiers to get shot... I don't want anybody to get shot. I just desperately still want to believe that there are two viable sides to this farce of a war that our farce of a President started. Why? Maybe just because I want to be right. I want george bush to be more of a failure than he already is.

I *know* that's horrible.

Let me rephrase.

I don't want "him" to fail. I want his policies to fail because they suck. There was a time when he would say something, and it would be going well, and I was able to hope, "God, please let him say something... anything... that I can actually agree with and support." That time is Looooong gone. Now I just feel like I've been fed enough bullshit and let down enough times already. I'm starting on a tangent again. I want him to fail because I just can't believe that there's a significant section of humanity who is just "evil" and "wrong" because he says so. There just HAS to be another side to the story, and we don't get enough of it. I'm sure there are crazy psycho whack job mother fuckers who just like to blow up Americans because it's cool. Then there are the crazy psycho whack job mother fuckers who like to blow up Americans for real valid political and social reasons... which doesn't mean I support their methods, but I do think they have addressable grievances against the United States. Then, lastly, is the group that we don't here about enough. The people just trying to protect their homes. The people that have been pushed too far to just roll over and get trampled upon. Of course, the story below is conjecture. That sniper could have just have easily been thinking, "AllahVirginsAllahVirginsAllahVirginsAllahVirginsAllahVirginsAllahVirginsAllahVirginsAllahVirginsAllahVirginsWOOOOO!" when he pulled the trigger.

So I hope not. I hope that that segment of real rational people who just want to live their lives is real. The people who just can't take it anymore. I also hope that particular population is dwindling. Not because we're shooting them but because things are getting better. But somehow I doubt it. I hope these people exist b/c, if they don't, george bush is right and there are just large numbers of people out there who irrationally want to blow up Americans. He just can't be right though. He's a big fucking twat. I WANT TO HURT SOMEBODY by Greg Palast Thursday, November 2, 2006 for The Guardian (London) It was pure war-nography. The front page of the New York Times today splashed a four-column-wide close-up of a blood-covered bullet in the blood-soaked hands of an army medic who'd retrieved it from the brain of Lance Cpl. Colin Smith. There was a 40 column-inch profile of the medic. There were photos of the platoon, guns over shoulders, praying for the fallen buddy. The Times is careful not to ruin the heroic mood, so there is no photograph of pieces of corporal Smith's shattered head. Instead, there's an old, smiling photo of the wounded soldier. The reporter, undoubtedly wearing the Kevlar armor of the troop in which he's "embedded," quotes at length the thoughts of the military medic: "I would like to say that I am a good man. But seeing this now, what happened to Smith, I want to hurt people. You know what I mean?" The reporter does not bother -- or dare -- to record a single word from any Iraqi in the town of Karma where Smith's platoon was, "performing a hard hit on a house." I don't know what a "hard hit" is. But I don't think I'd want one "performed" on my home. Maybe Iraqis feel the way I do. We won't know. The only Iraqi noted by the reporter was, "a woman [who] walked calmly between the sniper and the marines." The Times reporter informs us that Lance Cpl. Smith, "said a prayer today," before he charged into the village. We're told that Smith had, "the cutest little blond girlfriend" and "his dad was his hero." Did the calm woman also say her prayers today? Is her dad her hero, too? We don't know. No one asks. The reporter and his photographer did visit a home in the neighborhood -- but only after the "hit" force kicked in the door. I suppose that's an improvement over the typical level of reporting we get. In dispatches home by the few US journalists who brave beyond the Green Zone, Iraqis are little more than dark shapes glimpsed through the slots of a speeding Humvee. Last month there was a big hoo-ha over the statistical accuracy of a Johns Hopkins University study estimating that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of this war. I doubt the Iraqi who fired that bullet into Lance Cpl. Smith read the Hopkins study. Iraqis don't need a professor of statistics to tell them what happens in a "hard hit" on a house. Of civilians killed by the US forces the Hopkins team found 46% are younger than fifteen years old. I grieve for Lance Cpl. Smith and I can't know for certain what moved the sniper to pick up a gun and shoot him. However, I've no doubt that, like the Marines who said prayers before they invaded the homes of the terrified residents of Karma, the sniper also said a prayer before he loaded the 7.62mm shell into his carbine. And if we asked, I'm sure the sniper would tell us, "I am a good man, but seeing what happened, I want to hurt people."