I've been keeping up with, if not blogging, the recent violence in Fallujah. It's getting ugly, isn't it.
First there was the violence against the four American mercen-- I mean contractors. That's the word we use now, right? Although I guess the company that provided them is calling them volunteers -- I had no idea these guys were doing what they were doing for free [insert sarcasm here].
Now the US military and our talking heads are making lots of noise about payback, using some of my FAVORITE terms: "we have to sanitize Fallujah" "clean it up" and, from the LA Times, "Fallouja is a barrier on the highway to progress. We're going to eliminate that barrier without damaging the highway."

I'm not excusing the behavior of the Iraqis who did the killing and dismembering, but I sure as hell have NO sympathy for the four unfortunate bastards who got torn to shreds either. All four of these people knew what they were getting into when they signed up for this. All were employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, a company that hires former military members "to provide the client with veteran military, intelligence and law enforcement professionals with demonstrated field operations performance tempered with mature experience in both foreign and domestic requirements... all drawn from various U.S. and international Special Operations Forces, Intelligence and Law Enforcement organizations." When you are deliberately in harm's way, you can't act all shocked when something horrible happens. It's sad that yet another person is dead in this whole miserable affair Iraq, but when you make yourself a candidate for the Darwin Awards, don't get mad when Charlie D. calls you home to Jesus...