I am Kyle's self-indulgence

Somehow this event escaped my notice until today. Maybe I'm not reading the right blogs.

Over a week ago an event was held to give Iraq veterans an opportunity to tell about some of the atrocities they witnessed and committed during our ongoing war.

From The Nation:

While on tank patrol through the narrow streets of Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, Pfc. Clifton Hicks was given an order. Abu Ghraib had become a "free-fire zone," Hicks was told, and no "friendlies" or civilians remained in the area. "Game on. All weapons free," his captain said. Upon that command, Hicks's unit opened a furious fusillade, firing wildly into cars, at people scurrying for cover, at anything that moved. Sent in to survey the damage, Hicks found the area littered with human and animal corpses, including women and children, but he saw no military gear or weapons of any kind near the bodies. In the aftermath of the massacre, Hicks was told that his unit had killed 700-800 "enemy combatants." But he knew the dead were not terrorists or insurgents; they were innocent Iraqis. "I will agree to swear to that till the day I die," he said. "I didn't see one enemy on that operation."

I think it's important to listen to them not because I think our nation's soldiers are particularly cruel or immoral, but because this is reality. Whenever reports have entered the news about American soldiers committing atrocities our national leaders have assured us that they are isolated incidents committed by a few bad seeds.

"This is not an isolated incident," the testifiers uttered over and over, to the point of liturgy, insisting that the atrocities they committed or witnessed were common. The hearings were not organized to point fingers at "bad apples" or even particular squads, several testifiers said.

The truth is that war can cause normal, decent human beings to do inhumane things. War is by nature cruel and immoral, and the Iraq war is no exception.