I came across three videos on youtube today, three videos that have my blood boiling.
Here's the first one. I think it's powerful enough to speak for itself:
http://www.youtube.com/...
And all the guys who died all the five million or seven million or ten million who went out and died to make the world safe for democracy to make the world safe for words without meaning how did they feel about it just before they died? How did they feel as they watched their blood pump out into the mud? How did they feel when the gas hit their lungs and began eating them all away? How did they feel as they lay crazed in hospitals and looked death straight in the face and saw him come and take them? If the thing they were fighting for was important enough to die for then it was also important enough for them to be thinking about it in the last minutes of their lives. That stood to reason. Life is awfully important so if you've given it away you'd ought to think with all your mind in the last moments of your life about the thing you traded it for. So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and honor and the safety of the home and of stars and stripes forever?
You're goddamned right they didn't.
They died crying in their minds like little babies. They forgot the thing they were fighting for the things they were dying for. They thought about things a man can understand. They died yearning for the face of a friend. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child. They died with their hearts sick for one more look at the place where they were born please god just one more look. They died moaning and sighing for life. They knew what was important. They knew that life was everything and they died with screams and sobs. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live.
- Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun.
After that little reminder of just what our soldiers are facing day-to-day over there, after seeing how scared they really are, I came across these two other videos.
First, soldiers taunting Iraqi children with bottled water:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Second, soldiers cheering on an airstrike on a mosque:
http://www.youtube.com/...
"What Mosque?"
If you listen real closely, you can hear one of the soldiers say, "I think that was completely unnecessary." The louder one agrees, "I agree with you, but it was cool."
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE WE DOING!!!