Sunday, June 25, 2006

Keep up the fair work


Well, finally -- here's some good news from Iraq.
Instead of killing 30 innocent people a month at checkpoints, American soldiers have adopted new procedures.
And so they were able to reduce the slaughter to 12 innocents a month by January this year.
And now its down to just four innocent civilians a month!
Hooray!
The Reuters story says:
Since the U.S. invasion three years ago, shootings by U.S. troops have been a source of complaint among Iraqis, despite repeated attempts to ensure both civilians and troops are aware of the procedures to follow and danger signs to monitor.
New efforts were being made to inform Iraqis of checkpoint and convoy procedures and to train troops, the briefing note said. Soldiers were also being given new equipment, including lasers, to attract drivers' attention without opening fire.
This year 12 percent of escalation of force incidents, not all of which involve opening fire, resulted in serious injury or death. It was not clear how many incidents there were last year.
One senior military intelligence source has said there were about 4,000 such incidents last year, but that could not be confirmed. Of those, the source said, less than 2 percent were later found to have involved an actual threat to the troops.
Forgive my snark, but how else can anyone respond? I am sure in the end there will not be a single family in Iraq unaffected by the horror and cruelty of this occupation.

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