They are a number
Today I was reading this NewYorkTimes (free registration yada) article and I thought nothing going on inside Iraq would give me a shock anymore. Once again the greatest nation in the world touting Democracy and Freedom did it again:
In Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on American troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through an American-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only.
"If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't."
Now what is going on, do they think this is going to work out? the article goes on by telling the reader that there are talks between the US armydefensedepartmentnavyshit and the Israelies about how to go ahead with the "arab mind" (o-ton Capt. Todd Brown). As if the Israelies have a good stragedy of going forward and as if the stragedy they are using right now is helping anyone.
The american soldiers are going ahead and just pick some "suspected terrorists" out of the 7.000 people living in the city. While they where at it they bulldozed a house "where some ambushes came from". Reads like 1940 or something. The iraqis now have all a card. Without that card they are not allowed behind the barbed wire fence into their village. They are all a number now. How do they feel?
"We are like birds in a cage."
Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary school teacher from Abu Hishma
How long until we are encircled with barbed wire and for leaving our house we have to show an ID card with a number on them? There is no border of bad anymore, they have all been crossed now.