My Lai Redux

“Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.”

“If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.”

--Larry McMurtry

Newsweek features the above picture with the caption--"A Bloody End: Corpses of Firefighters from the Soldiers of Heaven cult after a Battle Outside Najaf" ("Apocalypse Now," 2/12/07).

Must've been a helluva battle! Obviously a one-way rifle range since there are no weapons, ammo, etc. anywhere to be seen in the photo. There are, however, scattered cigarettes and cigarette cartons. Perhaps, like the clever shoe bomber Reid, they were attempting to detonate these. These dead bodies were not combatants.

If it was a battle, it's generally nice if you kill people carrying weapons. But why get bogged down in such small details here...

One would like to think that if this were the pitched battle that it was described to be in the article, the photographers would have been able to find a few weapons lying around to photograph.

It is Ranger's analysis that this battle was a propaganda event to herald the combat abilities that the friendly Iraqi forces do not actually possess.

Dead people in ditches are reminiscent of the My Lai Massacre.