The New Centurions

John Wayne and John Bradley

"A lot of guys make mistakes, I guess, but every one we make, a whole stack of chips goes with it. We make a mistake, and some guy don't walk away - forevermore, he don't walk away."

--Sergeant John M. Stryker (John Wayne), Sands of Iwo Jima

''In Ramadi, U.S. forces mistakenly killed three Iraqi police officers during a recent raid targeting al-Qaida in Iraq members,'' the military said. News today on the matter is conflicting; Reuters reports they were not police; Stars and Stripes informs us the U.S. has extended their sympathy to the officer's families.

The ''shooting was under investigation,'' said the military. Oops--don't they mean, ''killing''? Shooting and killing are two distinctly different verbs.

In previous posts Ranger has estimated the instructor training cost per Iraqi police candidate at $35,000 per student. When factoring in all costs, it is probable that up to $250,000 worth of U.S. tax dollars died when these police were gunned down. When was the last time any of my readers got the chance to shoot holes in $250,000 worth of tax dollars?

It would be more cost-effective to kill them at the front end, before we train and equip them.

In the same article, ''(Nassar) Al Rubaie [head of al-Sadr's parliamentary bloc] relayed a demand by al Sadr's movement that all detainees held by occupation forces'' be transferred to Iraqi authorities, ''because this is a part of sovereignty'' (''Iraq:Clerics Allies Quit Cabinet,'' Qassim Abdul Zahra.)

Since they are not designated POW's, and they are held by an invading power, isn't it more correct to call them hostages or maybe even kidnapped? Where is the rule of law?

What al Rubaie doesn't realize is that the only detainees that matter are British when they're held by Iranians. Nobody cares about sovereignty and the rule of law, not in the GWB administration.

Last week at a rally where upwards of a hundred thousand protesters called for the U.S. to leave Iraq, al-Rubaie blasted the U.S. presence as an affront to "the dignity of the Iraqi people. After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded" (''Shiites Call for U.S. to Leave Iraq.'')

Salah al-Obaydi, a senior official in al-Sadr's Najaf organization, called the rally a "call for liberation. We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq with full sovereignty."

Always ready to call a victory for their side, Gordon Johndroe, National Security spokesman, said of the rally, "Iraq, four years on, is now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions." He seems to have missed the point of the rally.

What insolence. How could Iraqis even begin to believe that they have the right to deal with their own citizens. Obviously they have us confused with a nation that cares about the rule of law. They've been watching one too many John Wayne movies.

Welcome to democracy, as imposed by the New Centurions.