indcbill: got mortared today*

indcbill: 5 of them

proteinwisdom: You okay?

indcbill: yeah. a twelve year old kid got his knee blown out*

indcbill: and an Iraqi welder was killed

indcbill: fucking nuts

indcbill: scary sound, let me tell you

indcbill: that twelve ear old who caught shrapnel and lost an orange-sized piece of his leg?

indcbill: he was sittng there, drinking juice

indcbill: quietly

proteinwisdom:  Awful.

proteinwisdom: So—was it an attack by one of those roaming Shia death squads that doesn’t want a peaceful or unified Iraq, but instead is bent on an incessant campaign of ethnic cleansing—the end result being the eventual installment of a front government that will be a mere proxy for the brutal oppression of any remaining Sunni Muslims, kind of a Bizzaro version of the pre-invasion Iraq, with Saddam replaced by a committee of bloodthirsty Shia warlords in fancy suits and expensive shoes? 

indcbill: no, actually he was hit by maniacs throwing mortars

proteinwisdom: Oh.

proteinwisdom: Well, I have to tell you, I’m not sure I can believe you—at least, not while stalwart conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald are telling me otherwise. 

proteinwisdom: That, and once this Jamil Hussein fella emerges to confirm that it was indeed a Shia death squad responsible for the attack, and that the little boy was actually six little boys—all of whom perished in the attack, along with 20 women leaving a mosque—well, then we’re going to have what can best be described as “an information conflict.”

proteinwisdom: And with all due respect to your proximity to the attack, pal, you simply don’t have the cultural background to tell me what I should think.

proteinwisdom:  I mean, don’t get me wrong:  I appreciate that you’re over there, potentially putting yourself in harm’s way.  But the fact remains, you’re there as an occupier’s puppet, a brainwashed automaton unable to see the desert for the palm trees.

proteinwisdom: Whereas Sullivan and Jamil Hussein?  Everything they say fits perfectly—nay, exquisitely—with the narrative of an Iraq in chaos, where the rampaging Shia don’t want Dar al-Salaam, but rather relish in leaving Killing Fields in their wake.

proteinwisdom: Which is what many in the media here are saying, too.  Along with a new breed of “sensible” conservatives.

proteinwisdom: And so it must be true.  Otherwise, how else to explain the consistency of the tales?

proteinwisdom: QED

indcbill:  well i’m just telling you what I know

proteinwisdom: Meh.  Whatever, warmonger.  We should just pull back and let the brown folk slaughter each other.  I mean, it’s obvious, is it not?  Sometimes you have to destroy the village to save it.

proteinwisdom: Tell me, Bill—WHY DO YOU FEAR THE TRUTHINESS!