Another day, another pointless death in Iraq

"A vehicle got close to them, and they opened fire on it randomly as if they were in the middle of a confrontation," said Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a policeman at the scene. "You won't find a head. The brain is scattered on the ground."

He added: "I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?"

"Is it so natural . . . " I can only become profoundly depressed when I read stories like this and imagine the day-to-day mayhem our pathologically casual attitude toward use of force has unleashed on the Iraqi people. The unacknowledged permanent surge that has been the "professional" private force at work in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion represent perhaps history's costliest mercenary army. These mercs appear to behave little better than Hessians in the colonial times or the "black and tan" in Ireland and are generating about as much love and affection. They are doing long-term harm to America's reputation and strategic position in the world. It is clearly beyond time that this entire outsourcing enterprise received exhaustive congressional scrutiny. Iraq is already a mess for the real military personnel on the ground and the mercs, in the above instance, slaughtering two wholly innocent and defenseless Armenian Christian women on their way home from work, are making the jobs of the real soldiers so much harder--and dangerous.

Meanwhile, more rotten news emerges from woe-benighted Burma . . .