U.S. Intelligence

I guess this only seems outrageous to me since I'm a cowardly liberal who believes in the importance of things like communication and investigation prior to resorting to violence.

. . . Marines are also under orders to shoot to kill if a vehicle crosses the "trigger line," the inside edge of the last of four security zones between the outside world and a fortification. So, a coyote asked the grunts, why would an Iraqi cross that line? "Maybe his wife's pregnant. He's trying to get her to the hospital. That happens all the time. Maybe he's just a fucking retard." The instructor offered up another example culled from experience: "Marines grab an Arabic sign. They throw it out at the blocking position thinking, 'That's a stop sign,' when in actuality it says, 'Coalition Checkpoint, Proceed With Caution.' What do you think the Iraqis do? They fucking proceed with caution, and they proceed to get lit up."

Two different instructors backed up this scenario with a stunning statistic: "Over the last 12 months or so we killed about 1,000 Iraqis at blocking positions and checkpoints," the first coyote told the grunts. "About 60--six-zero--we could demonstrate that, yeah, he was a bad guy, he was an insurgent. Six-zero out of about 1,000. So if we don't communicate what we want them to do, all we're doing is creating more enemies." The second instructor later offered up the same figures, concluding: "So obviously, 900-something innocent Iraqis have been killed. That's pretty shitty numbers, right?" . . .

Lost in Translation