Still they tear through the cities and countryside of Iraq, 4000 members of the U.S. military, 2000 from the Iraqi forces, on a righteous crusade straight out of a seventies Charles Bronson picture: This time it's personal!
They will turn the country upside down, will do whatever it takes to find three comrades who came up missing. Are they alive or dead? Have they been captured? Have they gone AWOL? No one knows. But by Christ, we're going to find them.
I don't mean to suggest that the lives of these three soldiers are meaningless, but if you have a conscience and a soul, you can't help wondering why their lives are so much more important than the lives of those around them, why a military operation that can't be bothered counting the number of Iraqi dead places such a high priority on these three.
How many Iraqi citizens will have their lives disrupted or destroyed by this awesome display of overkill? How many more will turn against the U.S. occupation? The Bushinistas couldn't devise a more effective recruiting tool for the insurgency if they tried.
And still the losses will mount, and the dead will be mourned, and still it will go on.
