Believable

The Washington Post features an excellent article on some American Marines' misgivings about their duty in Iraq. On the whole, the article is interesting and even sometimes moving, as when one Marine describes the result of his search of a bus: "We just scared the living [expletive] out of a bunch of people. That's all we did." The piece is also maddening. Another Marine says of the war, "This is a whole different thing. We're supposed to be looking for al Qaeda. They're the ones who are supposedly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. This has no connection at all to Sept. 11 because this war started just by telling us about all the nuclear warheads over here." Uh, not quite right on the facts, but closer than the average Republican voter, I guess.

Though the journalist makes it clear that these are the views of just one platoon of Marines, I'll bet (based on what I know about American combat soldiers in the 20th century) that the "what the fuck?" questions are probably endemic among American troops in Iraq. Which is only as it should be, given the now-total annihilation of the neocon rationales for war. What was that question Kerry asked back in the Seventies about the last man dying?