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Mar. 29th, 2003
This story on a couple of Iraqi soldiers who surrendered in Umm Qasr is revealing all the way through. Start with the fact that they were both recent conscripts, one only seventeen years old. Notice how they didn’t feel safe surrendering until an old Iraqi who’d been through the first Gulf War told them it’d be OK. They were really happy to surrender once they thought it was safe, though.
On the other hand, they wouldn’t call their parents to tell them they were OK because their father would have been disappointed in them. And who’s willing to handle prisoners? The British; the Americans didn’t want ‘em.
I’m glad these two (and others like them) are OK.
My dear friend Kit is biking for clean air, which benefits the American Lung Association. I gotta recommend sponsoring her, even if she’s pretending to be some kind of a wacky Alaskan hobbit in the first chunk of that entry. Um, wacky Alaskan mutant hobbit pursued by Sentinels, I think. Don’t ask me.
And now that I’ve highlighted a good cause, I’ll highlight a selfish one: I’m gonna go ahead and get that Stratfor subscription cause hey, why not? I have six bucks in the donation fund right now (someone else sent me five bucks), and I am not in any way dependent on donations to get the subscription, but if you wanna kick in some cash then go right ahead.
Well, that’s interesting. I figured when the Solomon Islands politely extricated themselves from the coalition, it was just one of those things and a good excuse to poke some fun at Bush. A diplomatic error but not a really important one.
So what do I say when it happens again? This time, Slovenia is saying “Hey, wait, include us out.” This time it’s after we accidentally included them in the wartime budget. No kidding; we were slated to give ‘em four and a half million until the Prime Minister of Slovenia said they didn’t want our money.