Careful what you ask for

Mikaela says:
The US sure knows who to back in global conflicts! Our track record is soooooo wonderful. We wanted to be a world superpower, right? Wanted to have our gun barrels in lots of different pies? You get what you sow? Well, we're reaping bombs now.

From Democracy Now on Wednesday:

Report: Insurgents Aided By Old U.S. Army Manual

"The Washington Post is reporting that the Iraqi resistance likely learned some of their bomb-making techniques indirectly from the U.S. Army. In 1965 the Army issued a detailed booklet on how to build and hide booby traps. The manual included detailed diagrams illustrating various means of wiring detonators to explosives. It also gave advice on the best locations for concealing deadly bombs. In 1987, Saddam Hussein distributed an Arabic version of the manual to the Iraqi military. The manual was translated at a time when the Reagan administration was supplying Iraq with military assistance in its war against Iran [emphasis added]. One U.S. official estimated that ten percent of the bombs planted in Iraq use the pressure-detonation techniques detailed in the U.S. document. "

The Post story is no longer available on its website (citing temporary technical problems), but today's story about the heating up of violence between Sunnis and Shiites forebodes the earnest beginnings of Iraq's civil war. If this continues, American soldiers in Iraq will literally be caught in the crosshairs of two indigenous religious groups that our government will choose between. And we all know how successful that scenario is bound to be. What are we doing there again?

Persistent Violence Plagues Iraq
Bombings in Tikrit and Baghdad Kill 23
By Omar Fekeiki and Fred Barbash
May 6, 2005

"Against a backdrop of rising sectarian tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, groups of unidentified bodies have been found at least twice in recent weeks.

Last month, the bodies of 19 Iraqi soldiers were found piled in a soccer stadium in western Iraq after they had been captured by insurgents.

Separately, police announced the discovery of 58 corpses floating in the Tigris River near a village where Shiite Muslim leaders earlier had reported that civilians were being abducted by Sunni Muslim extremists. There has been no confirmation of how the 58 died."