West of Hades

Bismarck, North Dakota
46° 49' North; 100° 47' West

Climbed back in the Cigar Tube to come home from Toronto yesterday afternoon....vibe on AC161 was much better than on the trip out.....at least at the beginning......seatmate was human....plane was only half-full and the trip was wide open - no mountain of work, no worries, looking forward to making it home in time to read my kids the latest Dave and Morley saga at bedtime....so was settling in and truly enjoying something I rarely have time to do these days...reading the NYTimes, slowly, cover to cover....all was well until we got somewhere over North Dakota and I flipped to page A9....what I saw made me physically ill.....began to hyperventilate....had to get up and head down the aisle towards the bathroom..... shaking.... with rage.....with shame....with utter hopelessness.

Now I, as much as anyone who has been paying attention to the situation in Iraq, have railed against the spinelessness of the NYT (ie. NewPravda) since the invasion.....but there can be no denying that that single image hit me harder than 1000 Op-Ed pieces from Joseph Wilson and Scott Ritter ever could....it's a picture of a little Iraqi girl...she is blood-spattered....her parents are dead....they've just been assasinated by American soldiers for the crime of driving their car.

We must work to stop this.... all of us.

If we do not, I really truly fear for all of our souls.

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Advance warning....this is the real thing, no sugar coating....You can see the image here; get Gilliard's take here; and another of Billmon's maximal comparisons here.
Update: From Sir Richard of Cranium over at the ASZ, here is the entire series of images.
Updatee: Lawrence over at the Orchid points out the implications of such images being seen in the Middle East.