I'm not sure

I want to talk about what's going on in Iraq now, as right now things are very much up in the air, so much so that what I write this evening may not hold true by dawn. But it's not looking good for the "Coalition of the Willing", which may have sparked a general uprising among the Iraqi population, both Sunni and Shia, after banning an influential Shia newspaper and overreacting to the gruesome murder of four mercenaries in Fallujah.

Let's not play games here - the American media may be toeing the Bush Administration's line and calling the dead "civilian contractors", as if they were putting up drywall or laying pipe in the most dangerous part of the Sunni Triangle, but at $1500-$2000 a day these ex-Marines and Navy Seals were there as hired guns at best and cold-blooded contract killers at worst. Mourning the death of someone who gets paid by the highest bidder to sow the seeds of misery is not my cup of tea, and as much as I feel sympathy for their families, I have no compassion for the mercs themselves.

Poor Kos of the Daily Kos said just as much in a reply to a post on his blog last week and has reaped the whirlwind for it from the Right and the their spineless enablers on the Left - including John Kerry's staff, who delinked their campaign website from Kos' after much kicking and screaming from "outraged" conservatives who when confronted with the sordid truth about our government's increasing dependence on mercenaries to do our dirty work (unlike soldiers, mercs are not bound by the articles of the Geneva Convention; and since most of the mercenary outfits operating in Iraq are headed up by former military officers with close government ties, mercs are essentially able to conduct "black ops" missions for the United States without implicating the Pentagon).

Right now I'm less concerned with people who are bilking the American taxpayer to kill people in Iraq for fun and profit and more worried about the rank and file of the U.S. Armed Forces, who make a fraction of what these "contractors" do to be ordered into harm's way, like it or not. The next few days may prove to be absolute Hell for the occupying forces - I just hope that common sense prevails and we pull them out of this fool's crusade before the shit really hits the fan.