Try to imagine that for a moment. You're cornered--out-numbered, to be sure. They disarm you and tell you and 36 of your comrades to lie on the ground, next to a road. You're either lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you look at it because you're number 37 to go. You live the longest, but is that a good thing? You feel dirt and pebbles press into your skin as the first man is shot in the head. You wish there was something you could do, but there isn't. They've got guns and you know they'll use them if you try anything. Two more men receive lead deliveries in their brains. You think about your wife and child. You look around in the hopes you spot some kind of solution. You see only guns and the scared-shitless face of #36, laying next to you. You try to ignore the next five gunshots as the tension begins to get to you. In the distance, you hear a plane fly overhead--is it American? Perhaps they're bombing Falujah again, today. You've lost count of how many bullets have been fired. You try to see how close they are to you. You think of your boy. Why did you have to do this--volunteer for this new Army? Promises... promises of a new future. You wanted to believe, but now it's going to be over soon. The gunshots are getting very close now. You estimate that they're about seven heads away from yours.
Six... oh, Allah...
Five... sweet, Allah... please... please stop this.
Four... Allah, protect my family! Praise be unto You!
Three...wait... you were wrong-- they were actually one head closer than you initially thought.
One... you start to sob as the gunman approaches you.
Just think about that for a moment. Here, in America, we're very lucky. We're likely to live a very long time. More than 13,000 Iraqi civilians should have lived just as long.
But hey, the world is safer now with Saddam gone, right?
Tell that to the dead.
This is the beautiful new Iraq that Bush 43 has promised us. The bastard thinks everything is going so well, yet 40 of the men who were brave/stupid enough to volunteer for military work are now dead. During one of the debates, I remember Bush spouting on about how police and military personnel were being trained to protect Iraqi citizens. Well, those guys are 40 less, today.
How were they supposed to protect Iraqi citizens when they couldn't even protect themselves?
Why didn't Bush listen when we told him not to go into Iraq?
Oh yeah, I remember now. He said he was "right."
From BBC News:
Last Updated: Sunday, 24 October, 2004, 18:58 GMT 19:58 UKMassacre of Iraqi army recruits
The bodies of more than 40 Iraqi army recruits have been found following an ambush near the Iranian border in the north-east of the country.
Police said many of the soldiers had been shot in the head.
Hours later, a US diplomat was killed in a mortar attack at Camp Victory near Baghdad airport.
Ed Seitz, assistant regional security officer at the US embassy in Baghdad, is believed to be the first US diplomat killed during the current war.
A website often used by militants published a statement attributed to the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in which it claimed to have carried out the army recruits massacre.
Police said the bodies of the recruits - who were not armed - were found near the village of Mandali, south of Baquba.
"This was an execution. We found the dead lying face down by the roadside with a single bullet wound to the head," Iraqi national guard commander Ali al-Kaaki is quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
A local police official said that all had their hands crossed behind their heads.
Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul Rahman said 37 bodies were found shot dead on the side of the road, while the bodies of 12 others were found in a burned bus.
There was confusion over the precise figures. The Iraqi National Guard said 48 troops and three drivers were killed.
In other incidents:
*
A Bulgarian soldier was killed and three others were wounded in a car bomb attack in the southern city of Karbala
* US planes bomb suspected guerrilla positions in Falluja, western Iraq, killing six people. Witnesses said the dead were all civilians
* Police find the headless body of a man wearing a business suit in the river Tigris, near the northern city of Kirkuk
* US and Iraqi forces launched a search for weapons in the Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad.
Well-organised force
The BBC's Claire Marshall in Baghdad says the army recruits were believed to have just finished a training course at a camp near the Iranian border.
They were ambushed on a remote road in Diyala province at sunset on Saturday.
They were travelling in three minibuses, in civilian clothes.
According to some reports, they were stopped at a fake checkpoint and militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the vehicles.
"It appears that they were ambushed by a large, well-organised force with good intelligence," a senior security official told the Reuters news agency.
"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," Diyala province deputy Governor Aqil Hamid al-Adili told al-Arabiya television, the AP news agency reported.
"Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed," he added.
Reports suggest that the recruits were mainly from Shia cities in the south of Iraq, including Basra, Amara, Kut and Nasiriya, and were returning there after training in the desert camp.
Correspondents say Iraq's fledgling security forces are a prime target for militant groups.
On Saturday, 20 Iraqi policemen were killed and 47 wounded in two separate suicide car bombing attacks.
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