IRAQ'S STRANGE FRUIT

From CNN, a story full of antagonists. If we can call the Iraqis who died protagonists, we won't hear from them in the U.S. media. Undoubtedly some of those who died were innocent, while others, even if complicit in violence, would factually be alive today but for the U.S. occupation.

There is absolutely nobody to trust here. Those who criticize the Iraqi government as being the fruit of the U.S. occupation can't take the results of an investigation by the Iraqi government as gospel truth; Blackwater is in major CYA mode, the Justice Department is in a corner after eight years of misrule, and the defendants themselves most likely did some stupid stuff in a context where their prejudices and private interests asserted themselves above all else.

Aspiring for the rule of law is good; the colonization of the rule of law by this particular combination of characters is not so good.

"Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop."
--Abel Meeropol