...The murders were carried out with the knowledge and complicity of Iraqi Shiite police  who only hours earlier had been working alongside U.S. soldiers--and may have involved local officials loyal to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki...Trust and friendships forged over many months ended in one night of betrayal and murder. 

So I plugged into the DVD player a complete distraction; a disk that had just arrived from Netflix--the second season of the Showtime program, Weeds. 

As I used to do when my Bear was alive and I felt overwhelmed, I curled up in the fetal position and watched something mindless to take my mind off the unthinkable.  But he wasn't there to comfort me, and I was restless, and found myself observing the show rather than watching it, thinking how empty and shallow all those people were, how useless their lives, how selfish each one was.  When the high-school aged son of the pot-dealing widow-mom poked a hole in his condoms with a pin in order to make his deaf girlfriend pregnant so she wouldn't go away to Princeton, I really did feel sick.

(Captain Bryan) Freeman...reiterated his thoughts in an e-mail to (Democratic Senator) Christopher Dodd (who he'd met in Baghdad):

"Senator, it's nuts over here.  Soldiers are being asked to do work we're not trained to do.  I'm doing work that the State Department people are far more trained to do in fostering diplomacy.  But they're not allowed to come off the bases because it's too dangerous here.  It doesn't make any sense."

I wondered what made such programs as Weeds so wildly popular, and I wondered why, every summer, all you can find on network television (we don't get cable or have a satellite dish, hence my membership in Netflix) is these ridiculous reality shows with ridiculous premises and titles like, "Are You as Smart as a Fifth-Grader?" 

Even the wariest Americans have trouble believing that Iraqis who look them in the face each day could muster the audacity to try to kill them. 

Were we, as a country, just trying to distract ourselves from horror on horror?

Many soldiers sensed a changed mood when they arrived at police headquarters in Karbala on Jan. 14.  Some of the Iraqis the soldiers had been working with since the fall seemed unusually tense...Another aired an ominous warning.  "Tomorrow," he said to soldiers standing guard outside, pounding a fist in his palm.  "Tomorrow." 

I couldn't seem to get a handle on what was really bothering me, other than the obvious, so I did some reading.  This and that and the other.  And I came across a phrase somewhere:  outrage fatigue.

And I thought, That's it.  We get all wrapped up in what happens to the pot-dealing widow-mom in the ticky-tacky house because we can't deal with one more outrage.

On the first floor of the main building, (Staff Sgt. Billy) Wallace saw the door to the room he shared with (Private Jonathan) Millican and three other soldiers open from the outside.  Sergeant First Class Sean Bennett instinctively slammed it shut with his right shoulder.  But the attacker in the hall still managed to cram the muzzle of an AK-47 into the doorjamb and let fly a stream of bullets...

Somewhere in the struggle, a grenade bounced into the room.  Millican dived, catching bullets in his body as he went down and absorbed the explosion.  He had been chatting online with his wife Shannon when the fighting broke out.  A minute later, he was dead. 

There is another theory, of course.  And that is that Americans aren't absorbed in the book-larnin' of a fifth-grader or a pot-dealing suburban mom because they need a distraction from the outrage.

The other theory is that they are absorbed with these things because they just don't give it that much thought.

Too depressing, dontcha know.

As the troops tended to their wounded and waited for rescue helicopters to arrive, they realized (Capt.) Freeman, (1st Lt. Jacob) Fritz, (Spec. Jonathan) Chism, and (Pfc. Shawn) Falter were missing.  The attack had lasted just five minutes.

I thought about how it really is less than one-percent of this population who keeps fighting this Groundhog Day war over and over and over again.  Capt. Freeman had served his country and already done one tour in Iraq and completed his military obligation.  He was living a civilian life and starting a family.

The Army yanked him back in again under the Individual Ready Reserve program and forced him back to Iraq.  An armor officer, he knew he was not qualified to do the job he was being asked to do, and he grew increasingly uncomfortble working with Iraqi police.  He asked that he be given another assignment, but the army insisted he do his job as he was ordered.

A few days later, he was dead.

During the fighting inside, none of the Iraqi police or the commandos did anything to help the Americans.  "No one was shot," says Sergeant First Class Michael King, describing the Iraqi police immediately after the attack.  "No one twisted an ankle.  No one jammed a thumb.  Nothing."

I fought the urge to do crazy-Mom things, like call my son, who I knew was working, just to listen to his voice mail, then hang up, like a junior high crush or something.  It reminded me of the time he was home on pre-deployment leave and I'd been watching the news about five Marines killed that day in one roadside bomb.  He was cooking out with his dad, and I went outside and hugged him.  He was glad to return my hug, but when he asked what had broght it on, I said, "There are other moms who won't ever be able to do that again with their boys.  I just wanted to do it while I could."

My husband, I recall, got angry with me over that emotional display, telling me later that it did not help, that Dustin felt bad enough about a second deployment, that he didn't need that kind of crap.

I knew he was right, but it was something I had to do.  I'm sorry if it hurt my boy.  I just had to do it, right then.  Like, when you see news of a child abduction when your kids are little, and you go into their room and watch them sleep and touch their hair.  How can you not?

In the back of two of the vehicles were the four Americans.  One of them was alive, though barely.  Handcuffed, he had been shot in the back of the head, but he was breathing  The other soldiers were already dead.  One had taken bullets in both legs and his right hand, and at some point the kidnappers had torn open his body armor and fired bullets into his chest and torso.  Two others were handcuffed together...Two shots to the face and neck had killed one.  Four bullets in the chest had killed the other...

In his last moments, one soldier, a young lieutenant, realized his body might be unidentifiable when he was discovered.  In the dust caked on one of the vehicles he managed to write his last name, Fritz, a final act before dying.

I thought about my nephew who is currently deployed, how agonizing it is for our family to go through this miserable terrible godforsaken war a sixth time.

Six times we have sent our valiant young men into battle.  It never ends.  It never ends.  It never ends.

The article said that someone, during the battle, heard the Iraqi police commander laughing on the phone.

I don't know what to write.  I don't know what to say to make it end.

Is there such a thing as outrage fatigue?  Are Americans really losing their souls in reality television and ipods and video games rather than facing REAL REALITY?

Joseph Galloway expressed my frustration in an incredibly angry and laser-focused editorial for McClatchy Newspapers: "There's No Vacation for Our Troops in Iraq":

There aren't enough American troops at their home bases, resting, refitting and re-training after their second or third combat tours, to replace those now in Iraq and Afghanistan come next spring.  Not to worry.  We can just extend their new 15-month long tour of duty in Hell to 18 months or maybe even 24 months.  After all, they're volunteers--the half a percent of Americans who serve and sacrifice while the rest of us obey a President's orders and go shopping and lay about the splendid beaches in August.

It's their blood that stains the hands of politicians who are vacationing when they should be working to bring this insane war to an end...

There's no vacation break for our troops this August.  Only another day, another week, another month on another patrol on an impossible mission in a war that their commander-in-chief and his men expected to be over, and indeed declared over, four years and four months ago.

"Mission Accomplished," that banner draped across and aircraft carrier crowed.  "A cakewalk," one of them predicted.

Have a nice vacation all you politicians, and by the way, keep those bloody hands hidden.  You wouldn't want to frighten the children on the beach.

Oh it's not just the children we don't want to frighten, Mr. Galloway!  Why, we don't want to frighten all those grown-ups either--at least, not with THE TRUTH.  No no no.  We only want to frighten them with our own made-up bullshit so they will vote for us.

Maybe this country does suffer from outrage fatigue right now in the dog days of summer, just before Bush takes his usual month-long vacation to his fake ranch in his fake home-state to do his fake photo-ops--See me run with legless combat vets to show how much I care!--people on vacation, staying away from all that depressing war news. 

But the thing about outrage upon outrage is that, eventually, a critical mass gathers, the weight builds, and there aren't enough shallow little TV programs or electronic gadgets in the world to hide all the blood stains.

(The full article that provoked this blogpost, is in the current issue of Time magazine: "Enemies Unseen" by Mark Kukis.)