So the newest strategy for finding insurgents in Iraq is to plant "evidence" on the street in the form of detonation cords, ammunition and similar items. Anyone who picks that stuff up can then be shot by waiting American snipers and counted as another "insurgent" killed.

Following this strategy, American police could put a gun on a sidewalk and arrest anyone who picks it up, or even shoot them since they would be in possession of a deadly weapon. We could plant drugs in the same way and send whoever picks them up to look at them to prison.

I would call this entrapment, but that word doesn't even begin to describe the hideous nature of this strategy. And, like other utterly stupid and depraved strategies to carve miniscule successes out of the granite mountain of failure in Iraq, this despicable practice will only serve to inflame Iraqi citizens against the US.

The reason for that should be simple to see: the relatives and friends of the people killed through this will know whether the person really was an insurgent or not. And every time US snipers kill an innocent Iraqi citizen simply because they were curious, there will be another group of people with one more reason to hate American soldiers. Once again the idiots in command have stumbled upon a strategy perfectly designed to recruit new insurgents and/or terrorists.

It's almost, you know, as if that was somehow the goal.

While our political and military leaders work on new ways to endanger our soldiers and bring destruction upon Iraqi civilians, Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, President of Iran, is in the United States being asked utterly stupid and pointless questions and generally getting made to look like a reasonable, rational statesman. Again, it makes one wonder if the Bush Administration's goal is to ruin everything about America that they can.

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