ABC reports that a drunken US soldier in Iraq has shot dead a rare Bengal tiger at a late night party at the Baghdad zoo. The killing of the tiger was in response to another, presumably drunk, soldier being bitten when he tried to feed the tiger through the bars.
I posted some time ago that there are over 200 companies in the US who will take you on a "safari" where you get to shoot tethered game animals and how pathetic this was. This has taken pathetic to a whole new level. Shooting one of the worlds most endangered large predators in its cage in an act of drunken revenge for the tiger behaving normally.
"That was the most precious and valuable animal in the whole zoo. It was 14 years old and had been born here."Zoo official Adel Musa said US soldiers often held parties in the zoo in the evenings. "We have no way of stopping them," he said.
If this is typical of the standard of US soldier in Iraq it is no wonder that there is rising discontent amongst the Iraqi civilian population.
There are many jewels hidden amongst the leaves in this forgotten part of the ancient forest. Spend some time browsing and you are sure to find some. Click here or continue your search below
or read the most recent entries here.While the killing of the tiger is inexcuable, I think that if you dig deeper you'll find that "rising content" is a better characterization of the majority of Iraq than "rising discontent."
We should hope things continue to improve there, because the fallout for the world if they don't will be very ugly indeed. Even if you thought that leaving Saddam in power was a better way to do things than to take him out, at this point we should all be hoping the allied forces succeed, shouldn't we?
Posted by: Dean Esmay at September 22, 2003 02:21 PMIndeed, the thing that the Iraqis most need now is peace.
The cowboy, shoot anything that moves, attitude of some of the military is not particularly helping them down this path. The shooting of 11 US appointed Iraqi policemen springs to mind.
I suspect that if you polled them you would find the majority of Iraqis are happy that Saddam is gone but not happy with the recent behaviour of some of the US military.
Posted by: GreenMan at September 22, 2003 02:50 PM
Stumble It!