Iraq Unvarnished

A U.S. soldier keeps a lookout after his patrol stopped to check a vehicle in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, April 25, 2007. President George W. Bush pledged on Friday to veto legislation that includes a timetable for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq but Democrats urged him to "heed the call of the American people" and sign it. REUTERS/Bob Strong

I discovered a new website today, LiveLeak.com, which allows users to upload video. Many are video clips uploaded from Iraq by the soldiers themselves. Watching these clips really brings home how ill-equipped our soldiers are for their current mission in Iraq. Watch this clip of soldiers conducting a search of a car.

The men in the car claim not to speak English (which may or may not be true) but the soldiers don't speak Arabic, and that is definitely true. They cannot communicate with the people they are searching. They're not fighting. They're occupying a country, but they don't speak the language. So they joke and laugh, and you wonder. What do the men being searched think of this laughter? Are the soldiers laughing at them? Or are they laughing at the soldiers? How many times have they been searched before? Are the materials in the car just their stuff, or the stuff of IEDs?

No wonder George Bush's Pentagon has worked so assiduously to keep us from seeing live film from Iraq.

I saw this website on BAGNewsNotes, which links to this disturbing video of soldiers shooting at a mosque -- for fun.