This is what war does to a man

A US Marine emails blogger Andrew Sullivan about the use of torture in Iraq – he claims he never saw Americans do it but Iraqi troops was a different story altogether – and his feelings towards the occupied nation:

To tell you the absolute truth, I had many moments in Iraq when I could see the benefits of genocide, and I thought that maybe we just put the wrong people in the ovens. I came to really, viscerally hate Iraqis. Everytime we had a marine, soldier, or sailor hit I felt that way. But I recognize that as just a gut reaction to the frustrations of the moment. In the end, acting out of that kind of instinctive urge for revenge will derail an operation of the kind we are trying to bring off over there. You have to calm down and think rationally, and that is what I hope our countrymen do. Calm down, think about it. This is not who we are.

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