THE LATEST IN HORROR—FOR BREAKFAST

Raven is eating an unusal breakfast: leftover linguini. Clearly, he finds it entertaining eating it strand by strand.

At the rate you’re going, Rave, that pasta will last you all day!

“I’m slow,” he admits, “but determined. It distracts me from the waves of nausea that plague me while I’m reading the latest news from Iraq.”

Oh no. What’s the latest US war crime?

“Speaking of which, a group of Iraquis has asked for the arrest of General Tommy Franks for, precisely, war crimes. They have presented their accusation to a tribunal in Belgium. But, on to the latest horror:

‘U.S. soldiers opened fire on Iraqis at a demonstration in the town of Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad—after being shot at with automatic rifles by some in the crowd, a U.S. officer said Tuesday. The director of the local hospital said 13 people were killed and 75 injured.

Col. Arnold Bray of the 82nd Airborne Division, who gave the U.S. account of the clash, said at least seven Iraqis were hit by gunfire but could not confirm the reported deaths.

Dr. Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali, director of Fallujah General Hospital, said there were 13 dead, including three boys no older than 10. He said his medical crews were shot at when they went to retrieve the injured, which he said numbered 75 people.

The demonstrators reportedly were protesting U.S. troops' presence in Fallujah. But some townspeople said the protest was held by students aged 5 to 20 to ask the soldiers to leave the school they were staying at so classes, scheduled to resume Tuesday, could take place.’”

I see. They already want to make sure that the people are ignorant by shooting the people who want to have their school open. Next they’ll want to make sure all the women are barefoot and pregnant, I suppose.

“There’s more:

‘U.S. troops in the town are headquartered in the school, and some in the crowd fired on the schoolhouse, Bray said. The al-Jazeera television station, quoting local residents, said the U.S. troops opened fire after someone threw a rock at the school.

Edtesam Shamsudeim, 37, said her 45-year-old brother died in the gunfire. She was shot in the leg and her husband was wounded.

"We were sitting in our house. When the shooting started, my husband tried to close the door to keep the children in, and he was shot," she said at the hospital, sitting in a chair with a bandaged leg, surrounded by some of her children. Their clothes stained with bloody handprints.

"Americans are criminals," she said.’”

Great image Bush and The Gang are creating in the hearts and minds of people around the world. I might as well have bloody handprints on the cover of my passport, Rave.

“One of the benefits of being a bird is being as free as one. We don’t need passports." Raven sucks down another strand of spaghetti. " We also don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.”

(Sigh.)