TAKING ANOTHER CRACK AT THEM

“I can’t believe this!”

Raven is furious. He slams his coffee cup down on the table, and turns away from the computer screen.

Now what’s happening, Rave? Or do I want to know?

Raven levels a beady gaze at me.

“I sure as hell didn’t want to know. Remember the story we talked about yesterday?”

The people who were protesting the US soldiers living in their school? Who were shot?

Raven turns back to the screen.

“Precisely. Listen:

‘Residents of Falluja, 30 miles outside the capital where 13 people were killed in a rally late on Monday night, said U.S. troops shot dead two more people during a demonstration on Wednesday.

U.S. Maj. Michael Marti told Reuters that members of a convoy returned fire after shots were fired at them from a crowd outside a U.S. command post. He said soldiers counted "potentially" two injured Iraqis.’ Imagine! They protest because the soldiers shot them and they shoot them again!”

They shot different people, apparently. What does he mean, “potentially injured”?

“Beats me. It goes on to indicate the presence of Rumsfeld:

‘In Baghdad Rumsfeld held a meeting with Jay Garner, the retired general in charge of American efforts to rebuild the country and launch a democratic government.

Garner told reporters after the meeting that the media should concentrate less on anti-American protests and more on the way U.S. forces had toppled Saddam with relatively little damage to Iraq's infrastructure.

"We ought to be beating our chests every day," he said. "We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans'."

I think that is very possibly the single most outrageously stupid and arrogant statement I have heard in this lifetime, Rave.

“It’s high enough on my list that I’m ready to reincarnate to the next one right now.”

Raven always wants to have the last word. This time, I believe he deserves it.