Tragedy in Iraq

FALLUJA, Iraq, March 31 - An enraged mob attacked a group of foreign contractors here today, shooting four people to death, burning their vehicles, dragging their bodies through the downtown streets and then hanging the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

Three of the victims were identified as Americans, a State Department spokesman, Lou Fintor, said today, adding that work was continuing to identify the nationality of the fourth.

Meanwhile, less than 15 miles away, in the same area of the increasingly violent Sunni Triangle, five marines were killed in one of the deadliest roadside bomb incidents for coalition troops in weeks. The marines were traveling through a dusty village along a supply route when the explosion ripped into their vehicles.

I don’t know what I think anymore. I have always believed getting rid of Hussein was a legitimate goal, but I’ve felt very uncomfortable with the whole WMD debacle. Now I don’t know what I think. I don’t know why we are there, I don’t know if we should be there, and I don’t know what should be done in the future.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, I felt such a sense of loss; yet I was so far removed from New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. I decided the least I could do was to read the obituary of every victim in the attack. The NY Times ran a special section of 9/11 victim obituaries every day, and, if I remember correctly, it took about a year to print all the obituaries.

I think I am going to do the same with the war in Iraq. Rather than ignore the news or pretend it is not happening, I want to read every story about every death in Iraq. Not just the deaths of Americans, but the deaths of Iraqis as well. I don’t know what this will accomplish, but as I said earlier, I don’t know what else to think or to do.