] I took a taxi to the front, introduced myself to the
] local commander, who had gone, as I recall, to Iowa
] State, and spent a couple days waiting for the impending
] human wave attack. That attack was to be conducted
] primarily with 11-and 12-year-old boys as troops, nearly
] all of them unarmed. There were several thousand kids and
] their job was to rise out of the trench, praising Allah,
] run across No Man's Land, be killed by the Iraqi machine
] gunners, then go directly to Paradise, do not pass GO, do
] not collect 200 dinars. And that's exactly what happened
] in a battle lasting less than 10 minutes. None of the
] kids fired a shot or made it all the way to the other
] side. And when I asked the purpose of this exercise, I
] was told it was to demoralize the cowardly Iraqi
] soldiers.
]
] It was the most horrific event I have ever seen, and I
] once covered a cholera epidemic in Bangladesh that killed
] 40,000 people.
]
] Waiting those two nights for the attack was surreal. Some
] kids acted as though nothing was wrong while others cried
] and puked. But when the time came to praise Allah and
] enter Paradise, not a single boy tried to stay behind.
]
] Now put this in a current context. What effective limit
] is there to the number of Islamic kids willing to blow
] themselves to bits? There is no limit, which means that a
] Bush Doctrine can't really stand in that part of the
] world. But of course President Bush, who may think he
] pulled the switch on a couple hundred Death Row inmates
] in Texas, has probably never seen a combat death. He
] doesn't get it and he'll proudly NEVER get it.
]
] Welcome to the New Morality.

Teh Cringely

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column