corrente

Well, what happened to those contractors shouldn't happen to anyone.

But it also makes me think that maybe the Republican idea to privatize war as much as possible isn't all that fair to the people actually doing the work. Our service men and women take the oath of enlistment. But these guys were contractors—did they really know what they were signing up for, and does this country have a right to ask that of them? Even the Blackwater guys, I don't think they asked for this...

UPDATE More from the Times of London on what to expect over the long, hot, Iraqi summer:

"Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of the United States coalition force in Iraq, has just given a press conference to explain why US Marines didn't react immediately to yesterday's attacks on four American contractors. He's said that any response from the United States would have made a bad situation worse.

"The General was today defending the decision not to go in to retrieve the bodies. He has told reporters that the it was established that the four contractors were dead, and that charging in could have resulted in more bloodshed.

"It seems that there was also concern that the insurgents were patrolling the bodies and there was a genuine fear that there may have been some kind of boobytrap to kill more US troops had they gone in during or immediately after the attacks.

"A Marine that a I spoke to today, who is based just outside Fallujah, said that the violence had not deterred American troops. He said that they were not afraid to go back in to the city. The Marines are gung-ho about that. They believe that these troubles are the result of a small minority of the people.

"But many people in this city that I have spoken to are unrepentant. They say that American forces have threatened them ... and they want revenge.

"There is a lot of hatred in Fallujah. They have had no aid, no assistance, there's major unemployment and the people have had enough. They're fighting back.

"There's very much a feeling that this will be a blood vendetta. But the American coalition has laid down the gauntlet. They've said that the cycle of violence can end when those who perpetrated yesterday's acts are handed over to the authorities; or it can continue until they are found out.

"General Kimmitt was quite firm and has said that there will be a response from the United States and in his words that response would be 'deliberate and precise and overwhelming'.