corrente

Salon has a riveting piece that all should read about the Iraq platoon that mutinied over a "death sentence" convoy mission this week. (Get a one-day pass.) Here's the money quote:

According to family members, the convoy was being asked to go much farther than usual from its southern base -- on a more than 200-mile trip through and around the extremely hostile Baghdad area. The tankers lacked bullet-resistant armor and, lumbering along at 40 miles an hour, would have made an easy target for insurgents lobbing bombs or grenades. The supply trucks are in disrepair and prone to breakdown. Many of the soldiers hadn't had enough sleep. And – astonishingly -- no armed escort or air protection was to be provided, the family members said.

Most absurdly, though, the jet fuel that these members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company were risking life and limb to transport wasn't even usable. It was contaminated with diesel and had already sensibly been rejected by one base and would undoubtedly be rejected again in Taji -- if the convoy managed to make it to its destination at all.

Now, risky missions are part of a soldier's job description, but this is something straight out of Catch-22. Is Colonel Cathcart in charge over there? You recall Cathcart: obsessed with getting promoted, he constantly raised the required number of missions before a soldier could go home and categorized everything either as "a feather in my cap!" or "a black eye!!!"

It appears that, once it became clear that arresting mutineers two weeks before a national election was a "black eye," the Army has denied ever doing any such thing.

I take that back. Colonel Cathcart isn't in charge in Iraq. He stole his coveted promotion and is now running things out of the White House.

"[T]he enemy . . . is anybody who’s going to get you killed" -- Yossarian

Lambert and Xan have more.