Changing the Tone

I suppose "go fuck yourself" is, technically, changing the tone...

OK, so the picture above is more illustrative as allegory than literal as it relates to this absolutely horrible and tragic story...but after working fruitlessly on a few other images, I kept going back to the shot of the Cheneys--smug and complacent beyond all decency, not caring in the slightest about the lives they've so casually shattered, even as they no doubt want to "do what's best" for their newest grandchild.

It reminds me of Michael Palin's character tenderly playing with his kids in the movie Brazil...or the recently uncovered photographs from Auchwitz showing the staff relaxing after, well, days filled with unspeakable acts of evil.

Well, I've digressed...sorry. Anyway, the latest example of the Team Bush anti-Midas touch is a case of what amounts to a total breakdown of a US soldier, testifying at the trial of another soldier who ordered him to kill an unarmed Iraqi while on sniper patrol. The soldier himself will be tried later, as will others. Think about it--everyone from the C.O. down to the victim's life will have been destroyed, thanks in no small part to Mr. Cheney, pictured above...and I doubt he gives a shit whatsoever...

A U.S. soldier cried Thursday as he told a court-martial that his staff sergeant ordered him to shoot an unarmed Iraqi. He said the sergeant then laughed and told the trooper to finish the job as the dying man convulsed on the ground.

The military reported, meanwhile, that it had opened an investigation into the deaths of five women and four children this week in a village where American forces had carried out ground and air assaults...

In the court-martial, Sgt. Evan Vela, 23, spoke barely above a whisper as he recounted shooting the man on May 11 near Iskandariyah, a mostly Sunni city 30 miles south of Baghdad.

Vela said Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley of Candler, N.C., told him to shoot the man, who had stumbled upon their snipers' hideout, although he was not armed and had his hands in the air when he approached the soldiers.

"He (Hensley) asked me if I was ready. I had the pistol out. I heard the word shoot. I don't remember pulling the trigger. It took me a second to realize that the shot came from the pistol in my hand," he said, crying.

Vela said that as the Iraqi man was convulsing on the ground, "Hensley kind of laughed about it and hit the guy on the throat and said shoot again."

"After he (the Iraqi man) was shot, Hensley pulled an AK-47 out of his rucksack and said, 'this is what we are going to say happened,'" Vela said, before he was dismissed from the witness stand to compose himself.

That's Cheney's--and Shrub's--and Limbaugh's and every other cretin's glorious war, a war they'd never have the courage to fight in for a day, much less four or more tours. A war that breaks pretty much everyone and everything it touches.

Ain't it grand?