Or how I got comfortable with living six city blocks in any direction from insurgents. You’re sitting down for afternoon coffee in Baghdad. The Americans no longer come into the neighborhood anymore. Instead, it’s the Iraqi security forces now. No big deal, you can handle that. They’re your people. Or maybe they’re not. At least the Americans help out with air strikes against the insurgents. It’s a shame no one has a way of determining whether they’re within six and a half blocks of an insurgent until it’s too late, because that’s the blast radius of a 2,000 lb bomb equipped with JDAM smart technology to make sure it doesn’t ruffle any feathers of anyone close by. Precision weapons? Hardly. The minimum safe distance with the smartest of the smart bombs is three city blocks. Any closer than that and you can look forward to the strong possibility of a permanent dirt nap. Does that sound fair to you? As you’re sitting there reading this now take a moment to think of three city blocks from your job, from your home, from where you shop for groceries. Does this sound like a situation you can remove yourself quickly from on foot? To avoid being tagged in death as being ‘one of the insurgents or an insurgent sympathizer?’ Of course, failing all that we can just send in the sharks with laser beams on their foreheads. They'll fix everything.
posted by mk1gti on Mar 15, 2006 - 52 comments