Walk a mile in his moccasins. Then shoot him.

This is the kind of story that ticks me off. Reading it, you'd almost forget that the boy killed was trying to kill American and other soldiers liberating Iraq in Fallujah, and that his father had learned nothing from it.

We hear that the boy, Ahmed, insisted on serving on the front line in a black tracksuit an "insurgent" leader had just given him.

The boy's mother was angry, but too bad. Apparently she doesn't even know he's dead yet. Allah will help the father against the Americans, but apparently he cowers before his wife. (Wait until you get your martyrdom, pal, and you have 72 of them to answer to...)

Well, you know how kids are. They get these ideas and... Yeah, right. The father, Abu Muhammed, the guy our correspondent would have us pity, tells us he's not just an "insurgent", but a sniper. That's not enough - he says "When I shoot a target with a rocket-propelled grenade, it's like celebrating a feast".

So we know where the 13 year old kid got his ideas. Either father or son would have killed your or your kids in a flash and would have enjoyed every minute of it. But we're supposed to feel for them?

IMO this quote was interesting:

While atrocities unleashed by the insurgents -- beheadings and bombings that have killed scores of civilians -- have at least anecdotally seemed to unleash popular revulsion, there remains a constituency in Iraq that celebrates the guerrilla war. Myths have grown up around it, all infused with religious imagery and notions of divine intervention. Residents trade stories: that the knights of the prophet Muhammad were seen riding through Fallujah's streets on horseback with their swords drawn; that birds guided by God cast stones at Apache helicopters; that a scented breeze descends on the fighters as they battle U.S. troops.

Abu Mohammed had his tale.

At a checkpoint this summer, he was stopped by U.S. and Iraqi troops with a rocket-propelled grenade and three hand grenades in his trunk. He said he beseeched God: "I am fighting for you." The troops opened the trunk, he said, and found nothing.

Yeah, and other sources have told us about the big supplies of drugs the "insurgents" have.(There's no word yet on whether they've started ghost dancing).

It's just not fair!

The Americans, Abu Mohammed said, are "strong in their technology, but I've never seen cowards like them."

A hint of anger flashed across his usually calm demeanor. "Fifteen thousand Americans against 2,000 mujaheddin, with their technology and their firepower? They say they were victorious, but what kind of victory was that?"

Well hey, you have Allah on your side, not to mention the knights of Mohammed, the birds, the scented breezes...

And Allah isn't through with them yet:

"Until the day of judgment, there will be jihad," Abu Mohammed said, his words slow. "If something happened in Lebanon, I would find a bridge to cross and go there to fight." In a calm voice, he described his obligation as a matter of fact, a self-evident truth, and he quoted the Koran to illustrate his point: "And slay them wherever you catch them."

He clutched a pillow in his lap as he sat cross-legged. A tattered white curtain hung over the window, its pane broken.

"Jihad is not only against the Americans, it's also waged against the people who support them," he said. "They say the government is Iraqi, but it's really American. It's an Iraqi on the throne, but the throne itself is American."

For people who believe that, only one end is possible. I say we expedite it.

IMO the most irritating thing about this article is that what is most damning of our "insurgent" is toward the end. If you don't finish the article, all you see is some poor SOB who lost his son to the Americans.

I guess that's what you can expect from a blue state paper like the Washington Post. They work so hard to understand those who would kill them, and even present them sympathetically. Isn't it a shame that they don't put more effort into understanding red staters?