Dulce et decorum est...

“I was called to serve in Iraq because the government said there were weapons of mass destruction, but they weren't there. They said Iraq had something to do with 9-11, but the connection wasn't there. They told us that we'd win the war and be home soon, but we're still there. So when people ask me where my arm went, I try to find the words. But they're not there.”

— US soldier Robert Acosta, wounded in Iraq;
see Democracy Now's October 13 program

[Rob] Sarra's unit had just been in a firefight when he saw an elderly burkha-clad woman carrying a bag on her arm walking toward a nearby armored vehicle. The soldiers raised their weapons and began yelling at her to stop. Sarra, a Marine sergeant, then made an instantaneous and fatal assumption: if the woman did not respond, she must be carrying a bomb.

She did not stop.

Sarra had a clear shot and he took it. As soon as he fired his second shot, his fellow soldiers opened fire and cut her down.

“She fell to the dirt and as she fell she had a white flag in her hand, that she had pulled out of her bag,” says Sarra, staring past the camera into the distance.

“At that moment right there I lost it, I threw my weapon down on the deck of the vehicle, I was crying, I was like, Oh my god what are we doing here?”

— The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War
via The Hartford Advocate

See also Salon's article.