Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Murder Suicide

Two major stories from CBS and our neighbors from across the pond at the Guardian involved soldiers committing murder and suicide. CBS did a story soldiers who return committing suicide. It stated that soldiers who came back from Iraq were five times as likely to kill themselves as a person who hasn't gone to Iraq. The soldiers committed suicide in various ways from hanging them selves with garden hoses to shooting themselves to jumping off bridges. The story is slanted against the government and especially the VA (as it should be). The Guardian did a story on soldiers being brought up on murder charges. Funny thing soldiers in a war zone being brought up on murder charges, but apparently killing innocents and killing those deemed not innocent makes a difference to the government if not the almighty. This article is somewhat slanted against the soldiers, but when its considered a massacre its kind of hard to blame the villagers. Those bastards shouldn't have got in the way of the bullets just doesn't have quite the right ring to it. These articles are opposite in the focus of sympathizing with the soldiers and calling them monsters. They also differ in the country of their origin. The article sympathizing with soldiers was American while the article berating them was British.

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