This place is messed up

First of all, let me say that I, and everyone else in the US Army is completely OK. But there are a lot of torn up Iraqi families in this part of town right now. The Shiite Muslims are having their "Death of the Seventh Imam" celebration right now, and it is centered on a shrine which is probably 1000 yards down the road from where I'm sitting right now. There are an estimated 4.5 million people within 1 square mile of this location, all peacefully celebrating their religious event.

Well, you can't let people do their own thing in peace and security, so the Sunni Muslims mortar and rocket attacked the shrine this morning. I don't know if anyone was hurt by those attacks, but we anticipated the attacks several days ago. There is a bridge over the Tigris river that is about 50 yards outside the gate of Camp Justice. Usually the bridge is closed to all traffic because the insurgents were using it to launch rockets into our camp, but for the celebration, the bridge was reopened to pedestrian traffic so that the Shiite Muslims on the other side of town could get to their shrine.

Sometime after the mortar attacks, while the bridge was crowded with what had to be thousands of people, someone spread the word that their was a suicide bomber on the bridge and everyone panicked. We didn't have any idea of what was going on at the time, we can't see outside the protective walls of the camp, and even if we had seen it, there is nothing we could have done. At least 650 people were killed and 180 injured in the stampede and by being thrown off the bridge into the river.

The news release gives a bit more detail. I am continuously amazed by how these people treat one another, and the level of fear of the general population of this city.

I'm going to sleep tonight disgusted at the brutality of mankind.

Later
Trey