Magic Bullet Lady

[photo and caption via Michelle Malkin's website] Caption: AFP/Yahoo!News Caption: Tuesday August 14, 2007: An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. At least 175 people were slaughtered on Tuesday and more than 200 wounded when four suicide truck bombs targeted people from an ancient religious sect in northern Iraq, officials said.(AFP/Wissam al-Okaili)

Arabs in the Middle East lie. It appears to be in their DNA. Whoa, you bigot, Jack — don’t we all share pretty much the same DNA, us members of the human species? Well, yes, we are all sinners; we all lie. But Arabs, in their native lands, at least the Muslims among them, appear to believe that lying to us infidels is just the thing to do. See, for example, the Wikipedia entry on <i>taqiyya</i>. Stated differently, their so-called “honor” culture is 180 degrees from ours on some matters. Such as the notion that truth is immutable and ever to be desired.

Eyewitness accounts of events in Iraq, if they come from Arab Iraqis, should thus be considered dubious unless some hard facts support them. Case in point is the “Magic Bullet Lady” portrayed in the picture. The intact, unfired rounds she is holding up, she claimed, had “hit her house” during a long-overdue offensive against the Shiites hiding amongst the civilian population in Sadr City.

Of course, that notion of “civilian population” among Iraq’s sectarian areas, is a chimera, a useful fiction for the politically correct Bush administration that just can’t bring itself to deny. The simple fact is that the local population forms the logistical and moral support team for the sectarian fighters. This is as true for the Sunnis and Kurds as it is for the Shiites.

One can’t blame the Shiites for defending themselves against decades of Sunni/Baathist depredations. But they should have quit when the Yankees came to town, and welcomed us. But, no, they reverted to their primitive past, and allowed their reptilian-brained leaders to start targeting their liberators along with Sunnis and Kurds.

Magic Bullet Lady deserves some sympathy; throwing those unspent bullets could have taken her eye out. But not, I guarantee, have caused someone like this to speak the truth.