Eschaton!

Three interesting posts from Atrios overnight. First up:

Iraq Logic

People shot and killed are victims of sectarian violence.

People killed by bombs are victims of "al Qaeda."

"Sophisticated" bombs are all built by Iran.

"Al Qaeda" are Sunni.

Iranians are Shiite.

And only stupid bloggers notice this stuff.

Secondly, I've been wondering when this story would start to surface:

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

Finally, a juicy bit of irony: a Saudi Prince who was criticized for saying US policies contributed to 9/11 has stepped in as a saviour for Citibank. That's almost as ironic as the recent story I saw predicting the Chinese would become world leaders in green power technology.

If you don't read Atrios regularly, you should. From an international perspective, he does get a little bogged down in local politics, but he has a brilliant knack of encapsulating complex issues in a nutshell.