I know, I know, Username. But the sad truth is that Americans are indeed that stupid, and more.

My very first letter to Salon (look it up) was about my own personal military experience and how I view My Lai. It was rambling, but I was kind of jacked-up about some of the letter writers pontificating out of ignorance about the mind set of combat soldiers.

My main point was that whatever happened at Haditha, the truth will eventually come out because conspiracies of silence never hold for long, not even among the most Semper Fi of the Marine Corp. Someone once said, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."

All the guys in Kilo Company are individuals. A cross section of the company would reveal some to be moral, even in the face of the immorality of war. Someone will talk. Some among them will be unable to live with themselves if they participated in mass murder.

It's true that during the Vietnam War a young Colonel Colin Powell dutifully tried to bury the official field report on My Lai. But when the Americal Division grunts came home, it was on their conscience and their minds would not be quiet.

Lieutenant Calley, last I heard, runs a gift shop in Columbus, Ga., just off post from Ft. Benning. It has been reported that he was mentally unstable before he joined the Army. I can only imagine that he has not improved. He still gets a lot of mail saying he's a true American hero.

So it's a true American hero who stands at the edge of a pit and shoots a young woman holding her baby, who chases little children down a trail and shoots them in the back, who walks among the moaning wounded dispatching the coup de grâce with his M-16?

These hero worshipers will tell you angrily, "war is hell, you do what you have to do" as if they knew. On the other hand, others will say with absolute certainty that if they had been there, they would have never participated in the atrocity.

But they weren't there. And they can't say what they would or would not have done.

I can say this much with authority: In order to kill human beings you have to put your head in a place where nothing matters. After the war is over, you can't get your innocence back. But you can get your soul back. You can, and must, try to restore yourself or you will forever live in a world where nothing matters and it's like a living death. That's why somebody in Kilo Company is going to talk -- because they must.

The hero worshiping nobodies will exault the soldier until he betrays their image of him by becoming a human being once again. Then they will hate him and call him a traitor just like they did to John Kerry and Jack Murtha.

Americans used to roar like lions for liberty. Now we bleat like sheep for security. -Norman Vincent Peale

Yes, yes, by all means there should be waterfalls,

But the water should run red, like blood,

Every now and again, like a Yellowstone geyser

The damned thing should spew red liquid

On all those who come to gawk and buy souvenirs,

These war and patriotism fetishists,

Who are attracted to hallowed places,

Of horror and sadness,

To get their sick kicks,

At the expense of those who perished.

These war and patriotism fetishists,

Who will come by tourist bus and taxi,

To snap pictures of themselves,

"We were here,"

And bought "Ground Zero" tee shirts,

And other crap hawked by vultures,

Until their morbid curiosity is slaked,

And they head off on their way,

To the next scheduled attraction.

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"Can it really be true that black Americans will regard Jefferson as a victim of "discrimination," as he tried to claim in his reply to Pelosi?"

The Congressional Black Caucus is only in business for one purpose: Endless race baiting for fun and profit. They have to find some racial angle to virtually everything and everyone under the sun. Otherwise, they'd be out of business.

Perpetual victims, looking for entitlement and retribution for past sins, real and imagined. That's the CBC. And while they go about their crass business, they sometimes have to swallow a meal that a buzzard wouldn't eat. Jefferson is just such a meal.

It's touching, such solidarity shown by the womens lacross team. I'm wondering why, if these women think the men are "innocent" so to speak, don't they volunteer to take the place of the poor strippers at the next big circle jerk party.

I mean, if these guys are as wonderful as the ladies think they are, then maybe they'd like to get up on a table and shake their naked butts for a bunch of leering, crotch-rubbing clowns. Oh, but I guess the Duke ladies are too refined for that. They'd rather have a couple of ebony sisters from the wrong side of the tracks get their boys all worked up for nothing.

What a waste, girls! You could have put all that testosterone to good use rather than let your champions spend their wad (so to speak) on some nasty tarts.