Taking the Hostage Out of the Equation

It would appear that American forces manning a checkpoint near Baghdad had seen Speed too many times, as they adopted the strategy espoused by Keanu Reeves’ character of what to do in a hostage situation (i.e., “shoot the hostage, and take them out of the equation”) by doing precisely that, resulting in the death of an Italian intelligence agent and the wounding of a recently freed Italian hostage, Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist kidnapped in Iraq.
It would appear that the American troops in that area are sufficiently wary of just about everything, that a car speeding at them and not slowing down was, according to standard operating procedure, to be shot at.
The death of the Italian agent, coming along with the 1,500th American military death during the current Iraq adventure, and along with allegations of abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan by the CIA, I think it’s safe to say that we here stateside are darned sick and tired of hearing about the unfortunate things happening in our wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Hence, it’s time we started gearing up for our new war: the one against those irritating Syrians. You see, while Syria is not exactly up to a full-fledged “Axis of Evil TM” member, like Iraq, it is a largely secular Baathist style regime, and hence, offends Saudi Arabia, and hence, is ripe for regime change.
Obviously, naysayers (such as m’self) might question just why we might start our war cycle (which begins with bellicose rhetoric, and then right around a mid-term election, becomes an all-out shootin’ war– yes, it’ll be a while before we get round to that war… but stick around) with Syria. Sure, Syria is an irritant to Israel, sponsoring various terror groups and all, but then, Israel kind of irritates Syria back, what by occupying the Golan Heights and all… Oh yes: if we attack Syria, Syria just might try to garner sympathy in the Arab world by attacking Israel, ostensibly making the operation an American/Israeli war of aggression (that’s how it will be played, anyway) and we might just get World War III out of this yet.
Won’t that be glorious? We’ll show those octogenarian assholes who think they’re the greatest generation that we could kick their asses, by kicking the asses of some swarthy Middle Easterners. Yee ha! Let’s put on our shit-kickers, pop open a cold one, and hit our keyboards and remotes while some dufus reservists go do the dirty work… this will be so cool… we are sooooo kick-ass!