I hated Iraqis

One of the rapists/mass murderers in the Mahmudiya incident, Spc. James Barker, has pled guilty and was sentenced to life or 90 years, whichever comes first. The judge asked why he did it. “I hated Iraqis, your honor.” This, to borrow a line from Atrios, has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

He went on: “They can smile at you, then shoot you in your face without even thinking about it.” I’m not sure if a guy who raped a 14-year-old girl, burned her body and killed her whole family should really be pointing fingers. Or possibly it was just the smiling that he objected to.

As an experiment, I’m using the labels feature of Beta Blogger for the first time, allowing you to read my previous posts on this incident. It’s an attractive feature, especially for a blog with 3,402 posts going back over a decade, a way to make those archives useful. I was looking back over some of my old Trent Lott posts just yesterday, for example. Good times, good times. But attaching labels to 3,402 posts seems very much like work. I’m also worried that republishing those posts, like I just did for the Mahmudiya posts, will be obnoxious for RSS users. Opinions? suggestions?