Pick Up Your
Toys, Georgey

Story and Photos By Josh Mahan

The action of two-hundred pairs of gloved hands clapping wool-on-wool has a muffled effect. It sounds more like popcorn popping in a distant room.

The tone was sober, even tense as a small group of radical College Republicans chanted while students and professors took turns speaking into a microphone to the crowd.  

The gloved hands were able to drown out the fringe group, though, who were advocating a position that continues to place American troops next to improvised incendiary devices.

According the latest poll numbers, nationwide Republicans are the radical fringe. The latest numbers for  war-mongerer, religious zealot, and American President George Bush  finds 36 percent of the country supporting his performance, according to Newsweek. While the mainstream press once spoon-fed the public the line that Bush was a noble war hero, he's now widely deemed a lame-duck alcoholic without popular support, waging an illegal and tireless global war in the name of a Christian god and the gas pump.

One vocal Republican at the UM rally did a great job of representing just how radical and fringe his group is when he screamed, “Dumb-fuck pussies,” to the crowd of peace advocates. The weird got even stranger when the Republicans started using Vietnam-era chants like, “Move To Canada.”

“How many more years will we mark the coincidence of war with the coming of spring?” asked UM professor Katie Kane.

Another student remarked, “If you want to hurt them, stop paying for this war.”

That means you Thoreau.

If you’ve forgotten about how bad it has gotten in Iraq, the Associated Press reported today that 12 U.S. Marines are under investigation of War Crimes after going on a shooting spree after a Marine died in a roadside explosion. Those killed lived nearby. The Marines stormed their houses. Some were found in their nightclothes. The following is disturbing and graphic:

“Ali, 76, whose left leg was amputated years ago because of diabetes, died after being shot in the stomach and chest. His wife, Khamisa, 66, was shot in the back. Ali's son, Jahid, 43, was hit in the head and chest. Son Walid, 37, was burned to death after a grenade was thrown into his room, and a third son, 28-year-old Rashid, died after he was shot in the head and chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Also among the dead were son Walid's wife, Asma, 32, who was shot in the head, and their son Abdullah, 4, who was shot in the chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.Walid's 8-year-old daughter, Iman, and his 6-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman, were wounded and U.S. troops took them to Baghdad for treatment. The only person who escaped unharmed was Walid's 5-month-old daughter, Asia. The three children now live with their maternal grandparents, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Rsayef said those killed in the second house were his brother Younis, 43, who was shot in the stomach and chest, the brother's wife Aida, 40, who was shot in the neck and chest while still in bed where she was recuperating from bladder surgery. Their 8-year-old son Mohammed bled to death after being shot in the right arm, Rsayef said.

Also killed were Younis's daughters, Nour, 14, who was shot in the head; Seba, 10, who was hit in the chest; Zeinab, 5, shot in the chest and stomach; and Aisha, 3, who was shot in the chest. Hoda Yassin, a visiting relative, was also killed, Rsayef and Hamza said.