Sometimes I’m so weary I just feel numb

Last Friday was the U.N.’s International World Peace Day, a well-kept secret.

The International Day of Peace, established by a United Nations resolution in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly, was first inaugurated on the third Tuesday of September, 1982. Beginning on the 20th anniversary in 2002, the UN General Assembly set 21 September as the now permanent date for the International Day of Peace.

Upon learning of this day, through I See Invisible People, for some inexplicable reason I just felt too depressed to deal with it. Can you imagine that?

At a time when the Blackwater scandal was all the news and the Senate had just failed to vote the troops sufficient rest.

Now there’s this from the Washington Post: U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With ‘Bait.

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of “bait,” such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”

Well, it’s only 363 days until the next International Day of Peace.

H/T to Have Coffee, Will Write.