From the testimony of an Iraq veteran. Time is circa the invasion and the early days of the occupation. He was an infantryman with the 82nd Airborne. I missed his name as I was setting up so I’ll update.

He’s telling a story about raiding a house in Baghdad. When he said “we never went on a raid where we got the right house, let alone the right person,” the room applauded.

From his testimony:

I swung my rifle around, and the dude in the doorway, he had an RPG on his back, my sight was on his chest, what I’m trained to do. But when I looked at his face, he wasn’t a boogeyman, he wasn’t ‘the enemy.’ He was scared and confused by [seeing] I had the same expression he had … He was probably fed the same BS I was fed in that situation. I [saw] his face, and it took me back… I didn’t pull the trigger and he got away….

[Back in a nearby village] we’re asking who the troublemakers are, and hear [from the people], “these people are troublemakers” so we go, myself and another soldier, we step off, we toss the hut, and the only thing find is a little .22 pistol, not RPGs, not pictures of Saddam not large caches of money. We end up taking two young men [prisoner] regardless. I say to my sergeant, these are not the men we’re looking for. He says, “Don’t worry, I’m sure he would’ve done something anyways.” His mother is crying in my face, trying to kiss my feet. I can’t speak Arabic. I can speak human. She was saying, ‘Why are you taking my sons, they’ve done noting wrong.” It  made me feel very powerless.