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hunting bin Laden

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

"Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear." So the line in the song goes. And so I preface the story I heard tonight over drinks.

One of my colleagues flew combat missions in Afghanistan for years following the invasion by coalition forces in 2001. Among his other missions was an ongoing one to shoot anyone who "looked tall". The ideas being that they were ostensibly hunting Osama bin Laden by weeding out every tall man they saw.

Sounds like a pretty savage way of dealing with the situation. I repeat it, I suppose, to highlight it as reflection upon humanity. Not going to make any judgments, just want to say: I believe that people could think this way, and do this sort of thing to innocent people that they don't know. That's all.