"This is my hardest deployment," Marine Sergeant Cooley said as he unfastened his helmet and tossed it onto his bed. "We weren't trained for this kind of thing." He's been shot at with bullets and mortars, and he's endured IED attacks on his Humvee, but post-war Fallujah is more difficult and more stressful than combat. He isn't unusual for saying so. Many Marines I spoke to in and around the Fallujah area said something similar.

"We're trained as infantrymen," Captain Stewart Glenn said. "But here we are doing civil administration and trying to get the milk factory up and running."

"We make up all this stuff as we go," Lieutenant Mike Barefoot added.

While most Americans go to school, work traditional day jobs, and raise their families, young American men and women like these are deployed to Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan where they work seven days a week rebuilding societies torn to pieces by fascism, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and war. It is not what they signed up to do. Some may have geeked out on nation-building video games like Civilization, but none of the enlisted men picked up any of these skills in boot camp.

The Mhalla riots are going into their second strong day. 50,000 people are rioting. The police is shooting tear gas, rubber bullets, you name it, and IT'S NOT WORKING. The demonstrators were originally only like 2000-3000, but the government crackdown forced the people on the street. And until today, it's a War Zone...

[response to people in the comments]...First of all, Mahalla is not a MB stronghold, no more than any other city is. The MB's power is greatly exaggerated and hyped, and they are too chicken to be behind this revolt. If anything they are distancing themselves from it and criticizing the actions of the Mahalla people. So no, that's not what's going on. What's happening is that the people there are ignored and fed up, and refsue to shut up while their family members and friends get arrested. They have a semblance of diginity that has somehow eluded the rest of the population. So, yes, we should encourage this.

Secondly, if you are following what's happening there as much as I am, here is something you might not know: The people are not the ones burning stores and cars; the police is. It's being done to be used as pretext to arresting people, The people are setting tires on fire and throwing rocks at the police who are unlawfully arresting their friends, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at them and have killed so far 4 people, the last of which is a 15 year old boy, who got shot in the head. The people are finally pushing back against a regime you both know is autocratic and tyrannical, and yet you only take issues with them refusing to eat shit. That, on its own, says volumes about you.