Really interesting - and very sad - collection of letters sent to Moore by American soldiers and some of their family members during the Iraq War. It's fair to say that all letters here are very supportive of his anti-war stance, though it's notable how many of the letter writers admit to being, at one time, both pro-war and anti-Moore. Most of the soldiers writing are very young, and it's easy to feel sympathy for them. They've been recruited, mostly, because they've got few other options - that armed forces tend to recruit their cannon fodder from the poor and poorly educated is no new thing. Yet I have to admit I was shocked at how little thought some of them seemed to have put into joining up. And it sounds terrible to say that, like I'm victim-blaming, but I can't help but think that there's a whole lot of other victims here (the ones these soldiers signed up to fight)... and while some of the letters show concern for the Iraqi civilians whose lives were absolutely shattered by that poorly thought-out war, they're in a distinct minority. There's a lot more of "I can't believe I have to go over there now, I'm afraid and I don't want to live like that", and, fair enough, people put themselves first and their own lives are more immediately concerning to them, but still. Young as they are signing up, do none of them consider the fact that they're signing up to kill other people? The few soldiers who talk about seeing dead kids in the streets with their legs shot off... what did they think was going to happen to Iraqi children when they went over there? And then I think some of those letter writers are barely more than children themselves... they talk about being recruited at 17, for goodness sake. It's appalling. The whole thing is deeply bizarre... and frankly very depressing.

It's depressing because so many of the people, in this book, are saying "It'll be different after the election". They're so certain that Bush won't be re-elected, that his piss-poor performance, his incompetence and greed, will be enough for the American electorate to vote him out. Of course it wasn't. And 15 years on, America's got another war-happy plutocratic moron in power and I look over at the citizens there and think "They're going to elect him again", because sadly I wasn't surprised when they did it the first time. So, yeah. Depressing on multiple levels, because nothing seems to change.