 that I experienced myself as well. In an article titled Conditions of Atrocity, Robert J. Lifton cited both Milai in Vietnam and Milai Massacre and the Iraqi prison scandal of Abu Ghraib as examples of what he called, and then the rest of this is his writing, atrocity-producing situations so structured psychologically and militarily that ordinary people, men or women, no better or worse than you or I, can regularly commit atrocities. In Vietnam, that structure included free fire zones, areas in which soldiers were encouraged to fire at virtually anyone, body counts, with a breakdown in the distinction between combatants and civilians, and competition among commanders for the best statistics, and the emotional state of U.S. soldiers as they struggled with grief, with angry grief over buddies killed by invisible adversaries and with a desperate need to identify some enemy. This kind of atrocity-producing situation surely occurs in some degree in all wars, including World War II, the U.S.'s last, quote, good war. But a counter-insurgency war in a hostile setting, especially when driven by profound ideological distortions, is particularly prone to sustained atrocity, all the more so when it becomes an occupation. And I'm going to close on a little bit more of an up-note, but before I do that, the open-ended question that I want to leave you with, a rhetorical question is, what's your red line? And perhaps it's already been crossed. And I'd like to close with reading a poem. As I said, it's a little bit more on an upbeat so that people don't walk out of here and slit their wrists after all of this information. But it's a poem by a poet and author, Marge Piercy, and it's called The Low Road. What can they do to you, whatever they want? They can set you up, they can bust you, they can break your fingers, they can burn your brain with electricity, blur you with drugs till you can't walk, can't remember, they can take your child, wall up your lover, they can do anything, you can't stop them from doing. How can you stop them? Alone you can fight, you can refuse, you can take what revenge you can, but they roll over you. But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob. A snake dancing file can break a cordon, an army can meet an army. Two people can keep each other sane, can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, sex. Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. With four you can play bridge and start an organization. With six you can rent a hall house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fundraising party. A dozen make a demonstration, a hundred fill a hall. A thousand have solidarity in your own newsletter. 10,000 power in your own paper. A hundred thousand your own media. 10 million your own country. It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act. It starts when you do it again after they said no. It starts when you say we and know who you mean. And each day you need one more. Thank you.