Yesterday something appalling happened, as is typical. A Baghdad city councilman shot up a group of U.S. troops, killing two, injuring three, along with an interpreter. According to McClatchy, the assailant was kind of a model citizen.

[Raed Mahmoud] Ajil’s family said that he’d suffered from bouts of depression and sporadic epileptic seizures, which he masked in his role as a public servant. Relatives knew him to be friendly to U.S. troops and said he had no qualms about working alongside them, even though many in this mixed Sunni-Shiite Muslim town view American forces as occupiers.

"(The Americans) used to love him. They gave him a contract for a project he was working on. He spoke English fluently with them and they used to like him so much," said Sherif Abdullah Aziz, 47, a cousin. "There is no explanation that we know of for what happened."

I don’t have anything more on this, but I note that it wouldn’t be beyond reason for either the guy’s mental health to have snapped or for the stress of collaborating with the occupation to have set him off. This is McClatchy’s last graf:

Anti-U.S. sentiment remains widespread, with many locals viewing the American presence as an intrusion. As news of Ajil’s killings spread, some residents hailed him as a hero. Several uttered his name and added, "God rest his soul," and a taxi driver at the scene pointed to the bloodstains and said, "the pigs deserved this."