Dallas-based Iraqi blogger Fayrouz found a story about Iraqi women learning the art of defining trajectories for high-velocity plumbum:

The first time the women at the paramilitary training camp here went for shooting practice most were nervous, some started crying and others did not want to pick up the guns. Nearly four weeks later, Shemaa Jasem, 22, held up her paper target showing three small holes near the bull's-eye, and was disgusted. "Bad shooting today," she said. ...Where the mood was once anxious, it has become jovial. Two of the women were shooting Saturday while the others sat on the ground chatting cheerfully.

Mrs. Jasem, a former factory worker from Baghdad whose sister Sondas, 33, also was going through training, said she was proud of what she was doing. Most of the women refused to give their full names for security reasons.

"This is a good thing for my country, going against the terrorists and the bad guys," she said. "My mother and father are very happy. I want to join the American Army one day. "Wherever I go, I tell people that I work for the ICDC and the coalition forces."

Not only are Iraqis learning the vital role of civilians responsibly carrying arms to defend family, property and country but women are invited to participate as equals. It's as if people in a foreign culture had inspected, experienced and finally adopted a democratic concept once alien to them! Someone tell Jacques Chirac.