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blue bits. red rocks.
Tuesday 1 May 2007

I had an interrogation with a 22-year-old Saudi Arabian who was very straightforward that he had come to Iraq to conduct jihad. We started having a conversation about religion and ethics, and he told me that I was a very strange man who was a Christian but didn’t follow the teachings of Jesus to love my enemy and pray for the persecuted. My nickname in my unit was ‘priest’ because I spent a lot of time in the chapel. So I had this moment with a man who was a jihadi and he was giving me a lesson on the Sermon on the Mount. That was about five months into my time in Iraq, and I had already had about 100 interrogations and I was so weary of the whole process. I told him that I thought he was right and that there was a massive contradiction involved with me doing my job and being a Christian. Joshua Casteel

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