Publicola

A riot occurred in an Iraqi town after U.S. military & Iraqi police began a door to door weapons search.

"The police station in the tense Iraqi town of Hit smoldered on Thursday, a day after it was set alight in what residents said was a riot over intrusive weapons searches by Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers.
24-year-old Amer Aziz, who said he represented the young men of Hit, told Reuters the trouble began when police and American troops began a house-to-house search for guns on Wednesday morning.
'The Iraqi police were very rough with our women,' he said. 'They forced their way into houses without knocking, sometimes when women were sleeping. This is a very conservative town.'
Uproar ensued in the Sunni Muslim town of 155,000 as angry residents surged into the streets, burning police cars and throwing stones and handmade grenades at the Americans.
Aziz said a parley had taken place in the afternoon, when townsfolk told the Americans to leave or face suicide attacks."

There is no legitimate reason for the U.S. military to be going door to door confiscating weapons from civilians. Further there is no legitimate reason why I would feel pity for anything that happened to troops, even our troops, while committing such an act.

I have said before that I fear the U.S. military would use civilian disarmement in Iraq as practice for civilian disarmement in the U.S. I hope that the main thing the U.S. learns from trying to disarm Iraqi civilians is that it's not worth it, that's if they don't learn that their actions in this matter are morally reprehensible. & I hope they realize that any resistance being offerred by the Iraqi's would seem like good natured flirting compared to what Americans would do in that circumstance.

The following is from Gary Marbut's article in the Sierra Times:

"...How, you ask, do you tell the good people from the bad people, so you can make sure the good people get guns? The answer is, you can't. The best you can do is assume that the good people far outnumber the bad people, as they do in most any culture, and just give guns to everyone. After that, it becomes a simple matter of mathematics, and the ranks of the bad guys will shrink from attrition faster than the ranks of the good guys.
This is why it is a bad idea to disarm the civilians of Iraq. It is immoral, it places our troops at greater risk, and it is repugnant to the concept of individual freedom, one of the announced reasons for our presence in Iraq.
Finally, there is no doubt that every place in the world where tyranny has gained sway, that tyranny has been preceded by disarming the general population. Given this absolute and unquestioned history, how must it be perceived by the people of Iraq (and the people of the world) for the United States to be busily disarming the individual people of Iraq?"