Florida teen skips school, goes to Iraq

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/29/teen.iraq.ap.ap/index.html

Wow this kid is kind of a badass, I mean just picking up and going to Iraq. I’m sure it was a vacation he will alwaya remember. On Monday, his first full day in Iraq, six vehicle bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing five people and wounding more than 40.

Would the name of this teen perhaps be Farris Hassan?

Pretty gutsy of that kid! I like him.

Due to his ethnicity though, I doubt that he was ever in any more danger than anyone else in Iraq at the time. By this I mean in extra danger due to being American, as the article implies.

Except the fact that he spoke no Arabic, and his clothes pinned him as an American. Just because he looked Iraqi doesn’t mean he didn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

I admire his moxie (or lack of judgement).

I’m suprised the administration isn’t going to arrest him.

I saw clips from an interview with his mom… She was all “I guess we’ll just have to hide his passport and cut off his access to money! Hahahahahahahahahahaha.”

It was kind of weird.

I’m sure he stuck out like a sore thumb whenever he opened his mouth. As for the way he dressed, it might have not looked much different than other Iraqi teens. Bottom line is that when people look at him, they are not going to see him as a representative of “The Great Satal Infidel American Dog” like they probably would if he was a white kid from Duluth.

In fact, this is the very reason that my family and I had little trouble moving about the country (Iran) and eventually leaving during the height of the Iranian revolution in '79. The threat of being kidnapped or worse was never a real issue, and the local populace was even nice enough to give us a ride from Isfahan to Tehran. I doubt the situation would have been the same if we were white.

passport? money? heck with that…
if he were my child, he’d be grounded (by which i mean chained in the basement ala ‘desperate housewives’) til he was 40!!!

The Oracle of Delphi has devined his future , options for a disney movie.

Declan

Bad ass, maybe.

Stupid ass, definately!!!

What pisses me off about this little jerk is the essay he sent home to his teachers from Kuwait, half of which he wrote *before he even left the US * and none of which he wrote after he had actually been to Iraq. That’s some fine journalistic objectivity right there. If he was so into journalistic immersion, why did he wrote the editorial beofre he’d actually been to his source? And furthermore, write it in exactly the same language you hear from the talking heads in Washington and on Fox News? Nice start to a career of journalistic fraud.

And he’s lucky someone didn’t blow his freakin’ head off.

mm

And now, the creepy & less-than-Disney-esque details ooze out of the woodwork.

Like his father’s involvement in terrorism. And his own intrests in meeting people.

http://www.newtimesbpb.com/Issues/2006-01-12/news/norman.html

I have to admit, after reading about how he lied - I like him even more.

This is pretty funny: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/1/traigelliott.html