Skute had apparently caught some news somewhere, perhaps on somebody’s television since I found it difficult to picture him actually reading a paper or using a computer. Enon and I were discussing the situation in the Middle East, in particular the smufudgen they call a war in Iraq. Skute interrupted.

“What are these clusters that everybody is talking about, and why did the Israelis drop all those bombs on them?” he asked.

I had to think about it for a minute. Ahh, cluster bombs! I sidled over to him, rested my left arm across his shoulder, then sucker-punched him with a right to the belly. He sat down to catch his breath, and hopefully think for a minute about what he said. Enon was obliged to explain to him that cluster bombs were clusters of little bombs that spread out over a large area, designed primarily to kill indiscriminately large numbers of people. In older days, I imagine before the cluster bomb was ever introduced, (correct me if I’m wrong, please), these devices could have been very effective against a standing army. But the days of standing armies are long gone, and so too are the strategically viable reasons to use cluster bombs. The bombs just kill people, and in the Middle East, these people are 90% civilian, and about half of them are children.

Something about the cluster bombs is that they are notoriously unreliable, that a significant number of the little “bomb-lets” do not detonate when they are supposed to, so they lay around in the dirt like land mines waiting for kids and farmers to stumble across them months or even years after the fact.

International law, the Israelis claim, allows them to use these things. It is my understanding that my own U.S. military used these devices in both Afghanistan and Iraq. To fuck with international law, where the hell is your conscience? Might as well break out the gas canisters because they serve to the same exact end. Where, morally is the difference?

Once Skute caught his breath again, he asked another question: “How come the Israelis ended up looking so bad to everybody? I thought they were supposed to be the good guys,” he added.

“What about us?” Enon replied. “We use cluster bombs all the time. And we are supposed to be the good guys, too.”

“No wonder everybody over there hates us,” commented Skute.

“That’s one of the reasons,” Enon told him. “But only one of many.”

Skute looked quizzically at Enon, hoping to dig out a deeper explanation. When that didn’t happen, he shrugged his shoulders, then dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a joint. After he had examined it for tears in the paper, he passed the number to Enon who lit it and inhaled deeply. It went around the circle several times, and the discussion turned to Kite, who was absent, and who all three of us have some kind of crush on.

"She's back on the methadone," Enon said.

"That's good," I replied honestly, but knowing in my heart that it would probably only last a few days.