[Webstral]

I can't say whether the encounter with the British contractors fits in a literary sense. I'm too close to the subject. I can say that the piece makes perfect sense to me in the context of showing the war in Iraq. The contractors are everywhere. We're all on the same side, but the relationship isn't formalized--or at least it didn't used to be. The scene shows the ambiguity of the whole business. EOD doing its business in the desert somewhere might have strayed across contractors, or EOD might not have strayed across a group of contractors. I interpret this scene as showing the chaos and fog of war in the particular circumstances of Iraq with the types of players one might encounter. Again, I'm too close to the subject to offer an objective opinion. To me, the bit with the Brits was real--in essence, if not in the particulars.

Webstral