“An American soldier shot and killed a rare Bengal tiger in Baghdad zoo during an apparently drunken party, the head of the zoo said on Saturday.

‘The soldiers arrived in the evening with food and beer, accompanied by a group of Iraqi police officers,’ Adel Salman Musa said of the incident on Thursday night.

‘One of the soldiers, who the Iraqi police said had drunk a lot, went into the cage against the advice of his colleagues and tried to feed the animal, who severely hurt his arm,’ he explained to AFP.

The tiger tore off one of the soldier’s fingers and mauled his arm. One of the other soldiers immediately fired at the animal and killed it, he said.”

“The soldiers don’t have the right to behave like that. That was the most precious and valuable animal in the whole zoo. It was 14 years old and had been born here,” Salman Musa said.

Hate mail will be accepted graciously for the following remarks. First, IMHO it is too bad that’s all the tiger did to the drunken soldier before being slaughtered. Didn’t the drunken yahoo realize he could have been a contender for the Darwin Awards if only he had persevered in his interactions with the creature? And isn’t the whole incident an apt metaphor for the US invasion of Iraq? Ill-intentioned ignoramuses make an illegitimate incursion with no appreciation for the danger of their actions, get burned by the predictable response and respond with devastating lethal force with no understanding of what they are destroying?