How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
A guy from the 3rd, a big, thick-necked sergeant, was holding up a tube. It was an RPG launcher. "Ask them who this belongs to!" the sergeant barked at me. Did I look Iraqi to him? (4.93-94)
Way to assume, sergeant. He thinks Birdy is Iraqi because he has dark skin.
Quote #2
Ahmed, the interpreter, found us. He had been around but not hanging out with the regular troops. He was thin, dark-haired but light-skinned. He could have been Latino. He shook hands all around and Jonesy asked him how he learned Arabic.
"My family is from Lebanon," he said with a shrug. "My grandmother made me learn it." (4.72-73)
Ahmed is given an interpreter, middle-man type role because his family is Lebanese. But it's clear that he's pretty removed from the Middle East—he spent his whole life in the U.S.
Quote #3
"It's good to have a slave," Pendleton from Third Squad said.
I didn't dig that too much and neither did Jonesy. We didn't say anything but Pendleton caught our attitude. (6.15-16)
Pendleton's statement is not cool anyway, but it makes sense that it would bother Birdy and Jonesy more than the others, considering the history of slavery in the United States.