We used ordinary Army-issue.303 rifles, essentially unimproved".
These are the sort of statements made not by ordinary armies but by armies that have embraced ideological convictions that make it easy to shoot down people in the streets, even civilians, if you believe that they are with the terrorists — or whatever it is you decide to call them.
The line between renegades and the ordinary Mahdi Army is blurred and the army may have cast its net too wide.
Behind this armoured and mechanised onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.
Drone strikes are the most effective way to turn ordinary people into armies of resistance.
It is also tapping its extensive network of imams and NGOs to levy funds for the army from ordinary Malians.
But behind a good economy lies an army of ordinary workers looking for meaningful, well-paid jobs and career development.
In Parliament, politicians have debated ending conscription, threatening the post-Nazi ideal of an army of ordinary citizens, as German soldiers fight in Afghanistan.
Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Chinese in the army were exposed to modern forms of drama for the first time, and, equally significant, artists discovered regional folk legends, songs, and dances, which they then incorporated into their work.
Most ordinary Chechens say the army has become an equally grave threat, kidnapping and killing innocent citizens in dark-of-night raids and extorting them by daylight, and Mr. Putin admitted such military abuses in a speech to Chechens last week.
Knowing that the move would create unprecedented pressure on the country's understaffed and thinly spread health facilities, the government went a step further, enlisting an army of ordinary citizens in the battle against preventable diseases like malaria.
