言い返すタイプ？
でも、彼の著書「夜は近づく」の第５章「insurgency」の言いようのない暗さは、「言葉狩り」のヴェールを破ってイラクの現実を突きつけてしまう。ファクツ（事実）の前でレトリック（形容）は非力なのだ。たとえば、こういう会話だ。
「神に誓って言うぜ。おれたちは殺されるだろうな」
「みんな同意見だ」
「１００パーセントだな」
「うちの一家は、おれを埋葬する墓地をとうに予約してるよ」米軍の教官が戦闘の基礎訓練や治安警備を教えるイラク人市民防衛部隊第三パトロール隊の面々の会話である。教官のアメリカ人中佐は、アラビア語を解さない。呼び名は「ベイビー」や「スモーキー」など米国流。人材を選ぶ暇などない。「できるだけ速く、できるだけ多く」イラク人を集めるのが最優先だ。拙速では？ と聞かれて「その質問は万鈞に値するな（thousand-dollar question）。何が拙速だ？」と言い返すタイプである。
私には、
「その質問は万鈞に値するな（thousand-dollar question）。何が拙速だ？」
というのは、意味が分かりません。
これをみて私は原文を探しました。GoogleのCacheでみつけました。
Iraqi Security Forces Torn Between Loyalties
Work for U.S. Leaves Recruits Uneasy
by Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post
November 25th, 2003
BAIJI, Iraq -- At the sprawling Baiji train station, long ago looted of everything but rail cars, the men of the city's Iraqi Civil Defense Corps lamented their first two months as a pillar of the U.S.-trained security forces that will inherit responsibility for keeping order in Iraq.
In a Sunni Muslim town suspicious of U.S. forces and often the scene of armed opposition, villagers have derided the men of the 3rd Patrol as traitors, pelting them with rocks as their trucks pass. Some were stopped in the market by men in checkered head scarves and warned that their commander faced death. Last month, U.S. Special Forces mistook them for guerrillas or thieves -- that point remains in dispute -- and opened fire on them. Worse, they feared, was what lay ahead if U.S. forces withdrew from this northern town.
"I swear to God, we'll be killed," said Hamid Yusuf, holding a secondhand Kalashnikov rifle.
"We all have the same opinion," insisted one of his commanders, Qassim Khalaf.
"One hundred percent," answered Jamal Awad, another patrol member.
"My family's already made a reservation on a plot of land to bury me," said Yusuf, 29, breaking into a grin as the men traded barbs tinged with gallows humor. "As soon as they leave, I'm taking off my hat," he said, tipping his red baseball cap emblazoned with the corps' emblem, "and putting on a yashmak," the head scarf sometimes worn by resistance fighters.
会話はここと一致します。最後をちょっとはしょってあるのがわかります。
最後のユスフ（２９歳）は、『私の家族は私の墓所の予約を済ませているんだ。』とか、にたにた笑いでブラック・ジョークを言うわけです。『アメリカ人がでていったら、この部隊の紋がついている野球帽をぬいで、ヤシュマク（反政府運動の兵士が冠っていたりするスカーフ）をかぶるんだ。』と言うわけですね。ここではinsurgentsではなくて、resistance fightersといっています。
これだと、『ファクツ』は、この即席のイラク市民防衛隊の兵士が、もちろん、自分達が死ぬことも予測しているけれど、要点は、それをネタに冗談会話をしていることであって。この人ら、ヒマなんですね。で、その『レトリック』は今度は『resistance fighters』になっているんですが？
それで、この市民防衛隊の人たちが話したもっとも恐ろしいことが、米軍特殊部隊に『ゲリラと間違われて』殺されかけたこと、というのは、笑えます。もっとも、その当事者にすれば笑い事じゃないけれど。
Like soldiers anywhere, they complain most about what they don't have: cars, radios, bulletproof vests, new uniforms, boots and, in a town where attacks have tripled since July, more ammunition. They trade stories about close calls, most hauntingly about the time they came under fire from Special Forces troops a month ago.
Versions of the story conflict. Jackson, acknowledging the sequence of events was "a little sketchy," said the civil defense patrol traded fire with a dozen or so looters at the rail yards. A Special Forces unit arrived and started shooting. In the end, Jackson said, three or four members of the 3rd Patrol were wounded. Yusuf and his colleagues put the number at five.
"Some guys got caught in cross-fire. It was nothing intentional," Jackson said. "There was a lot of confusion. In war, sometimes that happens. War doesn't go perfectly. My concern was taking care of them and their families. That was my concern."
Yusuf and his colleagues acknowledged that the wounded were taken to a U.S. military hospital and given the best care possible. But they dispute the contention that looters were present or that they fired before being shot at. They insist the Special Forces soldiers mistook them for guerrillas. In a fusillade of fire that one of them compared to a horror movie, they said they ran for cover, scattering their lunch of potatoes, tomatoes and bread. Trails of blood, blackened by time, are still smeared across the train platform.
"We were yelling, 'Civil defense! Civil defense!' " said Khalaf, the unit's leader.
One of their colleagues, Alaa Nasser, 21, was critically wounded in both legs and remains in a hospital in Baghdad. His colleagues said he needs $425 for an operation. The four others have yet to return to work.
"Only Rambo could have handled the situation," Awad said.
さて、問題の『千ドル』ですが、
Jackson put his recruits through three weeks of training -- drilling, marksmanship, first aid and basic combat skills. "And I'm talking basic combat skills," he said. He dealt with the language barrier and even established some camaraderie with the recruits -- some call him captain or general, whichever sounds more senior. He faces no target number for enlistment, but was told to work as fast as he could and recruit as many people as possible. He said he felt induction was proceeding at "the right pace," but that, in the end, it wasn't up to him.
"What's to say what's too fast? I don't know," Jackson said. "That's the thousand-dollar question. What's too fast?"
Either way, he said, the goal remained the same -- to turn authority over to Iraqis sooner rather than later.
ここ、面倒なので全訳します。
ジャクソン（中佐）は応募してきた兵士を三週間訓練する。教練と、射撃の初歩、救急医療、格闘術の初歩。『私は、格闘術の初歩を担当しています。』中佐は言葉の壁をなんとかして、彼らと仲間意識まで、ある程度築いている。だから、中佐を『大尉』とか、『将軍』とか、適当によさげに聞こえる名前で呼ぶ者もいるのだ。中佐の募集人員には数値目標はない。しかし、できるだけ多くの人を、できるだけはやく集める様に指示されている。中佐によると、今の所『正しい速度で』進んでいると思うというが、結局の所、それを決めるのは中佐ではないのだ。
『早すぎるって、なんだんね？わからん。』と中佐は言う。
『難しすぎる。早すぎるってのは何？』中佐によれば、早すぎるにせよ、しないにせよ、イラク人へ政権をできるだけ早く渡すという目標は同じだ。
この、million dollar questionというのは、『問題が大きすぎて、普通の人は答えを知らないだろう』ということです。このジャクソン中佐はそういう『難しい』ことは苦手みたいで、もうちょっと現実的なことに興味をもつ人みたいですね。だから、ここは切れ味よく言い返しているのではなくて、そういうことはわからん、と言っているだけなんです。
