When we posted about Bilal's "Domestic Tension" project, plus his more recent project where he inserts himself into an anti-George Bush video game, reaction among io9 readers was definitely split, with several people lambasting Bilal for cheap sensationalism.

So it's interesting to read Bilal's own account of his creative process, which starts from his feelings of constant trauma. Imprisoned by Saddam, Bilal managed to escape to the U.S., but his family stayed behind in Iraq. He writes about running for his life on several occasions, but also reading the news about Iraq with a punch-in-the-gut feeling. He also talks about his guilt about living in the "comfort zone" of the U.S. while his family and friends suffered, and his desire to bridge the "comfort zone" and "conflict zone" somehow. He also was inspired by the U.S. Army using video games as a major recruiting tool.

In the book, the story of Bilal's art installation is interspersed with his account of growing up in Iraq and feeling constantly surrounded by madness. He talks about his father going insane when he was a child, and how his father was abusive or psychotic even when he wasn't pretending to be a sheep. Later, an "epidemic of insanity" hits his town of Kufa later, as young people pretended to be insane to get out of fighting in the Iran-Iraq war. How can you tell the difference between a real insane person and a fake one? For those who are faking insanity, it's an act "born out of desperation," he writes. Later, Bilal's brother kills a man who raped him, and Bilal's family has to flee their town or face revenge killings.

As the book goes on, Bilal's project gets more and more famous, and the book becomes more of an exploration of cyberculture and gaming culture. After about a week, the site runs out of bandwidth, and the project almost grinds to a halt — but a Chicago web developer steps in and donates a dedicated server, becoming one of the project's main sponsors. The constant stress, loneliness and grief starts to take a toll on Bilal, who hides his tears from the webcam. And then there are moments like this one:

A tall, fresh-faced young man with a crew cut ambles into the gallery. His name is Matt Schmidt, and he tells me that until recently he was a U.S. Marine. He saw the YouTube video where Estonia killed the lamp, and how upset I had become. He holds out a plastic bag. "I got you a new lamp and some light bulps," he tells me. "I figured you can use all the help you can get."

Matt says he never thought much about the consequences of killing in war. He says he and his fellow Marines were always too busy trying to survive to be worried about their targets. But the paintball project has made him see things in a different light, enabled him to see his adversaries as human beings. He wishes his Marine buddies could visit the gallery.

In general, the onslaught is furious, traumatizing and overwhelming — and that's before Bilal's site hits on Digg. "I survived Digg day," Bilal writes. People spread rumors the site is a fake and Bilal is animatronic.

If you want to see just how surreal online culture can get — and get a taste of where confrontational art is heading in the future — you should totally pick up a copy of Shoot An Iraqi.

Last year, Bilal spent a month living inside Chicago's Flatfile Gallery, with a webcam observing him 24/7. And visitors to the gallery's website could control a paintball gun and shoot at Bilal or his possessions. During the month "Domestic Tension" was going on, the site got more than 80 million hits, 65,000 paintballs were fired, and the site received 2,000 comments ranging from racial slurs to encouragement.

Since the project ended, Bilal has been unable to sleep without sleeping pills, because it brought back his post-traumatic stress from years of living under threat in Iraq. Persecuted and arrested by Saddam Hussein for his work, Bilal fled Iraq and came to the United States in 1991. He's now teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. On the positive side, a group called Virtual Human Shield managed to take control over the paintball gun by visiting the site constantly for a whole week.

Now Bilal is causing controversy again, by inserting his image into an Al Qaeda-created video game called "The Night Of Bush Capturing," in which Jihadis hunt down the U.S. President and kill him. Bilal says he wants to explore themes of civilians' complicity in warfare, and the tendency of civilians to support whichever side is more powerful at the moment:

My character in the game will be like any Iraqi civilian on the ground, allying with the power which is dominant at the moment. At the beginning of the game the American soldiers are stronger than Al Qaeda, and I will ally with them, fighting Al Qaeda. But as the game progresses and Al Qaeda becomes more powerful, I will switch sides to fight on behalf of Al Qaeda. That is exactly what is happening in Iraq. The game will culminate with my revenge on the Bush administration for the destruction it has wrought on my country. I will be a suicide bomber who attacks Bush.

Not surprisingly, Bilal has been condemned as un-American by Republicans, and his show has been closed down twice, both times after just a day. He says he's not trying to be shocking for its own sake, but to get past our apathy and image overload about the war in Iraq. And video games are the perfect medium:

Because video games have become the medium of our time, so many people use this popular medium to convey a message. With video games, people are engaged beyond art, their senses are engaged.