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I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...


American Heroes...
I'm feeling sick- literally. I can't get the video Al-Jazeera played out of my head:

The mosque strewn with bodies of Iraqis- not still with prayer or meditation, but prostrate with death- Some seemingly bloated… an old man with a younger one leaning upon him… legs, feet, hands, blood everywhere… The dusty sun filtering in through the windows… the stillness of the horrid place. Then the stillness is broken- in walk some marines, guns pointed at the bodies... the mosque resonates with harsh American voices arguing over a body- was he dead, was he alive? I watched, tense, wondering what they would do- I expected the usual Marines treatment- that a heavy, booted foot would kick the man perhaps to see if he groaned. But it didn't work that way- the crack of gunfire suddenly explodes in the mosque as the Marine fires at the seemingly dead man and then come the words, "He's dead now."

"He's dead now." He said it calmly, matter-of-factly, in a sort of sing-song voice that made my blood run cold… and the Marines around him didn't care. They just roamed around the mosque and began to drag around the corpses because, apparently, this was nothing to them. This was probably a commonplace incident.

We sat, horrified, stunned with the horror of the scene that unfolded in front of our eyes. It's the third day of Eid and we were finally able to gather as a family- a cousin, his wife and their two daughters, two aunts, and an elderly uncle. E. and my cousin had been standing in line for two days to get fuel so we could go visit the elderly uncle on the final day of a very desolate Eid. The room was silent at the end of the scene, with only the voice of the news anchor and the sobs of my aunt. My little cousin flinched and dropped her spoon, face frozen with shock, eyes wide with disbelief, glued to the television screen, "Is he dead? Did they kill him?" I swallowed hard, trying to gulp away the lump lodged in my throat and watched as my cousin buried his face in his hands, ashamed to look at his daughter.

"What was I supposed to tell them?" He asked, an hour later, after we had sent his two daughters to help their grandmother in the kitchen. "What am I supposed to tell them- 'Yes darling, they killed him- the Americans killed a wounded man; they are occupying our country, killing people and we are sitting here eating, drinking and watching tv'?" He shook his head, "How much more do they have to see? What is left for them to see?"

They killed a wounded man. It's hard to believe. They killed a man who was completely helpless- like he was some sort of diseased animal. I had read the articles and heard the stories of this happening before- wounded civilians being thrown on the side of the road or shot in cold blood- but to see it happening on television is something else- it makes me crazy with anger.

And what will happen now? A criminal investigation against a single Marine who did the shooting? Just like what happened with the Abu Ghraib atrocities? A couple of people will be blamed and the whole thing will be buried under the rubble of idiotic military psychologists, defense analysts, Pentagon officials and spokespeople and it will be forgotten. In the end, all anyone will remember is that a single Marine shot and killed a single Iraqi 'insurgent' and it won't matter anymore.

It's typical American technique- every single atrocity is lost and covered up by blaming a specific person and getting it over with. What people don't understand is that the whole military is infested with these psychopaths. In this last year we've seen murderers, torturers and xenophobes running around in tanks and guns. I don't care what does it: I don't care if it's the tension, the fear, the 'enemy'… it's murder. We are occupied by murderers. We're under the same pressure, as Iraqis, except that we weren't trained for this situation, and yet we're all expected to be benevolent and understanding and, above all, grateful. I'm feeling sick, depressed and frightened. I don't know what to say anymore… they aren't humans and they don't deserve any compassion.

So why is the world so obsessed with beheadings? How is this so very different? The difference is that the people who are doing the beheadings are extremists… the people slaughtering Iraqis- torturing in prisons and shooting wounded prisoners- are "American Heroes". Congratulations, you must be so proud of yourselves today.

Mykeru.com has pictures.

Excuse me please, I'm going to go be sick for a little while.

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- posted by river @ 9:37 PM

HOW WEIRD

LOL



DrunkMonkey wrote:

How wierd

Sorry?

@Tahliba

Bush and his friend Bliarhave apparently concluded that they can crush the Iraqi people’s will to resist occupation and legitimise a puppet regime next January by occupying Fallujah. its so stupid how these guys and their advisors think maybe they imagine they can emulate the British forces that terrorised Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1920s by obliterating recalcitrant villages.

and US generals will no doubt deliver Fallujah to Bush and Blair after bombarding its neighbourhoods with artillery and rockets and you dont need tobe a NASA scientist to know that they are doomed to deliver neither the Fallujans nor the people of Iraq pehaps they are unaware that Fallujans defied Saddam’s rule during his last years in power. Fallujah — known as the city of a thousand mosques — attracted Saddam’s wrath in 1998 when its imams refused to hail the tyrant in their Friday sermons of course many were imprisoned, and the city punished as a result but the generals certainly do know how resistance began in Fallujah. sometimes early 2003 US soldiers opened fire on parents and children demonstrating against the continued military occupation of their primary school — killing them in cold blood and injuring about others until the killing of those demonstrators, not a single bullet had been fired at US soldiers in Falluja or any of the cities north of Baghdad. But, remorselessly, little-known Fallujah became a world-renowned centre of defiance, where a poor and poorly armed people has courageously faced the military wing of the new empire (both British and American)now they want to crush the symbol of Fallujah, to teach the rest of Iraq a bloody lesson. Another pyrrhic victory is likely to be added to an already long list

Its funny that the occupation forces have now reverted to their initial ploy of attacking cities north of Baghdad, while reaching ceasefires with some Baghdad districts and southern cities. Presumably, they see this as an effective divide-and-rule tactic(i am sure The BRITISH are teaching Americans this) but it is likely to prove as futile as the rest of their plans for post-invasion Iraq and its in reality, merely a battle postponed. Iraq’s history, reaffirmed by events since the US-led occupation, shows that its people’s unity is stronger than differences based on religion, sect, ethnicity or national identity. That was demonstrated on Sunday when a senior Kurdish officer with the token US-commanded Iraqi force besieging Fallujah deserted within half an hour of being shown the plans to occupy the city and the US and British governments could do worse than digest the old Chinese proverb:"They lift a stone to drop it on their own feet." For they might have occupied Iraq and succeeded in lifting some of its heavy stones, but the stones will inevitably come crashing down on their feet

SF

Thanks but that was out of context I assure you. I posted that on a thread about one womans death in the middle of a war to make the point that it wasnt important.

I certainly wouldnt have said that here (no way!!). This is in fact WHY I felt that the one woman eveyone is lamenting is unimportant. Many many more suffering.