Never, I would have never thought this to be possible. Iraq has never known anything like that and that despite Her being bloodily invaded before by barbarians...
But never that way, never like this... Never.
I am even too sad to write...What is there to say?
I find myself strangulated by grief, silenced beyond words, sliding into consternation and disbelief...
I find myself torn inside as if a thousand daggers have transpierced me...
I wonder what God feels...I want to tell Him, Her, It...
The war is in its fifth year, and still, Bush has not produced anything even vaguely resembling a political solution. He is utterly clueless.
The world’s oldest civilization is being destroyed before our eyes — its cities laid to waste, its people slaughtered by the tens of thousands. Saddam never could have dreamed of devastation on this scale. We’ve ruined everything. Truckloads of dead men are delivered to the Baghdad morgue every morning where they are processed and then dumped in mass graves in abandoned soccer fields or schoolyards. 20 percent of the population has either been internally displaced or forced to flee into Jordan and Syria. In Falluja alone, 65 percent of the buildings have been destroyed and tens of thousands of its citizens are left living in tent cities scattered across the desert — exposed to the elements, living on crusts of bread and foul water. The number of refugees has risen rapidly; 2 million in Amman, Damascus and Cairo. They go wherever they can to avoid the bombing and find safety or hselter.
The Iraqi people are now facing what Juan Cole calls an "everyday apocalypse" — a complete security meltdown in which crime and terror flourish in the seedbed of foreign occupation. Bush’s war has created the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time — 700,000 dead, millions more maimed or traumatized for life, and an entire country reduced to rubble.
Mike Whitney | Iraqis to Bush: "You have left us with nothing"
Dear One, I am so sorry. They have not only destroyed our homes, but they have destroyed Yours as well...
Where are we to go now Dear One? Which refuge? Which direction? Where do we turn? What are we to face?
The roofs have fallen and the skies are uncovered...
And we are like fugitives, running...Looking behind us, in front of us, above us with a sky wide open over our heads and an earth ready to swallow us any moment...
Is there anywhere at all where a Red Line has not been crossed?
From the moment I knocked on the front door of Daoud Mousa al-Maliki's home in Basra, I knew something had gone terribly wrong in the British Army in southern Iraq.
I had seen British military brutality in Northern Ireland - I had even been threatened by British officers in Belfast - but I somehow thought that things had changed, that a new, more disciplined army had emerged from the dark, sinister days of the Irish conflict. But I was wrong. Baha Mousa, Daoud's son, had died from the injuries he received in British custody, a young, decent man whose father was a cop, who did nothing worse than work as a receptionist in a Basra hotel.
Then I went to see Kifah Taha, who had been so badly beaten by British troops in the presence of Baha Mousa that he had terrible wounds in the groin. He told me how the soldiers would call their Iraqi prisoners by the names of football stars - Beckham was one name they used - before kicking them around the detention headquarters in Basra. There were stories of Iraqi prisoners being forced to kneel on sharp stones, of being kicked and punched in the groin, the kidneys, the back, shoulders, forced to sit with their heads down lavatory holes.
Robert Fisk | A cry for justice from a good man who expected us to protect his son
We run and run and there are no lines we have not crossed. No borders, no frontiers...
We run and run and they follow us everywhere...Right into our temple within, our temple without, into our beds, into our sleep, into our dreams...into our prayers...
Not a minaret, not a dome, not a church door...Nothing has been left untouched...
I imagine the Iraqi people will react with anger and shame. Many will blame the United States for bringing this on them, because they brought the war and these leaders and the destruction of the Iraqi society they knew. For many Americans, that will be hard to comprehend, especially since American soldiers carried these boys in their arms and saved their lives.
Lara Logan | Clinging To Life In A Baghdad Orphanage
What intrigues me, despite Lara Logan's insight above and the rescue of these children, is the egregious mendacity with which CBS portrays naive agents of an occupying power that has had five years to secure the Iraqi capital and protect its people and infrastructure — in accordance with Article 32 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as heroes.
In short, throughout its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, it was and remains the United States's responsibility to ensure that such atrocities do not occur.
There's no evading it. The U.S. military, its commander-in-chief, and all U.S. public and private institutions and persons supporting the Iraqi puppet regime, are responsible for the conditions in which these kids find themselves. And by deception through distortion, the U.S. media is as guilty of perpetrating this small war crime — redolent of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu's Romania — as their political masters.
But no mind. Far worse has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen as long as one U.S. soldier remains on Iraqi or any other sovereign nation's soil.
We stand, raise our hands to the sky and we receive fire bombs falling into our arms, against our chests, crushing us...
We bow down and repeat the sacred name and arrows pierce our backs in a ritual ablution of blood...
We prostrate down and touch the earth with our foreheads and mines explode in our faces...
Is there anywhere Dear One, that is no Red Line - Anywhere at all?
Layla Anwar | -/- A Red Line -/-
Unfortunately, while Americans sleep, nope.
