New Evidence Confirms US Used Death Squads to Manufacture Civil War in Iraq

An Iraqi prisoner of war comforts his son at a center for
prisoners of war captured by the US army near Najaf
in March 2003. Photograph: Jean-Marc Bouju/AP

Today, almost 2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed, and at least 5 million displaced from their homes as a direct result of the most Orwellian mission ever created: "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Remember, there are indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure, as well.

Now, there is clear evidence that, in the aftermath of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US government, military and CIA organized death squads of up to 12,000 men for the purpose of torturing and slaughtering Iraqi civilians, night after night, in order to defeat the Iraqi resistance. Believe it or not, Iraq had no history of sectarian clashes.

“Iraq is not a sectarian society. People are intermarried. Shi’is and Sunnis marry each other…Some from the militias and death squads want a civil war (but) there has never been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke a civil war? The Americans will say that it’s al Qaida or the Sunni insurgents; it is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do; the occupation authorities.” --Robert Fisk, “Somebody is trying to provoke a Civil War in Iraq”

In Baghdad, up to a hundred bodies a day were dumped on the streets. Often they’ve been tortured with electric drills. Yet those doing the killing have little to do with al Qaeda or Sunni insurgents. The majority of the killings are carried out by US controlled Shia death squads, who have systematically infiltrated and taken over police units and even entire government ministeries. The killers act with impunity and there’s little investigation into their activities.

“A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centres in Iraq. Another special forces veteran, Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had been sent into Iraq to organise the Iraqi security services

Links:

The Myth of the Surge

“One of the enduring myths of the Iraq War is that George W. Bush’s “surge” of 30,000 US troops into Iraq in 2007, reduced the number of attacks on US troops and effectively defeated the Sunni-led insurgency in Baghdad. This is entirely false. The surge was largely a public relations campaign that was designed to conceal the activities of US-funded and trained Shia death squads that were killing or expelling millions of Sunnis from Baghdad in what turned out to be one the greatest incidents of ethnic cleansing in the modern era. While the MSM still refuses to acknowledge what was actually taking place on the ground even before Bush deployed his meager 22,000 US troops to Baghdad, a disturbing article in last week’s Guardian helps to connect the dots.

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Remember All The Children, Mr. President.

Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights posted the following:

Remember All the Children, Mr. President
Including those whose lives were destroyed by United States policies, actions and inaction.
by Bill Quigley

"Remember the 20 children who died in Newtown Connecticut.

Remember the 35 children who died in Gaza this month from Israeli bombardments.

Remember the 168 children who have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan since 2006.

Remember the 231 children killed in Afghanistan in the first 6 months of this year.

Remember the 400 other children in the US under the age of 15 who die from gunshot wounds each year.

Remember the 921 children killed by US air strikes against insurgents in Iraq.

Remember the 1,770 US children who die each year from child abuse and maltreatment.

Remember the 16,000 children who die each day around the world from hunger.

These tragedies must end.

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What's Really Going on in Syria?

As most of us already know, the US has been calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s removal from power and Washington has already admitted to providing logistical and communication assistance to militants in Syria. Now, US intelligence agencies have detected that Assad's government is preparing its chemical weapons stockpile for possible use. Of course, that conveniently follows Hilary Clinton's chemical weapons red-line rhetoric. The "there will be consequences" hype echos loud and clear, reminiscent of the Bush administration's false “weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” pretext for the Iraq War. Meanwhile, there are 17 US Warships and thousands of US soldiers near the Syrian coast.

"It is in close proximity to the coast of Syria. On board the ship are 70 fighter-bombers and a total 8,000 US servicemen."

However, despite what we see and hear from our officials and the mainstream media "news" outlets, the Syrian government claims that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country. You may not believe that, but consider this: President Bashar Al-Assad, a former physician who said, "Syria faces not a civil war, but terrorism by proxies," banned GMOs in food ‘to preserve the health of human beings.' Now, does that sound like someone who doesn't care about his people?  Even if he doesn't give a damn about innocent human life, anyone with the slightest bit of common sense knows that to use those chemical weapons would be tantamount to suicide.

The reality is right now that fear mongering, media manipulation and creating pretexts for regime change are just as prevalent, if not increased since the last administration.

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More Soldiers Dying From Suicide than Combat.

Suicides are sky-rocketing among the 1.4 million active-duty military personnel , averaging one per day since the beginning of 2012, the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war. That's not counting all the soldiers who have come home. Once they are discharged, they immediately begin falling through the cracks, so much so that it’s doubtful there are any accurate numbers on suicide rates among veterans of recent wars. One thing we do know is that the numbers are very high.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of 2012 far outnumber U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

Kim Ruocco, widow of Marine Maj. John Ruocco, a helicopter pilot who hanged himself in 2005 between Iraq deployments, said he was unable to bring himself to go for help.

"He was so afraid of how people would view him once he went for help," she said in an interview at her home in suburban Boston. "He thought that people would think he was weak, that people would think he was just trying to get out of redeploying or trying to get out of service, or that he just couldn't hack it - when, in reality, he was sick. He had suffered injury in combat and he had also suffered from depression and let it go untreated for years. And because of that, he's dead today."

One man responded to the article:

I was very moved by this article. Being a soldier who was made a example after I reported I was having problems and suicidal. The military has not changed since my discharge 20 years ago.Recently I was forced to use the military confidential line and was first hung up on, then put on hold, and finally told to call back Monday. This was a crisis line. To my horror after obtaining a copy of my medical records for treatment and services outside the VA medical system. There was a note by my doctor saying I made a call and was "Babbleing". I have still not been seen nor helped with this problem(s).That General lied, and the VA doesnt care. Just pick up the phone and call the confidential number. I cannot explain the cost of my reporting being suicidal as a active duty soldier. But it ruined my life. If your in the service your best off doing it and dont live as I am and have been.Thank you for this article and getting the word out. I will be more than happy to share my medical records publicly for any doubters.

Is it any wonder that so many take their lives after they find out they're fighting a global war for corporate plunder by those who profit from death and destruction?

War Is A Racket - Smedley Butler, 1935

Who Pays The Bills?

[T]he soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement -- the young boys couldn't stand it.

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Déjà vu: Lies About “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and "Terrorism"

Remember the exchange between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and President Barack Obama that went out on an open microphone?

Sarkozy: “I can’t stand (Netanyahu) any more. He’s a liar.”
Obama: “You're sick of him? I have to deal with him every day.”

Well, could that have something to do with Iran? Because anyone who's paying attention knows that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu   continues to ratchet up the warnings about Iran, nukes, and the end of the world; meanwhile President Obama is supposedly doing his best quiet the bellicose old fool, asking him for a commitment not to launch a unilateral attack against Iran.

Iran is the new Iraq. It's no secret that the Israelis have been using the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) terrorists - trained, financed and armed by Israel's Mossad - against Iran. Yet, the claim is that the bombing incidents in India, Thailand and Georgia were targeting Israeli diplomats, so, of course, Israel is on high alert. The clear message is: if we - US and Israel - don’t act soon, Iran will get nuclear weapons, which will, most assuredly, bring about Armageddon.

That is, despite the fact that Iran has never started a war; despite the fact that Iran’s nuclear energy program is regularly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency; despite fact that the US possess 10,600 nuclear warheads, while  Israel possesses hundred; despite the fact that Israel, unlike Iran, refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into Israel to monitor its nuclear program.

It wasn't all that long ago that the Bush administration created false links connecting Iraq to 9/11 and Niger uranium. The propaganda campaign designed to demonize Iran as Israel prepares for, or even better for them, convinces the US to attack is in full swing. But, then again, Iran has even more oil than Iraq - fourth largest oil reserve in the world. Hence, the déjà vu situation: the demonization of Iran as a threat to world security.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Related Links:

U.S./NATO bombers massacre children in eastern Afghanistan – once again!

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Point. Click. Kill. US Drone Strikes Target Civilians in Coward's War.

It's no secret that Nobel Peace laureate, President Obama has increased the frequency of drone strikes well beyond what former President Bush did, as they have been used with regularity, since he took office.  From the battlefields of Iraq, to Afghanistan, well situated for oil and gas pipelines, to tribal areas in Pakistan, from the comfort of their environmentally controlled offices, military forces, and the CIA are employing the use of drones with impunity.  According to the Brookings Institute, the US has 7,000 drones in operation and 12,000 more on the ground.

One military robotics researcher told Peter Singer, the author of Wired for War, “We modeled the controller after the PlayStation because that’s what these eighteen-, nineteen-year-old Marines have been playing with pretty much all of their lives.”

Just one week ago, January 31, President Obama (see video below) made the claim that the drone strikes, under his administration - 260 - have "not caused a huge number of of civilian casualties", and he went on to exalt the exceptional proficiency, and precision of unmanned aircraft, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Since 2009, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 175 children. Is that a huge number?  Well, imagine it's American citizens who have died as a result of another country's drone strikes.



However, the huge numbers of civilian casualties, is only part of the story.  According to a recent report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, civilian rescuers are being targeted! At least 50 civilians died as a result of follow-up strikes.

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.

The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”. . . .

A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama.

There have been 260 attacks by unmanned Predators or Reapers in Pakistan by Obama’s administration – averaging one every four days.

Why is it a coward's war?

Precisely because we are arbitrarily waging undeclared, trillions-of-dollars, so-called  "wars", without actually having any "skin in the game." Engaging state-of-the-art stealthy pilotless vehicles that murder people - halfway around the world - by joy-stick without any risk to ourselves is cowardly and contemptible. Point. Click. Kill. How long  before our own enemies have the same capability? How long before the decision to kill is ceded by a machine (talk about accountability issues)?

Related Links:

Afghan civilian death toll reaches record high

The civilian death toll for the war in Afghanistan reached a record high last year with 3,021 deaths, according to the United Nations.

The number killed rose by 8% last year – the fifth consecutive rise – with a further 4,507 civilians wounded, the UN report said. Many were killed by roadside bombs or in suicide attacks, with Taliban-affiliated militants responsible for three-quarters of the deaths.

Read more...

Video-Game-Style Warfare: Terror From the Skies.

How can you create a war on terror when you're the biggest terrorist of all? The U.S. military and the CIA are terrorizing the skies with more and more unmanned missile-armed drones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. To be sure, it won't be long before America is added to that list.

America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases: Its Full Extent Revealed for the First Time

A ground-breaking investigation examines the most secret aspect of America's shadowy drone wars and maps out a world of hidden bases dotting the globe.

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Sounds of Silence Technologies and Nervous System Manipulations and HDTV.

By now, most people are familiar with the terms, 'neuromarketing' and 'neuroeconomics', and most people have heard of the CIA mind control research program that lasted from the 1950s through the 1970s, called Project MK-ULTRA.   These experiments were often conducted without the subjects' knowledge or consent.

To be sure, whatever was discovered some 50-years ago is considered child's play, today, as we live in a era of exponential technological growth with no end in sight. In fact, psychotrnic weapons, which are non-lethal weapons that use electromagnetic waves to effect the "human nervous system and brain, altering emotional states and behavior" dates back to the 1930s. 

In January, 1991, in the first Gulf War, Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS) waves were used against Iraqi troops to cause mass surrender (without a shot being fired) of thousands of Iraqi troops from underground bunkers in Kuwait and Iraq.

The physical, emotional, and psychological effects of this technology were so severe that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops surrended en masse without firing even a single shot against US led coalition forces. The numbers reported in the news were staggering: 75,000 and then annother 125,000 (or more) Iraqi troops would come out of their deep desert bunkers waving white flags and falling to their knees before approaching US troops and literally kiss their captor’s boots or hands if given the opportunity.

The technology called FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance) Patent for ssss waves

USP # 6,488,617 (December 3, 2002)

Title: Nervous System Manipulation by EM Fields from Monitors.

Issued to: Loos, Hendricus.

Abstract: Physiological effects have been observed in a human subject in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near 1/2 Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance.

Many computer monitors and HD TV screens, when displaying pulsed images, emit pulsed electromagnetic fields of sufficient amplitudes to cause such excitation. It is therefore possible to manipulate the nervous system of a subject by pulsing images displayed on a nearby computer monitor or DIGITAL TV set. For the latter, the image pulsing may be embedded in the program material, or it may be overlaid by modulating a video stream, either as an RF signal or as a video signal.
The image displayed on a computer monitor may be pulsed effectively by a simple computer program.

For certain monitors, pulsed electromagnetic fields capable of exciting sensory resonances in nearby subjects may be generated even as the displayed images are pulsed with subliminal intensity.

The following is from a study published by the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The section titled “Incapacitation Effect: Microwave Hearing,” reads as follows:

Microwave hearing is a phenomenon, described by human observer as the sensations of buzzing, ticking, hissing or knocking sounds that originate within or immediately behind the head. There is no sound propagating through the air like normal sound. This technology in its crudest form could be used to distract individuals: if refined, it could also be used to communicate with hostages or hostage taken directly by Morse code or other message systems, possibly even by voice communications.

Application of the microwave hearing technology could facilitate a private message transmission. It may be useful to provide a disruptive condition to a person not aware of the technology. Not only might it be disruptive to the sense of hearing, it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard “voices within one’s head.”

Congressman Dennis Kucinich attempted to ban “non-lethal” weapons in (HR2977), Space Preservation Act of 2001.

Links:

“Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons,” U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), 17 February 1998

This addendum to Nonlethal Technologies -- Worldwide (NGIC-1147-101-98) study addresses, in summary, some of the most often asked about questions of non-lethal weapons technology, the physiological responses observed in clinical settings of the biophysical coupling and susceptibility of personnel to nonlethal effects weapons.

We are moving ever closer to the era of mind control

Books:

"Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard, 1957

“Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” by Jerry Manders 1977

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$18.7 Billion Missing From Bush's Plane Full of $20 Billion in Shrink-Wrapped Cash

Six years, and three audits later, the US still cannot account for $18.7 billion of the $20 billion that George W, shrink-wrapped, stuffed into a C 130, and then hurled it like a ho for turning free tricks, overseas to Iraq for distribution. Oh, you thought it was $6.6 billion that went missing? Wrong. That figure has now tripled.

This was money that had come from Iraqi development fund - oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.  Moreover, the documents of expenditure are missing. Who got it, where it was spent, or whether anything was actually built with the money is "unknown".  Yeah right, you can make a good faith bet that someone knows.   Just like someone knows where the $2.3 trillion missing, reported on 9/10/01, went. Such a coincidence that the very next day, three towers -- probably containing much of that information --  and thousands of people --  who most certainly had a clue -- dissolve into dust.

The bottom line is that the American government was responsible for safeguarding that money, and they did not. Yet, a bank-teller's drawer, is found to be one penny short, or over (as I learned long ago), and that person can potentially go to jail. Yes...to jail, if it's found out that he or she added or took a penny to break even.

Billions, and trillions of dollars go missing on a regular basis, since W entered office, and it's no big deal?!? Come on people! How much evidence do you need to figure out that stone-cold, straight up gangster thugs, rollin' deep, and bustin' caps in anyone who gets in their way, transformed the United States of America into their own personal Babylon? That is, if there ever was a United States of America. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

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President George H.W. Bush Found Guilty of War Crimes?

Did you know about the International Tribunal that found former President George H.W. Bush guilty of 19 war crimes in his Iraq war? Because of  his war's "destruction of Iraq, killing at least 125,000 persons directly by its bombing while proclaiming its own combat losses as 148, and because it destroyed the economic base of Iraq and because its acts are still inflicting consequential deaths that may reach hundreds of thousands."

It's true.  On February 29, 1992, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium in New York, a 22 member International War Crimes Tribunal representing 5 continents, before a public meeting of 1,500 people (completely blocked out by the media in America) headed by former United States Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, wrapped up 12 months of gathering and reviewing evidence of the the Initial Complaint of the Commission of Inquiry dated May 6, 1991 against President George H. W. Bush, Vice President J. Danforth Quayle, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and others named in the Complaint charging them with 19 separate crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the First Protocol thereto, and other international agreements and customary international law.

The Tribunal found George Bush and others in his administration guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Okay, am I the only one who missed this historic event?

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Bombing Civilians to Save Them?

"Nearly 100 civilians have been killed so far in the airstrikes launched by major Western powers," Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said in the capital Tripoli on Thursday. Really? I wonder how many civilians are dead, almost three days later.

What sort of "humanitarian bombing" campaign kills or injures far more than it saves?   I mean, we're told that Qadhafi forces are bombing the country's hospitals. But, where is the supporting evidence?  Why do we accept what the mainstream media reports as if they're not controlled by the same powers bombing whoever they deem,  profitable?

"This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years. Starting with Iraq, Syria, then Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off, Iran." -- General Wesley Clark, March 2, 2007

Links:

Canadian pilots abort bombing over risk to civilians

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The Treasonous Billionaires Are the Real Terrorists.

On September 15, 2007, Iraq veteran Mike Prysner (left), after an anti-war march from The White House to The Capitol Building, and ended up as one of over 160 people arrested;  in his case, for crossing U.S. Capitol Police, that were blocking access to The Capitol Building. during a mass "die-in".

On the sixth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, Mike Prysner, gave a powerful speech (video below), revealing who the real terrorists are, at an event sponsored by Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW) called “Winter Soldier”. 

"And I tried hard to be proud of my service but all I could feel was shame. The racism could not longer mask the reality of the occupation. These were people. These were human beings.

I've since been claimed by guilt anytime I see an elderly man like the one who couldn't walk and we rolled out on a stretcher and told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt anytime I see a mother with her children like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worst than Saddam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt anytime I see a young girl, like the one I grabbed by the arm, and dragged into the street.

We are told we are fighting terrorists; the real terrorist was me, and the real terrorism is this occupation.

Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. It's long been used to justify the killing, subjugation and torture of another people. Racism is a vital weapon employed by this government. It's a more important weapon than a rifle, a tank, a bomber or a battleship. It's more destructive than an artillery shell or a bunker buster, or a Tomahawk missile. While those weapons are created and owned by this government, they are harmless without people willing to use them.

Those who send us to war do not have to pull a trigger or lob a mortar round. They do not have to fight the war, they merely have to sell the war. They need a public who is willing to send their soldiers into harm's way. They need soldiers who are willing to kill and be killed without question. They can spend millions on a single bomb, but that bomb only becomes a weapon when the ranks in the military are willing to follow orders to use it. They can send every last soldier anywhere on Earth, but there'll only be a war, if soldiers are willing to fight. And the ruling class, the billionaires who profit from human suffering care only about expending their wealth, controlling the world economy. Understand that their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression and exploitation is in our interest. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country. And, convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us think that we are somehow superior.

Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, have nothing to gain from this occupation. The vast majority of people living in the U.S. have nothing to gain from this occupation. In fact, not only do we have nothing to gain, but we suffer more because of it. We lose limbs, endure trauma and give our lives.

Our families have to watch flag draped coffins roll into the earth. Millions in this country without health care, jobs or access to education, just watch as this government squander over $450 million dollars a day on this occupation.

Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in other country to make the rich richer.

Without racism soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.

I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country and this tragic…tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis.

We need to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land and not people whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, is the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable, is the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable.  Our enemy is not five thousands miles away, they are right here at home. If we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers we can stop this war, we can stop this government and we can create a better world. -- Mike Prysner

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy... The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger real or imagined from abroad..." - James Madison - Edité par Phaedrus

Mike Prysner's testimony:





Los Angeles anti-war demonstration, 8th anniversary of Iraq invasion:

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Hope Knows an Injustice Visited on our Neighbor is an Injustice Visited on Us All.

In Pakistan, civilians have no choice but to cope with a drone war that has turned merciless, as  unprecedented’ drone assaults - 58 Strikes in 102 days - continues on without an official figure of how many civilians have died as a result of the unmanned missile strikes.  Strikes, which President Obama has more than doubled since the remote attacks started, despite the United Nation's urging to rein in , the "once-limited, once-covert program to off senior terrorist leaders that has morphed into a full-scale — if undeclared — war in Pakistan".

So, now, that we can do war by remote control, it's easy for us, as Americans, nestled in our mostly taken-for-granted creature comforts, to keep a positive attitude and pretend that that is enough to save our country...the world from those who want to take it over with no thought for anyone but  themselves.  It's not enough.

However, thankfully, there are brave people who realize that something must be done.  One of those people is Chris Hedges, who demonstrated the courage to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, to vindicate the rights of all who are left desolate,” and who consequently, was arrested yesterday, along with 130 other people, including Daniel Ellsberg, at the Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War event.

In the video below, Hedges gives a speech on how to keep hope alive, and it will not be kept alive, in his words, by "trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama".



Chis Hedges' speech:

"Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It will not be realized by chanting packaged campaign slogans or attempting to influence the democratic party.  It will not come through our bankrupt liberal institutions, from the press, nor from the withered stump that is the labor movement.

Hope will only come now when we physically defy the violence of the state.  All who resist. All who are here today keep hope alive.  All who succumb to fear, despair, and apathy become an enemy of hope.  They become in their passivity, agents of injustice. If the enemies of hope are finally victorious, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are in times like these the thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude or peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope’s power and it is why it can never finally be defeated. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money. The powerful protect their own. They divide the world into the damned and the blessed, the patriots and the enemy, the rich and the poor. They insist that extinguishing lives in foreign wars or in our prison complexes is a form of human progress. They cannot see that the suffering of a child in Kandahar or a child in the blighted urban pocket of our nation's capitol diminishes and impoverishes us all. They are deaf, dumb and blind to hope. Those addicted to power, enthralled by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics. Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing. And this is because they kneel before the idols of greed and money.

If we resist, and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished. If all we accomplish today is to assure a grieving mother in Baghdad or Afghanistan, a young man or woman crippled physically and emotionally by the hammer blows of war that he or she is not alone, our act will be successful, but hope cannot be sustained if it cannot be seen. Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed, and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

Defenseless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

Links:

Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) - Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict works on behalf of war victims by advocating that warring parties recognize and help the civilians they harm. CIVIC supports the principle that it is never acceptable for a warring party to ignore civilian suffering.

In 2005, CIVIC’s founder Marla Ruzicka was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomb while advocating for families of victims. CIVIC honors her legacy and strives to sustain her vision.

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Twin Archetype: Mythic Union of Opposites

Throughout the history of mythology, twins appear, representing polarity, duality or opposing principles, within what is essentially, a united structure: Good/evil, light/darkness, masculine/feminine, introvert/extrovert, etc. These dualities power the circulatory process so crucial to the eternal cycle of renewal and the cyclic nature of our universe, thus, always a center of spiritual force.

The 'horns' (bull) were a sacred symbol of the Minoan religion. It was this "corner of the Aegean that saw the rise, nearly 4,000 years ago, of the first high civilization of Europe, the prelude to the Homeric age and to the full noonday of classical Greece that was to follow". Like the sacred 'horns', the sacred 'towers', gave an asymmetrical appearance, as they were not actually side by side on the same axis, often portrayed as one appearing taller than the other.

Today, 4,000 years later, the bull is still sacred. He represents virile strength, massive power, stubbornness, and destruction. The ultimate "blessing" of our one true religion, capitalism, is the bull market; the twin towers (horns), emblematic of - amongst the numerous other meanings interwoven into it - our might and trade.

'Leaving the waters of the splendid East, the sun leapt up into the firmament to bring light to the immortals and to men who plough the earth and perish.' - Homer, Odyssey, Book III

He came back,
This time for me.
On the 110th floor I was so close to God
I could almost grab his beard.
Never before has heaven been this close to hell.
I can feel its fire on the floors below
Raising ash and paper and smoke
Thick as Satan’s laughter.
At the window, shattered,
I look for salvation and he tempts me,
Dares me to jump,
Whispering a psalm in my ear
He spits as he speaks:
“He will bid his angels watch over you.
With their hands they will support you.”
I mumble “Amen,”
Close my eyes and sense the rush of air.
I cannot breathe until I finally feel
Those hands of angels
Hard as cement against my face.
-- By Doug Seubert

Funeral for Staff Sgt. Marcus Golczynski. Christian, Golczynski's son receives flag from Marine Lt. Col. Ric Thompson. Photographer Aaron Thompson

8/19/09 Paul Pickett of Minden La., U.S. Army's Apache Company, 2nd Battalion 87th Infantry Regiment, covers injured soldier as helicopter lands to evacuate wounded after armored vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in the Tangi Valley of Afghanistan's Wardak Province. (AP Photo/David Goldman) #

Links:

Perspective On 9/11 And The Invasions Of Iraq and Afghanistan

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Remember the Fallen

CNN World list the names of every single casualty including a picture of the fallen, his or her name, age, unit, hometown, and the details of how he or she died. There is also a section listing all POW/MIA, with the same information as the casualty reports.

Afghanistan

There have been 1,523 coalition deaths -- 926 Americans, 11 Australians, one Belgian, 235 Britons, 133 Canadians, three Czech, 28 Danes, 21 Dutch, six Estonians, one Finn, 36 French, 31 Germans, two Hungarians, 22 Italians, three Latvian, one Lithuanian, four Norwegians, 15 Poles, two Portuguese, 11 Romanians, one South Korean, 26 Spaniards, two Swedes and two Turks -- in the war on terror as of November 30, 2009, according to a CNN count. Below are the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors whose deaths have been reported by their nation's governments. The list also includes two U.S. Defense Department civilian employees. The troops died in support of the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom or the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. At least 4,565 U.S. personnel have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon.

Iraq

There have been 4,687 coalition deaths -- 4,370 Americans, two Australians, one Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, one Czech, seven Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, five Georgians, one Hungarian, 33 Italians, one Kazakh, three Latvians, 22 Poles, three Romanians, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, one South Korean, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians -- in the Iraq war as of November 30, 2009, according to a CNN count. The list below is the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose deaths have been reported by their country's governments. The list also includes 13 U.S. Defense Department civilian employees. At least 31,572 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon.

POW/MIA:

Two U.S. soldiers are currently listed as Missing-Captured or Duty Status -- Whereabouts Unknown by the Pentagon as of December 1, 2009.

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Obfuscating the Real Issues.

While everyone is waxing hysterical over the manufactured controversy regarding President Obama's speech to schoolchildren, clearly a non-issue, there are real controversial issues that need to be addressed.

For example, why is President Obama continuing some of the Bush administration's disastrous policies, specifically retaining Blackwater (rebranded Xe pronounced “z”obviously a ploy to operate in the shadows rather the limelight of their murderous past), which is owned by right-wing religious fanatic, and "Christian" crusader, Erik Prince, who is currently accused of murder.

Why isn't Obama doing more to reverse the Bush Administration's destructive courses of action and instead relying on what can only be called, "Bush-era tactics." ?

Why isn't he doing more to stop the senseless bloodshed...to stop the hiring of mercenaries from "for profit" war corporations, who currently comprise more than half of all military forces in U.S. war zones?

Why does the Congressional research group, report civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States?

What happened to the Stop Outsourcing Security Act? , which would have phased out the use of private military contractors? Open Congress reports that secure it's interests regardless of costs in collateral damages.

Could it be that war profiteering is just too profitable to the corporate elite to put a halt to mercenary armies?

Do we really need a new super-sized U.S. embassy in Islamabad that rivals the scale of Bush's giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million?

So, why not hire private contractors, especially when our military is stretched so thin in various places around the world?

Jeremy Scahill eloquently answers this question and I will do my best to paraphrase. He basically says, when it becomes a necessity to hire an army of people to fight a war, it’s not a reflection of the will of “we the people”. If this were truly a war of national defense, people would willingly sign up, and the government would impose a draft. In this situation, however, imposing a draft would almost certainly put an end to this war as it would surely serve as the fuel needed to fire "we the people" up.

180,000 private contractors are in Iraq right now working for "for profit" war corporations. There are only 150,000 US soldiers. There are 630 corporations on the US government payroll in Iraq. 40% of the money being spent on the occupation in Iraq goes directly to these corporations.

This administration has circumvented the democratic process in order to keep a draft off the table. They have replaced a system of negotiation or international diplomacy or coalition of willing nations with a coalition of corporations. This not only violates democratic principles in the United States, it violates the sovereignty of nations around the world because they are hiring people from countries who are against the war.

On of the gravest matters regarding this issue is that the contractors have not been held to the same standards as the military. They are not held accountable under any system of law whatsoever. 70 soldiers have been court marshaled on murder related charges alone since the beginning of the Iraq war. Not one armed contractor has been prosecuted for any crime under any legal system.

Our soldiers are lucky if they're earning $40,000/year. Their families are at home saving their own money to buy body armor, meanwhile these contractors are making six figures and have much better equipment than our soldiers, manufactured by one of the companies that make up the Prince global empire. In addition, our soldiers often pay the price for the misconduct of the contractors, as they are above the law.

It wasn't all that surprising to see our government stoop so low as to hire Blackwater contractors take on the truly "dangerous" .... dying cancer patients, when Bush was in office, because, after all, President Bush was in office. However, it is surprising to see the escalation of some of Bush's most controversial policies under President Obama.

The bottom line is we need to differentiate between real issues and manufactured issues designed to steer us away from what is in our best interest.

Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)

Contracts to Blackwater USA from 2000-2008

Triple Canopy and DynCorp.

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Betrayal of the American Soldier.

A little over one year ago I blogged about America's outrage over Elliot Spitzer's hypocrisy despite the lack of outrage over the duplicitous way we allow our government to impose further punishment on the young men, we glibly "honor" with dollar store "patriotism".

Instead of making it as easy as possible for our soldiers to reenter "civil" society, we basically send them back into battle, to receive what amounts to, if they're lucky, a modicum of care.

As soon as the soldier is discharged from the military, he immediately loses all of his benefits, no matter how severe his injuries. It makes no difference whether the soldiers are severely wounded or not, they must be processed through the archaic paper based system, still in existence thanks to tax cuts for those who need an entire staff to track their wealth, in an effort to prove themselves worthy of receiving any compensation for the wounds sustained abroad.

Returning soldiers are handed 500 pages to read, and 26 pages of paperwork to fill out, after which they must wait, at the very least, six months, or - should something go wrong during these unnecessary procedures and red tape - up to two years to qualify for Veterans’ benefits.

That's not all. Our tax system is set up in such a way that the burden is on the government to prove that what we're presenting as true, is false, by auditing a small subset of taxpayers, in hopes that that will be enough to prevent people from cheating the system.

In contrast, we place the entire burden of proof on the soldier/veteran. The presumption is that whatever the veteran is claiming is wrong with him is not the result of serving their country, therefore he must gather all the documentation, doctor’s notices, all of the hospital forms and all the things from all the different places to prove he is indeed injured and in need of care, even though prior to his discharge from the military, his condition was already confirmed.

In his new book, The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans, authorAaron Glantz clears away the smoke and mirrors created to deceive us about the soldier and veteran's reality. He systematically documents the US government and the Bush Administration's treatment and neglect of America's returning soldiers and veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and confronts America's willful ignorance of those we claim to support, replacing myth with the grim facts.

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War! What is it Good For? Absolutely nothing!

"If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory." - Reinhold Niebuhr


"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight." -- Albert Schweitzer


Iraqi car




Sandstorm in Iraq



IRAQ - American prerogatives. Photographer KAI PFAFFENBACH (REUTERS)

"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence."


American soldier.

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.


You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

-- Siegfred Sassoon, (1886-1967)

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Is It Possible to Overcome the Tragic Legacy of War?

W. Eugene Smith's "Wounded, dying infant found by American soldier in Saipan Mountains" 1944 © [1944], 2008 The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith
Past traumatic experiences can invade an individual's present with the same psychological level of destructive force that occurred at the time of the actual incident.

The loss of feeling safe, or the absence of safe haven amidst an environment of chaos and violence, and the lack of a support structure after the traumatic event, are key causal factors involved in producing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

PTSD is very high among our coalition forces, not to mention, Iraqi civilians - including a great number of children - mainly because of the aforementioned factors. The lack of boundaries - for example, IEDs on the roadside and undetectable suicide bombers, etc. meaning the enemy could literally be anywhere - and the lack of a firm foundation and easy to manage infrastructure ready to handle the profound consequences of our soldier's brutal experiences has been strongly linked with greatly increased divorce rates, increased incidence of alcohol and drug abuse, and an increased rate of suicide amongst our soldiers once they come home.

This haunting legacy of war leaves soldiers with, not only the traumatic, unrelenting, brutal images of bloody battlefields, mutilated civilians and soldiers, but, in addition, they are left with the "blood guilt", the psychologically costly endeavor of having to kill.

The high level of death and destruction experienced during war can undermine the individual's brain's ability to verbalize what he's been through, however this Vietnam veteran was able to articulate the terror he had to relive on a daily or nightly basis:

Links:

A Soldier's Legacy "Don’t ask, don’t tell, but Alan Rogers was a hero to everyone who knew him."

Jumbo jet will carry fallen soldier's legacy to Iraq - More than a year after 2nd Lt. Peter Burks was killed by a roadside bomb blast in Iraq, his father continues to send care packages to soldiers and Iraqi children — so many that American Airlines is donating a plane to fill from top to bottom. It's a partnership with Operation Iraqi Children, a charity founded by actor Gary Sinise.

U.S. Soldier's Legacy Lives On. - The "Christopher Van Der Horn Military Survivors Mental Health Access Act," which doubles the number of mental-health visits without pre-authorization to 16.

In Remembrance

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Forcing Democracy and the Tragic Results

Pressured into prostitution by his impoverished circumstances, as are many children in Iraq, 14-year old Ahmed Khalil, was executed for homosexual behavior in 2006.

He sold his body only to help his impoverished family survive, and the Iraqi police shot him at point-blank range, pumping two bullets into his head and several more bullets into the rest of his body.

Saddam Hussein was the worst kind of tyrant, however, homosexuality was usually tolerated. At the very least, gay people were not in danger of being assassinated by fundamentalist death squads.

Fast forward to current day Iraq, and the security situation has vastly improved, however, it continues to become less secure for some, in particular, men, women, and even children suspected of homosexuality, in what was started as a sexual cleansing process four years ago.

Praised by President Bush as a leading moderate, the U.S. backed Iraq's leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, even after he issued, in 2005, a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the "worst, most severe way" possible.

The kidnapping and executing of people suspected of homosexuality (even young children) prostitutes, unveiled women, sellers and consumers of alcohol and people with Sunni-sounding names ensued as it was condoned and encouraged by this Shia spiritual leader, another consequence of imposing democracy on another culture very unlike our own. However, "imposing democracy" is far from the real reason we started this war.

The US has been arming and training both the Sunnis and the Shiites at the same time, all along, fully realizing the hatred each group has for the other...fully realizing the collateral damage this tactic would inflict. Why? Because creating volatile and instability, and creating a fractured division in Iraq is essential to conquering the most oil rich region in the world. The Iraqis, or as one woman describes, *the beast (over one million and counting, not to mention all the injured, poverty stricken Iraqis) had to be sacrificed.

The story of 14-year old Ahmed Khalil:

“Ahmed Khalil was a likeable, playful 14 year old boy, born in the southern Iraqi town of al-Ammara. The eldest child, he came from an uneducated family who lived in great poverty.

After the 2003 US-led invasion, the Iraqi economy collapsed, causing widespread unemployment and the disintegration of social services. With no income or welfare support in al-Ammara, Ahmed's family moved to Baghdad a couple of years ago, after the fall of Sadaam Hussein.

His father wanted to find a job to support his wife, two sons and daughter. The family settled in al-Dura, a very poor southern district of Baghdad.

Ahmed's father worked as a night watchman on a building site for the pitiful wage of $10 dollars a month, plus permission for him and his family to live on the site until the construction of the new houses was completed. They lived in the shell of the unfinished buildings. It was a life of desolation and destitution.

Ahmed was often bullied by the neighborhood boys for being poor. He had no one to protect him. It is unclear whether Ahmed was gay or not. He had sex with men, often in exchange for small amounts of money and food. He did this in order to help his family financially. Sometimes they were so desperate, he had sex for a few potatoes or some bread.

Ahmed's ‘gay' reputation spread all over his neighborhood, causing great scandal. His behavior was reported to the police by informants in the community. In early April 2006, Ahmed was found dead on the doorstep of his house. He had been shot, with two bullets in the head and several bullets in the rest of his body.

According to a neighbor, who saw Ahmed's execution from his bedroom window, four uniformed police officers arrived at Ahmed's house in a four-wheel-drive police pick-up truck. The neighbor saw the police drag Ahmed out of the house and shoot him at point-blank range.

Several other neighbors confirm this account, although they did not see the actual shooting. They say they heard gunshots and saw the police leaving the scene. They then found Ahmed's body lying on the ground outside his house. Ahmed was executed by the police.

Two days before Ahmed's execution, his father was arrested and interrogated by the police. They demanded to know what he knew about Ahmed's sexual activities and blamed Ahmed for corrupting the community. Officers eventually released Ahmed's father. His son was killed soon afterwards.

Both Ahmed's mother and father wept over their sons' brutal killing. Even though homosexuality is taboo, they did not agree he deserved to die. The family see him as a victim of poverty and police murder.

Because they are so poor, the family could not afford a funeral for their son.

The day after Ahmed was murdered, his family moved out of the area, fearing police retribution and denunciation within the local community. The family's whereabouts and fate is unknown.

Ahmed is one of many hundreds of teenage boys and girls in Iraq who sell their bodies to survive and support their impoverished families." -- Ali Hili, an exiled gay Iraqi who is Middle East Affairs spokesperson for the London-based gay human rights group OutRage!.

*A view from Iraq:

[...]When the sacrificial beast falls, the knives multiply.And Iraq was seen as a "beast" to be sacrificed. "Beast" in the positive sense.A beast is strong, has good survival instincts, is sturdy, can defend itself, has developed capacities and skills to remain alive in a jungle it knows all too well.And like in a Corrida, the minute the bull falls, the arrows multiply. And it kicks and fights back till its last breath and more arrows fall down upon it, until it is inert, immobilized on the grounds...This is exactly what happened to Iraq. The "beast" had to be sacrificed.And the Matadors multiplied their spiky arrows. All kinds of spiky arrows...Strip it naked and finish it off...

Fire from the skies and from the grounds. Bombs, DU, Napalm, Bullets...destroy homes, buildings, schools, universities, hospitals...segregate, ghettos...check points, id's, digital prints, biometric measures, numbers...ransack homes in the middle of the night, strip people naked, steal their belongings, rape their women...detain, blindfold, tie, abduct, kidnap...prisons, camps, detention centers, dungeons....torture till they go blind, paralyzed, amputated...or insane. Rape and sodomize them - men, women and children...steal and destroy the history, the monuments, the art, rip away the genius, tear apart that creativity, smash that contribution to civilization...go for the heads and the hands that produced it. Steal, steal and steal some more. Steal the treasury, the arts, the antiquities, the universities, the oil, the savings, the ratios...Burn...burn the culture, the manuscripts, the books, the libraries, burn the fields, the land...burn it...burn it...desecrate the sacred, the holy places, the spaces of worship, the holy books...desecrate nature, pollute it, soil it, poison it -- all of it..the sky, the earth, the water...uproot them, exile them, cut away their ties, abandon them, let them wander in the wilderness...Oh God this is too much.

Now they are naked and vulnerable...so prey on their last breath...prey on any point of strength they may have left...and go for that too.Dump on them...dump on them your anger, your hatred, your envy, your frustrations, your rage, your lust, your covetousness, your greed, your sadism, your unnamed desires, your beastly instincts, your death instincts, your moral depravity, all the "stuff" you don't allow yourselves to do in your "respectable homes and countries", all the "stuff" you don't allow yourselves on your own grounds, because you try so hard to appear and give the best, the famous facade of your civility...dump on them and exploit them even more...dump on them your shadows, your evilness, those parts of yourself you cannot own, cannot face...dump on them...the beast has fallen, multiply your knives.

Exploit them even more...they are vulnerable, as vulnerable and as naked as you want them to be. Go ahead, pontificate and justify to them...rationalize it away, smile while reading your essays and think hard while writing your articles...go ahead refine the deceit, refine it...find a thousand reasons why it is the way it is...and exploit them some more...Exploit their refugees with high prices, with their begging for permits, with their hunger, with their desperation...exploit their needy women, exploit their widows...exploit their orphans, street kids, traffic them, prostitute them for your porno rings...go ahead do more...They are all naked in front of you...dump some more...what else do you envy and you want to strip from them ? What else is left ?

What is there to strip from people who have reached the point of selling their organs for survival ? what is there to steal from people who no longer go to schools, who no longer read and write ? what is their left to destroy from homes, monuments, sites, buildings and hospitals when they are already in shambles ? what is there left to erase and burn when there is no history and no books left ? What is left to rape from diseased bodies ridden with poison and cancerous tumors...What is there left ?

The passion has turned to a never ending grief, the generosity has become a beggar, the pride and the honor a naked woman reaching out for a cloth to cover herself and the intelligence, a burning, raw, survival instinct, gasping for its last breath...Is there anything left to prey on, to destroy, kill, torture, rape, use and abuse steal, plunder, pillage...exploit...is there anything else you need to dump ?Iraq has become your mirror Ladies and Gentlemen. Look at Iraq and you will see yourselves. All of you. Individually and collectively.We look into the mirror....I look into the mirror and we, I, see nothing but You.And all I need, want, desire -- is to throw up the garbage, the rejects of "humanity", to vomit "human" kind." -- Layla Anwar

Links:
Gays Without Borders
Web of Deceit: Part 1

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