I do not want to go to Iraq, but Sen. Chuck Hagel
  of Nebraska wants to send me there. ..
  We the people deserve an explanation for this
  mess, especially if we are asked to clean it up.

  I, for one, do not agree with this war,  and I say
  to the president: This is your war, not mine,
  and you should be the one fighting it.

the author, Matthew Byers, is a 17-year old
studentfrom Orlando, Florida
 
 

ALIBABA         -----------

Murdering Thieves
 Fundamentalist hordes.
 Bastards.
Thus you have become,
     thus you have always been.
Ask Japan. Ask Korea. Ask Dresden.
Ask Indians. Ask Africans.
Ask Afghans. Ask Arabs.
Ask Iraqis and Palestinians.

  The stand ...................................
 Camilo Mejia is the first US soldier serving in Iraq
to proclaim himself a conscientious objector.
But as disillusion with the war grows among the US
  army and public, he is unlikely to be the last...

The appeal    ...................................
I'm addressing the people of the United States,
the Hispanic Community and the world to express my deepest sorrow and indignation about the injustice that is being made against my son.
I want to ask you to continue giving him your support.  Please write letters to Camilo ...
Send  letters to the Army Officials and to the Congress of the United States demanding that his conscientious objection application be accepted.
 Camilo's Address: ..........
 Commanding General, Fort Stewart's Address:
Major General William G.Webster, Jr.
..............

The shot seen around the world

When Tami Silicio saw the coffins of US servicemen
on a cargo plane, she felt compelled to capture the moment. It infuriated the Pentagon, got her fired, and changed America's attitude to the war:

On the tarmac of the international airport in Kuwait, Tami Silicio
stood in silence. Close by her, US Air Force personnel were saying 
prayers as coffins bearing the remains of American soldiers 
killed in Iraq were loaded into the rear of a cargo aircraft bound 
first for Germany and then the United States.

As the coffins were placed into the plane, laid out in neat rows 
on scrubbed wooden pallets, Silicio climbed into the hold. 
Momentarily, she was overcome. She would tell people afterwards 
that the interior of the plane with its 20 aluminium coffins, 
held in place by bright white straps, 
felt more like a shrine than a cargo hold. ...
 
 

The Mother's War

I ride the dusty road to Tikrit 
 in your rusack, in my mind ...

T h o u s a n d s   o f   P o e t s ,  OneVoice
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Barbara Hatch Vink
Olliesmom@earthlink.net 
 
 

  Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz character in 
"Apocalypse Now" applied crystal logic
to the madness of the Vietnam War, 
concluding that what made sense was 
to descend into barbarism. 

The U.S. military hierarchy, judging Kurtz's 
tactics to be "unsound," ordered the colonel 
eliminated to keep at least a façade of civilization. 

 A reprise of that tragedy -- a kind of "Apocalypse Again" -- is now playing out in Iraq, with U.S. soldiers sent halfway around the globe to invade and occupy a country supposedly with the goal of protecting the world from violence and 
introducing democratic freedoms. As in Vietnam, 
there is a widening gap between the uplifting 
rhetoric and the ugly facts on the ground. 

The Role 

Another Open Letter to the Troops in Iraq

... Stanford Prison Experiment. Subjects were recruited and paid a modest stipend, whereupon they were separated into "prisoners" and "guards," and placed in a mock prison built in a Stanford basement. The prisoners were stripped, deloused, shackled, and placed in prison clothes, while the guards were given authoritative uniforms, sunglasses, and batons. Long story short -- within two days there was a near prison riot, psychosomatic illness began to break out, white middle-class kids in the role of guards became rapidly and progressively more sadistic and arbitrary, and the two-week experiment had to be abandoned after only six days... before someone was badly hurt or killed. 

The experiment seemed to support the truism that "absolute power corrupts absolutely." But that conclusion serves as a description, not an explanation. It describes what happens to the individual, but it fails to account for the role of rationalization that legitimates the domination, and it completely fails to account for institutional support of that domination.  oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

In Gilbert's case, a recruiter gave her a form to fill out to verify her age and a friend's mother helped her complete it to indicate she was 21. Gilbert, who stood 5-foot-3 and weighed 105 pounds, was told she was underweight during her physical. 

"They told me to go home and eat bananas and drink lots of water, and come back  tomorrow," she recalled with a laugh. "That's what I did."

THE WHISTLE-BLOWER

Accused Soldier Paints Scene 
of Eager Mayhem at Iraqi Prison

When a fresh crop of detainees arrived at Abu Ghraib prison one night in late October, their jailers set upon them. The soldiers pulled seven Iraqi detainees from their cells, "tossed them in the middle of
the floor" and then one soldier ran across the room and lunged into the pile of detainees, according to sworn statements given to investigators by one of the soldiers now charged with abuse. He did it again, jumping into the group like it was a pile of autumn leaves, and another soldier called for others to join in. The detainees were
ordered to strip and masturbate, their heads covered with plastic sandbags.   888888888888888888888888888888888888888

sexism in the scandal: 

 gender issues in Iraq torture scandal

Military sociologists say that the behavior of the reservists at Abu Ghraib was aberrant and that gender played no special role. But advocates for expanding opportunities for women soldiers fear a backlash to the crisis could slow or even stop the steady advancement of women into combat support roles and leadership positions....

...The photos show several men involved in this behavior.  The first person to be court-martialed for this will be a man.  But what image do you see immediately when the phrase "prison photo" is asked. 

The Phoenix Program, Revisited 
 ABCs of American
   Interrogation Methods
The most valuable quality possessed by defectors, deserters, and criminals serving in"sensitive" CIA projects was their expendability. After signing their contracts, they were taken out for dinner and drinks, then to a brothel, where they were photographed, then
 blackmailed into joining special reconnaissance teams. Trained in Saigon, outfitted with captured enemy equipment, then given a "one-way ticket to Cambodia," they were sent to locate enemy sanctuaries. When they radioed back their position and that of the sanctuary,  the CIA would bomb them along with the target.@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

   Summary of Leaked Red Cross Report 
   on Iraqis Tortured in US Custody

The Crash of Civilizations 

When it all started out a few years ago the ideologues of the global War on Terror glibly called it the Clash of Civilizations. Between the torture, rape, murder of Iraqi prisoners by the US army and the gruesome beheading of an American hostage by Al Qaeda what we have instead is the very CRASH of Civilizations. 

Two sets of despicable racists, one claiming to represent 'freedom' and the other 'faith' but both failing to uphold the basic tenets of either concept. If there is anything at all that marks this clash it is the complete absence of all civilized behavior and the contemptuous disregard for every law, rule and ethic evolved through centuries of accumulated human wisdom. (If the rest of the world allows these jokers to continue like this, the day will come when they make Genghis look like Gandhi) 

Savages 

If We See Our Enemies As Inhuman, Then We Ourselves End Up As Savages

The present-day equivalent... is Hollywood, with its poisonous, racist portrayal of Arabs and Muslims. True to form, our enemies turned out, on 11 September  2001, to be as terrible as our movies made them out to be. One day, some serious research might be conducted into how far the pilot killers modelled themselves on Hollywood's version of their ruthlessness. 

But it's not difficult to see how the American thugs at the Abu Ghraib prison acquired their cruelty. Born-again Christians who no doubt publicly wished to be seen upholding a "pure, clean and upright life" treated the Iraqis as if they were "fiends in human form", as "fanatics", as "flies". Hadn't the US proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, described America's enemies as "dead-enders", "die-hards", "terrorists"? 

When the young woman involved in this torture expressed her surprise at all the fuss, I immediately understood why. Not because what she did was routine - though it clearly was - but because that is how she was told to treat these Iraqi prisoners. Hadn't they been killing American soldiers, setting off car bombs, murdering schoolchildren? Hollywood turned into reality. 

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