Graphic photos of dead and mutilated babies and children. Not what I expected when I checked in on the folks from the Under The Same Sun blog to see if they had another daily report from the World Tribunal on Iraq held in Istanbul.
Bush said last night, “Our progress has been uneven – but progress is being made. We are improving roads, and schools, and health clinics … and working to improve basic services like sanitation, electricity, and water. And together with our allies, we will help the new Iraqi government deliver a better life for its citizens.”
Oh yeah, Mr. Bush? Prove it. According to reporter/blogger Chris Floyd in his post, “In Loco Parentis: Child Abuse in Bush’s Babylon“:
- Iraq’s child malnutrition rate is now worse than the broken nations of Uganda or Haiti, the Japan Times reports
- cholera and typhoid are cutting swathes through the population, and are especially virulent in the “stable” areas of the Shiite south
- epidemics of hepatitis are killing pregnant women
- Iraq’s children are dwindling and dying twice as fast under the Coalition’s benevolent care than under the despotism of Saddam Hussein
- The U.N. reports that Iraq has suffered “one of the most dramatic declines in human welfare in recent history” during the occupation, and
- antibiotics are scarce
Antibiotics are scarce? How much medicine would that missing $8 billion buy? And how far would $8 billion go to give people clean water, which should be the top public health and infrastructure priority?
And how many times did Bush mention the children of Iraq in his speech last night? More below:
In fact, let’s go even further and declare forthrightly that if the liars could have established a client regime and a permanent military presence in Iraq without harming the hair of a single child, they would have done so. If they could have transferred more than $300 billion from the public treasury to the pockets of their family members and business partners without having to concoct a brutal and baseless war of aggression, they would have done so. If they could have legitimized their radical, rapacious domestic agenda without engineering the slaughter of innocent people in order to assume the politically expedient role of “wartime leaders,” they would have done so.
But they couldn’t. So like all murderers, they did whatever they had to do to get what they wanted, regardless of the consequences for others. Like all terrorists, they rationalize their atrocities with noble rhetoric, citing the unassailable righteousness of their cause as justification for the unspeakable evil they unleash. And like all abusers of innocent children, they cover their baser motives with self-serving lies.
– From “In Loco Parentis: Child Abuse in Bush’s Babylon,” by Chris Floyd
Bush’s references to “children” in his speech last night:
- “Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.”
- “We are removing a source of violence and instability – and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren.”
Last night, Bush said:
Fuck that shit. Next month they’re meeting? We “won” this fuckin war in 2003! And they’re “recently” meeting in Brussels? And meeting in July 2005 in Jordan? WTF?
They’ve pledged 34 billion? Fuck that. Show me the money. Show me the clean water. Show me the medicine.
Better yet: Show the children the money, the clean water, the food, the medicine, you dumb fuck.
__________
Cross-posted at DailyKos.
Arrested Development in the NYT:
Worth reading the whole thing.
Children’s suffering is always kept well below the horizon of this administration. I’m cynical enough to believe that much of the aid money for kids will go into American pockets through Halliburton and its ilk, much like some of the highly touted “school rebuilding” that was done soon after our invasion.
And as to the future of our children and grandchildren, we can’t predict their safety from terrorist attacks. However, we can predict that they are going to be kept very busy paying off the horrendous national debt from this war, not to mention the tax cuts for the wealthy.
Iraqi children matter not at all to those orchestrating this war. Iraqi lives matter not at all; American lives matter not at all. Any lives (other than their precious own) are expendable to those that peer through permanent filters of greed and the insatiable compulsion for more and more power and control.
These people are fully possessed by their own chosen delusions. You could fill their bedrooms with dead Iraqi babies, and they would still find some way to justify killing them.
Powerful diary, Susanhu.
Cruel- adj. 1)Disposed to inflicting pain or suffering.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.)
So, under the reign of Bush II, we see that the Iraqis have the conditions listed above: more dead babies, more dead mothers, fewer opportunities, more open violence. We know they still have torture chambers, no stable law, and military justice.
So, in what way are we NOT a more <u>cruel</u> regime? Sure, our goal may be noble. We may have the best of intentions. That doesn’t mean our ignorant and impotent flailing isn’t causing MORE harm.
As someone who until VERY recently had no problem invading countries like Iraq, I’m disgusted. If you are going to go to war to make people’s lives better, YOU DAMN WELL BETTER MAKE SURE THEIR LIVES ARE.
You won’t hear that in a presidential speech. If it were never more clear the definition of propaganda, then the president’s speech last night could be a solid note on the subject.
Propaganda is the absence of reality. The absence of reality is the absence of physical truths, the environment around us, the world around us, and our affects on this world. It is a form of psychic suicide.
If you like your reality the taste of kool-aid, then he is the man for you.
Bush is incapable of feeling empathy for fellow human beings. All citizens under his control, whether here in the US or in Afghanistan or Iraq, are just pawns and cannon fodder to achieve his dark and selfish goals. So to with the children who have been burned, improsopned and tortured, torn and mutilated, wracked with hunger, stricken with sickness and disease, orphaned, frightened and alone… they are all acceptable offerings on the altar of Bush’s ambitions.
He’s blissfully unaware of how shallow and transparent his ambitions are. I’ll say Dumb Fuck.
Some speech writer looked out at the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations that include Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, checkpoint shootings, murders of old men in their beds, lack of clean water, lack of medical facilities or supplies, daily bombings, and much more and apparently decided that this would be the best note for Bush to end his speech on last night:
When I first saw this I thought it was maybe a parody from an anti-Bush site…. but sadly, no.
Perhaps more than any other, this article is all anyone needs to know about Iraq.
For immediate withdrawal. Hal C.
Children no longer buy the talk of their teachers, promising them a bright and promising future in the days to come …
Ali Mashaal Salem, an eight-year-old boy, is pacing up and down an alley on maximum alert with his small plastic rifle. “I’m waiting for the Americans to kill any of whom who dares cross my borders,” he courageously told IOL, referring to his peers playing the enemy.
Other children have drawn with chalks lines on the street with a cartoon box — seemingly similar to a roadside bomb — placed on its side. As the enemy passed near the fake box, a resistance child hit the box, seeing all his colleagues fallen down in a breathtaking stunt.
Asked about their future dreams, the children gave unexpected answers. “I don’t know, but I will work on planting mines in the city to prevent the Americans from entering it,” said Ihsan, a sixth grade student.
link
Police opened fire on a group of about 2,000 demonstrators in the Iraqi town of Samawa. The demonstrators, some of whom threw rocks at police, were protesting the lack of jobs. One was killed, possibly the man who was reportedly shot in the head. Seven others were wounded. – Via Democracy Now! and Reuters.
Over and over the same people who co-opt the “life” label show their true colors.
They care about money. They care about oil. They care about power.
The one thing the DON’T care about, is life.
Great diary, Susan.