with special love and honor for Cindy Sheehan and the residents of Camp Casey
image: An Iraqi man hugs a fellow driver after he escaped death when a bomb destroyed his car after he left the cup (sic) to buy a cup of tea, Baghdad August 17, 2005. The death toll in a triple car bombing at a Baghdad bus station on Wednesday rose to 43, with a further 76 wounded, an official in the Interior Ministry said. ‘The casualty figure could rise as there are charred bodies all over the place,’ he added. The figures were based on reports from four hospitals to which casualties were taken, he said, including the Kindi hospital, near the scene of the coordinated attack.
REUTERS/Atef Hassan
Cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
Carrion Comfort
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist–slack they may be–these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee
and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me,
fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night,
that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
– – –
This diary series is dedicated to all who suffer because of war
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
support the fallen
support the troops
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
read this soldier’s blog
witness every day
