this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
A truck burns after witnesses said it was hit by gunfire from U.S. military forces in Baghdad September 16, 2005. Police and witnesses said that U.S. soldiers opened fire on the vehicle for unknown reasons, and that the truck was carrying supplies for U.S. contractors.
REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Patriotics
by David Baker
Yesterday a little girl got slapped to death by her daddy,
out of work, alcoholic, and estranged two towns down river.
America, it’s hard to get your attention politely.
America, the beautiful night is about to blow up
and the cop who brought the man down with a shot to the chops
is shaking hands, dribbling chaw across his sweaty shirt,
and pointing cars across the courthouse grass to park.
It’s the Big One one more time, July the 4th,
our country’s perfect holiday, so direct a metaphor for war,
we shoot off bombs, launch rockets from Drano cans,
spray the streets and neighbors’ yards with the machine-gun crack
of fireworks, with rebel yells and beer. In short, we celebrate.
It’s hard to believe. But so help the soul of Thomas Paine,
the entire county must be here–the acned faces of neglect,
the halter-tops and ties, the bellies, badges, beehives,
jacked-up cowboy boots, yes, the back-up singers of democracy
all gathered to brighten in unambiguous delight
when we attack the calm and pointless sky. With terrifying vigor
the whistle-stop across the river will lob its smaller arsenal
halfway back again. Some may be moved to tears.
We’ll clean up fast, drive home slow, and tomorrow
get back to work, those of us with jobs, convicting the others
in the back rooms of our courts and malls–yet what
will be left of that one poor child, veteran of no war
but her family’s own? The comfort of a welfare plot,
a stalk of wilting prayers? Our fathers’ dreams come true as
nightmare.
So the first bomb blasts and echoes through the streets and shrubs:
red, white, and blue sparks shower down, a plague
of patriotic bugs. Our thousand eyeballs burn aglow like punks.
America, I’d swear I don’t believe in you, but here I am,
and here you are, and here we stand again, agape.
– – –
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give to the American Red Cross
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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
Leonard Clark’s blog has been taken down
witness every day
This war gets more stupid as the days go by.
So glad to see her new entries..it has been so long I was worried that something had happened to her and her family.
.
~ Cross-posted from Another Billion Missing in Iraq ◊ by NorthDakotaDemocrat ~
Most of the money was “siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared” to finance the purchase of arms in Poland and Pakistan, according to the report. But rather than purchasing state-of-the-art weaponry Iraq had procured “museum-piece weapons,” the Independent charged.
The paper listed a series of problems with the arms purchased including armoured cars which “turned out to be so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour.” Other armoured cars reportedly leaked so much oil that they had to be abandoned.
An Iraqi soldier looks at a military vehicle destroyed in a road side bomb explosion in Kirkuk. A billion dollars has been plundered from the coffers of Iraq's defence ministry, seriously affecting the government's ability to combat the insurgency, the Independent newspaper in London reported, citing the Iraqi finance minister. AFP/File/Marwan IbrahimA shipment of the latest MP5 American machine-guns turned out to be Egyptian copies worth a fraction of the price, according to the report.
“Many Iraqi soldiers and police have died because they were not properly equipped,” the daily added.
The rip-offs were so huge, said the paper, that Baghdad officials estimate that the Iraqis involved “were only front men and ‘rogue elements’ within the US military and intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes”.
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