today’s diary is dedicated to all who are speaking out on behalf of those 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
Iranian anti-riot police officers march during a parade ceremony of armed
forces, marking the 25th anniversary of the outset of the Iran-Iraq war
(1980-1988), in front of the mausoleum of the late revolutionary founder
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday Sept. 22, 2005.
(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
An Iraqi soldier walks past a burning crude oil-transporting pipeline, some 35 kilometres (20 miles) northwest of the oil-producing town of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq. Several crude oil-transporting pipelines in northern Iraq were burning fiercely following an attack, an oil installation protection force official told AFP.
(AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)
An Iraqi woman walks past a memorial to the Iraq-Iran War in Baghdad September
22, 2005. Saddam Hussein can no longer force Iraqis to celebrate ‘victory’ in
the war with Iran but they are still haunted by the conflict 25 years to the day
after it started.
(Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters)
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan (C) speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC,
September 21, 2005 urging Congress and President George W. Bush to remove U.S.
troops from Iraq. Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq is currently touring the
U.S. trying to gain support for the anti-war movement.
REUTERS/Chris Kleponis
War Song of the Saracens
by James Elroy Flecker
We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!
Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.
From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou and Balghar,
Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum.
We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go there again;
We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny boom.
A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid,
For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom;
And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition,
And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong:
And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool,
And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along:
For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up like a
wave,
And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song.
– – –
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
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
Leonard Clark’s blog has been taken down
witness every day
