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.

images, text, and poem below the fold


Photo provided by the Sunni Muslim Scholars Association (MSA) shows the back of an Iraqi who was allegedly tortured by the Iraqi police in May 2005. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh has denied allegations that he commands death squads targeting the Sunni minority and ordered the torture of suspected rebels in a secret prison.
(AFP/MSA/File)


Arrested suspects are displayed at the headquarters of Iraqi police commando Wolf Brigade in Baghdad. Iraqi Sunni Arab leaders warned that military and police crackdowns were alienating their minority community in the run-up to December elections for a new parliament.
(AFP/Karim Sahib)

This excerpt from Billmon

Baghdad’s Medical Forensic Institute – the mortuary – is a low, modern building reached via a narrow street. Most days it is filled with families of the dead. They come here for two reasons. One group, animated and noisy in grief, comes to collect its dead. The other, however, returns day after day to poke through the new cargoes of corpses ferried in by ambulance, looking for a face or clothes they might recognise. They are the relatives and friends of the ‘disappeared’, searching for their men. And when the disappeared are finally found, on the streets or in the city’s massive rubbish dumps, or in the river, their bodies bear the all-too-telling signs of a savage beating, often with electrical cables, followed by the inevitable bullet to the head.

Read the full story in The Observer

– – –

Paradise Lost (excerpt)
by John Milton

Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from heav’n, with all his host
Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equaled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in heav’n and battle proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf
Confounded though immortal: but his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdúrate pride and steadfast hate:
At once as far as angels ken he views
The dismal situation waste and wild,
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of heav’n
As from the center thrice to th’ utmost pole.

– – –
read Ilona’s important diary at MLW – Returning Vet PTSD – One Soldier’s Story

view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)

take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)

support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
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
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