this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

we love and support our troops, just as we love and support the Iraqi people – without exception, or precondition, or judgement.

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune,  My Left Wing, and TexasKos.

image and poem below the fold

Wounded Iraqis rest at the emergency room of a local hospital in Baghdad. The bodies of two US soldiers who went missing south of Baghdad were found, as the military said it killed 15 insurgents but Iraqi police and a rights activist claimed they were ordinary poultry farm workers.
(AFP/Ali Al Saadi)

Tar
by C. K. Williams

The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain,                    
          mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
          off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I’ve been wandering out to
          watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble
          the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening to the news, wondering how to know a
          hundred miles downwind
if and when to make a run for it and where, then a coming bolt awake
          at seven
when the roofers we’ve been waiting for since winter sent their ladders
          shrieking up our wall,
we still know less than nothing: the utility company continues making
          little of the accident,
the slick federal spokesmen still have their evasions in some semblance
          of order.
Surely we suspect now we’re being lied to, but in the meantime, there
          are the roofers,
setting winch-frames, sledging rounds of tar apart, and there I am, on
          the curb across, gawking.

I never realized what brutal work it is, how matter-of-factly and harrow-
          ingly dangerous.
The ladders flex and quiver, things skid from the edge, the materials are
          bulky and recalcitrant.
When the rusty, antique nails are levered out, their heads pull off; the
          underroofing crumbles.
Even the battered little furnace, roaring along as patient as a donkey,
          chokes and clogs,
a dense, malignant smoke shoots up, and someone has to fiddle with a
          cock, then hammer it,
before the gush and stench will deintensify, the dark, Dantean broth
          wearily subside.
In its crucible, the stuff looks bland, like licorice, spill it, though, on
          your boots or coveralls,
it sears, and everything is permeated with it, the furnace gunked with
          burst and half-burst bubbles,
the men themselves so completely slashed and mucked they seem almost
          from another realm, like trolls.
When they take their break, they leave their brooms standing at attention
          in the asphalt pails,
work gloves clinging like Br’er Rabbit to the bitten shafts, and they slouch
          along the precipitous lip,
the enormous sky behind them, the heavy noontime air alive with shim-
          mers and mirages.

Sometime in the afternoon I had to go inside: the advent of our vigil was
          upon us.
However much we didn’t want to, however little we would do about it,
          we’d understood:
we were going to perish of all this, if not now, then soon, if not soon,
          then someday.
Someday, some final generation, hysterically aswarm beneath an at-
          mosphere as unrelenting as rock,
would rue us all, anathematize our earthly comforts, curse our surfeits
          and submissions.
I think I know, though I might rather not, why my roofers stay so clear
          to me and why the rest,
the terror of that time, the reflexive disbelief and distancing, all we should
          hold on to, dims so.
I remember the president in his absurd protective booties, looking
          absolutely unafraid, the fool.
I remember a woman on the front page glaring across the misty Sus-
          quehanna at those looming stacks.
But, more vividly, the men, silvered with glitter from the shingles, cling-
          ing like starlings beneath the eaves.
Even the leftover carats of tar in the gutter, so black they seemed to suck
          the light out of the air.
By nightfall kids had come across them: every sidewalk on the block was
          scribbled with obscenities and hearts.

– – –
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put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet

read Ilona’s important blog – PTSD Combat

poetry matters poets against war

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support Veterans for Peace
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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
witness every day

While speaking at the YearlyKos 2006 Convention in Los Vegas, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner said (and I paraphrase from memory): “George Bush, incompetent idiot, blah blah blah, went to war in Iraq when the real threat is in Iran.” (my emphasis)

There was a brief pause after his statement, and I regret that I wasn’t brave or quick-witted enough to yell “Bullshit!” into the silence. But the moment passed, Warner picked up his next thread in perfect cadence, and I bit into my box lunch apple.

So now what?

I’m gonna let him know that I think his statement is bullshit, and why. I’m starting here. If anyone knows of other ways, please put them in this thread.

Thanks.