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.
two images and poem below the fold
A man slumps on the driver’s seat of a vehicle after he and an engineer working for the North Oil Company were killed by gunmen while heading to work in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, July 11, 2006.
(Slahaldeen Rasheed/Reuters)
– – –
Iraqi police remove the body of a man from his truck who was killed by unknown gunmen, Tuesday, July 11, 2006, in Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq. Unknown gunmen killed an engineer with Iraq’s North Oil Co. and his driver in the early morning, police said.
(AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)
– – –
an excerpt from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
by Aimé Césaire
translated by Annette Smith and Clayton Eshleman
At the end of daybreak. . .
Beat it, I said to him, you cop, you lousy pig, beat it,
I detest the flunkies of order and the cockchafers of hope.
Beat it, evil grigri, you bedbug of a petty monk. Then I turned
toward paradises lost for him and his kin, calmer than the face
of a woman telling lies, and there, rocked by the flux of a
never exhausted thought I nourished the wind, I unlaced the
monsters and heard rise, from the other side of disaster, a
river of turtledoves and savanna clover which I carry forever
in my depths height-deep as the twentieth floor of the most
arrogant houses and as a guard against the putrefying force
of crepuscular surroundings, surveyed night and day by a cursed
venereal sun.
At the end of daybreak burgeoning with frail coves, the hungry
Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dyn-
amited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay, in the dust
of this town sinisterly stranded.
At the end of daybreak, the extreme, deceptive desolate eschar
on the wound of the waters; the martyrs who do not bear witness;
the flowers of blood that fade and scatter in the empty wind
like the screeches of babbling parrots; an aged life mendacious-
ly smiling, its lips opened by vacated agonies; an aged poverty
rotting under the sun, silently; an aged silence bursting with
tepid pustules,
the awful futility of our raison d’être.
At the end of daybreak, on this very fragile earth thickness
exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future–the vol-
canoes will explode, the naked water will bear away the ripe
sun stains and nothing will be left but a tepid bubbling pecked
at by sea birds–the beach of dreams and the insane awakening.
At the end of daybreak, this town sprawled-flat, toppled from
its common sense, inert, winded under its geometric weight of
an eternally renewed cross, indocile to its fate, mute, vexed
no matter what, incapable of growing with the juice of this
earth, self-conscious, clipped, reduced, in breach of fauna
and flora.
– – –
The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It’s been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can’t bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can’t bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can’t bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can’t bring myself to care because it’s difficult to see beyond the horrors.
from Riverbend’s blog, Baghdad Burning, July 11, 2006
– – –
read This is what John Kerry did today, the dKos diary by lawnorder that inspired this series
love and support the Iraqi people
join CIVIC’s “I Care” photo campaign
raed in the middle’s blog
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
love and support our troops
read Ilona’s important blog – PTSD Combat
support Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
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
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 a young heart with an old soul peace takes courage (multimedia)
poetry matters poets against war
support the troops and the Iraqi people
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.
