image: US soldiers attend a memorial service for a fallen comrade in Iraq. Bronze busts of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are starting to appear in towns and villages across the United States where the mounting toll is becoming increasingly unpopular.(AFP/File/Mauricio Lima)
Cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, and European Tribune.
Today’s poem is in anticipation of FratBoy’s speech – image and poem below the fold
Buffalo Bill’s
by e. e. cummings
Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
– – –
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
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 blog – `Bagdhad Burning’
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
someones tags hanging from a weapon and know I am supposed to think that that is some sort of symbol to remember a person by. I have given up calling this a war……the only war that really ever showed up was the one that our occupation has created. The weapon in the photo doesn’t seem to be a tool used to defend me, it seems to be device of killing that didn’t perform as well as we would have liked and now has “tags” hanging from it. I suppose if I were over there dodging bullets I may feel differently about the weapons of my dead….but why would I be over there with people shooting at me and trying to kill me? That question would haunt me 24/7 if I were there.
Those first set of tags don’t seem to be govt issued. I don’t recall, or maybe things have changed, but dog tags are that plastic red white and blue…
The second set also have a photo of a loved one on it.
My dad, since he was on aircraft carriers most of his “career” and during the several wars/conflicts, wore two sets of dog tags.
One around his neck, which he never wore because it was a hindrance and could get caught in machinery and thus get him killed… so that was tossed.
The second set, the real ones, were inside the ankle portion of his boots. Because no matter what one can usually find a boot of what ever is left behind.
I saw a photo of some soldier and it must have been propaganda bullshit because his tags, or possible tags of a lost buddy, were dangling from a fucking tank. Yeah riiiiiiiiiight.
I think Americans are such suckers for all of this Bushshit Propaganda that they’ll buy anything.
Speaking of buy… did ya know you can purchase flag cases in Wal-Fart?
That should read “dog tags ARE NOT plastic red white and blue”
are a bought for self set. The one that it looks like it has a loved ones photo slipped into one side of it was what they sent my husband to Iraq with. Instead of the old version double set which were designed so that they could be held in place in between a corpses teeth after death to identify the body, the new version is two with the black rubber edging and one acts as a dangling pendant when worn around the neck alive and as a toe tag when worn around the toe dead. Oops, I hear my grandma calling……time for tea and toast and talk about something NICER.
This may seem irrelevant, but Mr. Damnit bought Arabian Nights translated by Husain Haddaway based on the 14th century text edited by Mahdi. (Basically – it’s not that Richard Burton crap)
Anyways… I’m reading it now and I can see in my mind the land it’s set in and how now those lands are ravished by OUR own gunfire and looting. Hell, we even destroyed the ancient site of the hanging gardens.
Moses, Solomon are all part of the Islamic “bible”, too.
Why, again, is Bush SLAUGHTERING these people?
Why, again, are our men and women dying over there? Why are we training people to become killers and butchers and torturers?
Having my morning giggle. I read about the destruction of some of the monuments over there. To me that is so infuriating, what the hell? Feels like nothing is sacred anymore except US. How can my nation claim to be so Christian and just go shoot the hell out of the Holy Land? Makes no damn sense to me at all, where’s my valium…..oh yeah, I don’t have any of that stuff…..I’m going to have to remedy that damnit Janet. My husband can’t even talk about all the torture stuff coming out now, he has to divert his gaze and go to his happy place. My husband took some photos flying over the Euphrates and it is the most amazing turquoise color in places and there are ancient aqueducts that you can see built along it that must be 50 times older than any of the skin dust in the White House.
I was in Boston in April and the graveyards in the city have bullet holes in the gravestones. It’s from where the British used them as target practice.
Oh horrors, Right??? Supposed to anger us…
and while there I thought of how we are doing so much worse. We are destroying an ancient civilization.
My daughter has a book of satelite photos of earth and Bagdhad looks beautiful… at least it did at one time.
Arabian Nights…