Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 148

14 Comments

1. 

   RubDMC on October 20, 2005 at 2:43 pm

   

   Copy the image into your own comment (you can leave it on my server), and/or rate this one – not for mojo, but to leave a small mark after taking this moment.

2. 

   Oui on October 20, 2005 at 2:50 pm

   .

   A recently returned troop, who wishes to remain anonymous, says, “When I read about the mutilated charred bodies of the Blackwater mercenaries in the news, all I thought was that we did the same thing to them. They would see us debase their dead all the time. We would be messing around with charred bodies, kicking them out of the vehicles and sticking cigarettes in their mouths.”

   Another returned troop, also anonymous, says, “We would defecate on and run over dead Iraqi bodies.”

   

   As revenge, the U.S. Command ordered twice to raze the city of Fallujah, killing thousands, destroying lives and livelyhood of tens of thousands, in essence devastating communities.

   By any measure a war crime, foretold by the heavy handed assault at the outset of the invasion, when U.S. forces wanted to establish their HQ in a local school. The protest that followed led to the death of 35 civilians. The rest is history.

   Fallujah Timeline – Path to Pandemonium

   Fallujah: Napalm By Any Other Name ◊ by Avila @dKos

   Cluster bombs kill in Iraq, even after shooting ends

   

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3. 

   Oui on October 20, 2005 at 2:51 pm

   .
   Australia’s SBS television – DATELINE
   Psych War in Afghanistan
   Transcript and Video of Interview

   

   BBC News

   “You are too scared to
   retrieve their bodies –
   this just proves you are
   the lady boys we always
   believed you to be.”

   US PsyOps’ alleged message

   ArmyTimes – Afghan Report

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4. 

   dada on October 20, 2005 at 2:56 pm

   
   Peace

5. 

   Damnit Janet on October 20, 2005 at 2:56 pm

   Dear loved ones of Iyad,

   There are not enough words to say how sorry I am for your loss. There are not enough screams and tears.

   I wish I could take it all away.

   I would become a terrorist if my children were taken from me as Iyad was taken from you. I understand completely why you will hate this country and all who live in it.

6. 

   Damnit Janet on October 20, 2005 at 3:03 pm

   

7. 

   BrendaStewart on October 20, 2005 at 3:11 pm

   There is nothing to add….all has been said…..I hang my head and weep for the parent/s.  Thanks, as always, Brenda

8. 

   Oui on October 20, 2005 at 3:58 pm

   .
   Same link as above ::

   Australia’s SBS television – DATELINE
   Hmong – Apocalypse Now
   Transcript and Video report from Laos/Vietnam – how fitting …

   

   The effects of war can last for decades after the last shot’s been fired.

   This is certainly the case in Laos, to our north, where the Hmong tribespeople, who fought on the American side during the Vietnam conflict, are still being pursued 30 years later by their old enemies, the Patet Lao communists, who now run Laos. Up to 20,000 Hmong have been hiding in remote jungle but, earlier this year, driven largely by starvation, they decided to risk a long trek out of their isolation.

   Here’s Nick Lazaredes, aided by footage shot by the Hmong themselves.

   Hmong Refugees Arrive in U.S.:
   The latest chapter in a long odyssey

   Nearly three decades after they last fought communists in their native Laos, refugees at a Thai camp are to get American citizenship.

   The reward for helping the Americans during the Vietnam War took 29 years to materialize, but for the 15,000 Laotian Hmong in this sun-baked refugee camp, it was a payout beyond their wildest dreams: U.S. citizenship.

   “I can’t believe we’ll be Americans,” said Sui Yang, 60, who fought with CIA-backed Hmong guerrillas against the communist Pathet Lao in the mountains of Laos. “We heard rumors for years this was going to happen, but they were always only rumors. Most of us gave up hoping. I thought we were going nowhere.”

   Yang, a soldier in America’s “secret” war in Laos in the 1960s and ’70s, rolled up his trousers to show scars from deep bullet wounds. He spoke of U.S. choppers that supplied his guerrilla band in the jungles, and of downed U.S. pilots the Hmong rescued. He remembered his shock when the U.S. abandoned Indochina in 1975, and when Laos fell to the communists.

   An extra-ordinary story of mountain people in the Laos jungle – I had seen a film in the past, it really grabs you!

   Hmong Home Page

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9. 

   Man Eegee on October 20, 2005 at 4:40 pm

   

10. 

    Salunga on October 20, 2005 at 10:36 pm

    

11. 

    DuctapeFatwa on October 20, 2005 at 10:55 pm

    Out in the streets where few of us go is hell on Earth. I managed to get, a couple of weeks ago, to the mortuary in the city of Baghdad. As I often go in the past, counting the bodies of midday and midsummer out in the heat. There were 26 by midday. Nine had arrived by nine in the morning. I managed to get the official figures for July for the total number of violent deaths in Baghdad alone. The figure was 1,100 violent deaths, men, women and children. Shot, butchered, knifed, executed, death squad killings. A figure which, of course is not given out by the Iraqi Health Ministry and certainly not by the occupational authorities…

    Remember that figure for July that’s just Baghdad. What does that mean for the whole country? 5,000 dead? In July? What does that mean in the whole of Iraq in a year? You see the problem? We’re talking a 50,000, 60,000 dead a year now. The worst figure we’ve heard is 100,000 since 2003 yet still we don’t get statistics. When individual journalists have to go to hospital mortuaries and count the bloated corpses on the floor, you have know you’ve got problems…

    The total figure of journalists who have died during and after the 2003 invasion up to date is now 68. The most recent being an Iraqi stringer again from The New York Times in Basra who was found dumped in a waste heap, executed with three bullets through the back of his head. I suspect the “Iraqi police” killed him like I suspect the Iraqi police killed the American journalist in Basra. Look, there’s no doubt it’s becoming the most dangerous story for journalists anywhere ever…

    The American correspondents, some of them are guarded by armed Iraqis. The New York Times has a compound with four watch towers and armed Iraqis with “NYT” New York Times on their black t-shirts. NBC lives in a hotel in the Karada District with iron grills. The A.P. lives in the Palestine Hotel with two armored walls. Very rarely do they ever venture out and never do the American staffers go in the streets. As I say, we still go out with Iraqi friends. We actually go out to lunch in restaurants in Iraq. But I think that’s probably because as long as we’re with Iraqis and we look at our watch and say, 20 minutes, finish the meal, half an hour, got to be out. You’re ok but it’s a calculated risk.

    As I said, I’m not sure the risks are worth it anymore. Our lives are worth nothing to the insurgents. Our lives appear to be worth virtually nothing to the Americans or the British. I think that when you reach a stage where our lives and our jobs are simply no longer respected, you do have to ask the question, is it worth it anymore…

    And for example, the last trip I made outside Baghdad it took me two weeks to arrange it to go down to Najaf. It was the most fearful trip. I drove the road with three Iraqi friends. One of them a Shiite proleter, a clergyman, a religious man. All the checkpoints of the Iraqi army had been abandoned. This just after George Bush says the Iraqi army is in the field. There were up-turned Iraqi police cars, burned-out American vehicles. I didn’t see a member of the Security Forces until I reached the outskirts of Najaf about 80 miles from Iraq.

    The whole of the countryside outside Baghdad is under the control, is now the property of the armed insurgents both Sunni and Shia. This, we are not being told. This, president Bush will not acknowledge. This, our own dear Mr. Blair will not acknowledge….

    It’s not about embedding. It’s not about embedding, Amy. It’s about television’s refusal to show the truth of war….I tell you, if you saw what I saw when I go to wars when I’m on the front line with or without soldiers or with civilians or wounded in hospitals, if you saw what I saw, you would never, ever dream of supporting a war again. Ever in your life…

    If you go to war, you realize it is not primarily about victory or defeat, it is about death and the infliction of death and suffering on as large a scale as you can make it. It is about the total failure of the human spirit. We don’t show that because we don’t want to. And in this sense journalists, television reporting, television cameras are lethal. They cloud with governments to allow to you have more wars because if they showed you the truth, you wouldn’t allow any more wars…

    It wasn’t based on what do Iraqis want what would really happen. It was also based on oil, I know that. Because if the chief exported Iraq with asparagus, we wouldn’t be there, would we? When you base a war ideology, that’s what happens? You lose. And when you lie about the basis of it, you lose. And the war in Iraq has been lost already. It’s only prison journalism or hotel journalism and the lies of the State Department and the Pentagon and the White House and the Downing Street and the Defense Ministry in London and so on that keep this spin rolling. At some point there’s going to be an explosion the like of which will be inexplicable by those in power. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but it will come…

    AMY GOODMAN: What gives you hope? What gives you hope?

    ROBERT FISK: Nothing. I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m sorry. Nothing at the moment. Ordinary people, I guess. Ordinary people who speak out. People in the Arab world as well. But in terms of governments, nothing much. I may be wrong. I may be too much of a pessimist because I’ve seen too much. nerdified link

    • 

      Kidspeak on October 21, 2005 at 12:42 am

      Our MSM responds to this:

       …they have hearts that do not understand, and eyes that do not see, and ears that do not hear…

12. 

    alohaleezy on October 21, 2005 at 7:35 am

    IMHO…these Iraq Greif diaries should be front paged every GD day so the RSS feed picks it up. THEN, maybe, just maybe the sleepers will wake up to the atrocities of this illegal occupation. I weep for these innocent children.

13. 

    CabinGirl on October 21, 2005 at 8:01 am

    

    The 10 year old boy hits very close to home.