by
Tess Ellis, Unknown News
April
9, 2004
What a horrible thing for the families of the four
contractors killed in Iraq to have to endure. Knowing that their loved one
was the victim of desecration, the pictures of their mutilated bodies on
the front page of newspapers throughout the world.
How have we come
to this?
The country was sold this war on the premise that we were
liberators. Saving the poor backward Iraqis from the evil rule of Saddam
Hussein. Oh, and of course saving the world from weapons of mass
destruction.
Well, Saddam has been out of power for over a year,
and the WMDs are nowhere to be found. Iraqis still don't have reliable
electrical service. There are more people in prison now in Iraq than there
were when Saddam was running things. There is no longer a legal system,
and women who could once go to school and hold jobs can no longer do so.
American soldiers kick people's doors in and arrest them at
will.
American contractors bring in foreign nationals instead of
hiring Iraqis. When Iraqis are hired, it's at less than the foreigners.
Their nation's resources are being sold off to other
countries.
Even Iraqis who welcomed us a year ago have changed
their minds.
A recent article in the Washington Post about
the fighting in the Sadr City area of Baghdad quoted a woman at a hospital
with her husband who was shot by our troops:
"When the Americans came, we applauded. We were giving the
thumbs-up. We were jumping and shouting. I took a picture of Saddam
Hussein and stomped on it," said Iqbal Jabbar, 38.
She lifted a
foot to demonstrate on the dirty tile floor beside the hospital bed of
her husband, a burly man who lay groaning, with bullet wounds in the
stomach, arm, legs and feet. The fire that Americans returned into the
suddenly mean streets of Sadr City caught Sabri Sharrati Badr behind the
wheel of the family car; it caught 10-year-old Weaam Abdulatif Walhan in
the doorway of her house; and it caught Ali Sagheer Kherallah walking
home from work.
"Why do they do like this to us?" Jabbar
asked. Good question. Why?
When did the Iraqis, ALL
Iraqis, become the enemy?
Why are our soldiers risking their lives
when the people they are there to help are the same people they are
killing?
From the same article:
At one point, US fire tore into an ambulance driven by Raad
Diaheer Lazem, who took a bullet in the abdomen. Rounds from a.
50-caliber machine gun punctured the vehicle 100 yards from the entrance
to Chawadir Hospital, killing a pregnant woman with a leg wound and the
6-year-old son riding with her to the hospital.
"The lights were
on, the siren -- all the things an ambulance should use in a battle
zone," Lazem said. "I don't know why they shot at me. When I left the
hospital they saw me. I was shuttling patients back and forth all
night." In planning this war of so-called liberation, while
they were moving little markers around in the Pentagon war room, did
anybody consider that they were talking about the lives of real
people? How would you feel if the "collateral damage" they blow off as
inconsequential (part of the cost of war) were your wife and kids?
ARTICLE CONTINUES 
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When did the Iraqis, ALL
Iraqis, become the enemy?
Why are our
soldiers risking their lives when the people they
are there to help are the same people they are
killing? | | | |
Why is it, in a war that was supposedly started to save
the Iraqi people from the evil clutches of Saddam Hussein and the world
from a threat posed by fictitious weapons of mass destruction, we value
the lives of the Iraqis so little that we aren't bothering to keep count
of how many we've killed?
Just as important, why aren't our leaders
considering how their decisions are destroying American lives? How many
military and national guard families are going without while their loved
ones risk being killed? How many soldiers over there are fighting without
adequate protection? As summer comes on again, how many are going to
suffer with inadequate water like they did last year? How many are going
to come back permanently disabled to find that our government couldn't
care less?
And at a time that this administration is pouring tax
dollars into developing new nuclear weapons, why aren't our soldiers
getting adequate testing and medical care to document the effects of
depleted uranium?
We need to look at ourselves as a country. Yes,
we are blessed. Yes, we are great. But that greatness has been based on
honoring and respecting the lives of not only our own citizens, but those
in other countries too. The only people being honored these days are the
CEOs of companies entwined with the administration's military industrial
complex.
The people being killed by this administration because of
their poor planning, lies, and hubris, are of no consequence to them. But
they are the husbands, fathers, sons, wives, brothers, sisters, daughters,
and loved ones of more than 600 Americans, and thousands of Iraqi families
whose lives have been devastated by Bush's folly.
Have Mr. Bush,
Mr. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Condi Rice -- have any of
them actually gone to Dover, stood honor guard for our war dead coming
home? Of course not. They have fundraisers to attend, and bigger fish to
fry. Money wasted on Veterans benefits could be financing bigger and
better weapons for the next war.
Before that next war happens maybe
our "representatives" in Congress will acquire some "balls" instead of
rubber stamping whatever the party line dictates.
I would suggest a
"chickenhawk bill" that requires someone from the administration and/or
Congress to not only be there to honor the arrival of our dead, but to
actually be required to view the remains, so they know first hand the
results of their decisions.
Not only that, but require the media to
carry the images of innocents, like children shot by random machine guns
fired by our troops. Make them show the bodies of families wiped out when
our missiles hit their homes.
Make the administration and the media
show the American public the horror being inflicted on Iraqis and
Americans alike.
Make sure that the American people know about the
atrocities being carried on in their name so that the next president with
illusions of power and controlling the world's oil will think twice before
he sends OUR sons and daughters, not his, to kill or to die.
Have Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney,
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Condi Rice --
have any of them actually gone to Dover, stood
honor guard for our war dead coming
home?
Of course not.
They have
fundraisers to attend, and bigger fish to
fry.
Money wasted on Veterans benefits
could be financing bigger and better weapons for
the next
war. | | | | |
