Four years ago at this time I lay in a hospital bed in Baghdad after a rollover wreck near Basra, on the eve what would become one of the longest wars in U.S. history.
I've always found it ironic that a peace delegate, George Weber, became the first casualty of the war in 2003.
I still remember one elderly nurse at the Iraqi Red Crescent hospital who came by each morning to tend to my broken back. Although she didn't speak English, she pointedly held out the cross around her neck as a token of her faith in my eventual recovery.
Now these healers have themselves become subject to kidnappings and killings.
Meanwhile the President and the new Congress continues to debate Iraqi strategy with the same lack of intelligence and insight that they had before the war. They never pause to ask Iraqis for their views and analysis.
To the average Iraqi, it no longer matters what prompted the war or who contributes to the institutional and personal violence. They only wish it would end and for the U.S. to leave.
A Shi'ia friend wrote this week, "Saddam was a terrible man, and he is now gone. But Bush and Congress only gave us blood killing for our holiday (Eid), not gifts for our children."
He was describing his frustration with the ongoing war. "I am writing with tears in my eyes. Tell Bush he gave the USA people more and more enemies and he must be ashamed of himself."
This friend knows I live in Texas and thinks I have some "in" to the President.
During the past four years my fellow peacemakers and I have continued to travel back and forth to Iraq to examine the war and its aftermath and getting to know Iraqis at every level of society.
We've met politicians, community organizers, military commanders, religious leaders, and ordinary families.
We have seen first-hand the death and destruction caused by the war, prayed inside mosques and churches, visited schools and businesses, and slept in Iraqi homes.
Here is what we've found.
Although sectarian conflict is rising, the 'civil war' is partially a fight between rival political parties seeking control and mostly an armed insurrection against U.S. and government forces. Only a small portion of the "insurgents" are non-Iraqi.
Iraqis want to run their own country but are not permitted to do so. White House appointees and expatriate Iraqis continue to dominate the political affairs of Iraq. Major organs of state and the economy – banking, telecommunications, energy, military, and transportation – remain firmly under U.S. control.
Charlie Jackson is sixth-generation Texan, international technology consultant, and founder of Texans for Peace. He recently returned from his third visit to Iraq.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Here's the funny part.
We've contaminated the Iraq environment with enough depleted uranium to make it uninhabitable for any form of life forever. At current pace a scorpion won't survive. So, please tell us who's going to go work to extract the oil when it would be a death sentence to anyone that breaths the air, uses the water or eats the food?
It gets even funnier.
Everyone deployed has been exposed and carried the contamination home to their wives, children or anyone they exchange fluids with. Cancer rates and birth defects are souring. In Iraq, the parents no longer ask if the baby is a boy or girl - they ask if it's "normal".
Now it gets really hilarious.
bush wants to have more troops exposed.
by
Mr M (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 66 diaries, 2845 comments [654 recommended, 27 rejected]) on Sunday, Jan 7, 2007 at 11:49:49 PM
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