Every weekday night I watch the PBS News Hour, and at the end of the hour they do a silent memorial for soldiers killed in Iraq whose names are newly released. It’s hard to sit and watch the pictures of these young kids, and know their promise is ended. To me they are very young
Continue reading →Today on NPR I heard an officer in Fallujah claim that he had seen no signs of even a single civilian casuality in Fallujah. I guess he didn’t look very hard.
Continue reading →It’s hard getting good news of what exactly is happening in Iraq these days. Here’s a good description of why, and the story of how things have changed over the past year.
Continue reading →The New York Times this morning reports that Marine officers say we can’t leave Fallujah now that we’ve cleared out the insurgents, because then the insurgents will come right back. Which is both true and obvious. And while our military is tied down in Fallujah, the insurgents will operate elsewhere, as we have seen in Mosul, Baquba, Ramadi, and Baghdad this past week. We don’t have enough soldiers to occupy the entire country, and we don’t want to be there forever anyway. But the insurgents, who are mostly local people fighting the occupation, are going to keep fighting as long … Continue reading →
I read a weblog called A View From a Broad. It’s written by a woman serving in Iraq. She calls herself ginmar and she writes with a lot of attitude, about all kinds of stuff. Today she wrote a post about seeing the humanity in the Iraqi people, bouncing off memories of her own family. It’s a classic, and it’s heart-breaking. This is such an ancient country. Parts of it along the rivers seem almost primeieval, with the ten foot rushes and the fan-shaped palm trees. You expect to see a dinosaur, especially at sunset, when the earth is black … Continue reading →
Yes, things in Iraq are going very well indeed. November already is second deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq We’ve been there now since March, 2003. Twenty months and they’re dying as fast as ever. The worst month was April, 2004. I guess it’s no surprise they’re having so much trouble getting the active reserve to show up.
Continue reading →Apparently a video has surfaced which shows the shooting death of Margaret Hassan. This is a woman who, although she was a British citizen, had lived in Iraq most of her life, and had spent most of her life in service to the people of Iraq. I don’t even know what to say about such barbarism. Just as Iraqi deaths fuel the fury of Iraqi insurgents, so do these barbaric acts fuel the fury of the U.S. and its citizens. It’s important to remember that most Iraqi people are not terrorists. It’s impossible to feel sympathy for anyone who would … Continue reading →
I understand, as well as a civilian can anyway, that war creates psychological problems that may never heal. I’m sure these troubles are particularly acute in an occupation like the one we are conducting in Iraq, where insurgents and terrorists hide among the civilian population and you never really know where death hides. Plus our fighting forces are poorly trained and over-burdened, and this can be laid directly at the feet of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. But shooting wounded men who are no threat is a war crime. If it’s true that the incident caught on tape by Kevin … Continue reading →
Fallujah in Pictures Some are graphic; visit at your own risk. And, from the Los Angeles Times today, a report from a doctor on the scene. Haunted by Those He Couldn’t Save
Continue reading →Kevin Sites is there.
Continue reading →