Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates...what we have done.

A little reminder of why some here are so passionate that our country should not have invaded and attempted to occupy Iraq.

The bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation

This is an almost overwhelming article from Arundati Roy.





I guess no one had told Private A. J. the truth, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

More from this 2003 article:



She mentions the 200,000 Iraqi civilians we killed in Iraq War I, and there is so much more.



More about Arundhati Roy.
http://www.alternet.org/story/19936

Arundhati does point out one good thing that might come of this horrible tragedy....that it exposed our plans for empire.



Yes, he did.

Arundhati Roy is always worth reading. Thanks for posting.

It is not pleasant to read.

Walter Veltroni, Major of Rome, may be the left candidate to the leadership of the Italian Democratic Party.
He has always loved America, its culture, its extraordinary impulse to fight for ideals.
He's progressive, so when he thinks of USA he thinks of the Kennedys, the best Clinton, the efforts of the natives, the black people, the fights of the women for their rights.
He has "drunk" this America so far, he's soaked with it. So am I.

I trust USA. When discussing with people here - expecially some ignorant radical communists - I always ask about what they read, what they listen to, what movies they like. They enjoy America everyday and don't get aware of what they experience - the big, high, supreme progressive culture of America.
Things like those by Michael Moore would be impossible in Italy. Eastwood's movies are not in the mood of Italian directors. Powerful songs of poor and dejected people - by Springsteen among others - are long forgotten here in our Italian miserable holliwoodian sub-culture.
I'd like to talk to them of the DU community and some (not many) others in which american people come and shout, because they're angry, because all that was done was done in their name too. But I don't. Their brain was "managed" - their eyes are full of I don't know what fog.

You see: in the USA Bush and his dirty crew were able to "manage" information. They mixed up 9/11 with Iraq, Al-Qaeda with Saddam - invaded a country, killed many and forced Hussein - a killer, no doubt - to be the star of his own last breath on TV. I see that papers give Powell a second chance - one must be pure christian to accept it: I'm not and I'd like not to see any nor hear anything of him forever.

So the communists in Italy leave unofficial supporters sustain an ignorant antiamericanism and don't correct their view. What's America to them?
At the time of Bush decision to attack Iraq the right-wingers and its papers here began repeating "We're all americans" like an old vynil. What's America to them?

Veltroni says he remembers the words of Kerry Kennedy, Bob's daughter (if I'm not mistaken), during one of her last jouneys in Rome: more or less she said that
America is the most powerful political and military force in the world, but its real strength has always relied upon the ideals that it represents: democracy, freedom, civil rights. These are the real reason why it is great.

Veltroni sees America this latter way and thinks it's going to be like this once again in the eyes of the world. So do I believe.
It must be.

ciao Madfloridian!

I have lived a long time, and it may never be that way in my lifetime. But I would like to think we could be again...someday. There are lots of us here who never left those qualities behind. But we have not been in the halls of power.

That is why we are watching our Democrats so closely. They are now the beneficiaries of lobbyists who have abandoned Bush. We intend to do what we can to see they act wisely.

:hi:

Remind Italy many here still have those qualities.

Question: 'If you could look back from the year 2020 or 2025, do you sense that humanity is capable of turning things around? And again looking back – if that happened, how did we do it? What were the turning points?

Roy: I don't know. I would hate to pretend that I have a cogent answer to that. To me, I think there are three things that would make a big difference.

One is if we can somehow break the hegemony of the mass media, and right now we're very far from that place. It won't happen through any direct confrontation, but it will break itself by being so ridiculous and so propagandistic that it will cease to be relevant in some ways. We will end up using its energies against itself. So that when we read the mainstream press, we will not understand from it what they want us to understand. We will read the New York Times or the Economist, but the message we get will not be the message they want us to get. That is happening now, but it has to happen on a much larger scale.

second major issue is the process of corporate globalization. I think people haven't yet understood the extent of deprivation and the extent of desperation that is being created by feeding this capitalist machine."

....."Unfortunately the last issue – and maybe the most important – is that empires have always risen and fallen because of the physics of power, but they never had nuclear weapons. That danger looms over all of us, and has for so long that we are inured to it.

http://www.alternet.org/story/19936?page=3

Shortly after the illegal invasion of Iraq began, a Japanese reporter who was "embedded" with the U.S. troops noticed a sign in Arabic and English that said that this was the road to the ruins of Babylon. The Japanese reporter got all excited and told the soldiers that he was looking forward to seeing the site of Babylon. The American soldiers just looked at him blankly.

Middle Eastern archaeologists are just sick over the damage that the U.S. invasion has done. What the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Ottomans, and countless other conquerers couldn't destroy, the U.S. army--an army made up mostly of the poor and/or ignorant and commanded by brainwashed yes-men who "just follow orders" from their sociopathic commander-in-chief and Secretary of "Defense."*

*The old name "Secretary of War," was much more honest, don't you think?

Will our media not allow it? Will the party leaders on our side not allow it? Even the most outspoken Democrats don't say much about the outrages.

Remember when the people of Fallujah, knowing what was coming...wrote a letter to the UN begging for help?

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1042



A lot more at the link. This letter was written just before that huge November offensive.

Yes, it is time to say it out loud.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=3327939

The official line is that we're always the "good guys." If we do something that is undeniably evil, then it has to be construed as a "mistake."

The worse thing you're allowed to say is that Iraq was a "mistake" or that the war was a fine idea but Bush "went about it wrong."

It is taboo in the mass media to say that BGush is a sociopathic war criminal who lied his way into an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation and gave free rein to greedheads, vandals, and sadists.

And people complain about the Japanese not being able to admit to war crimes!

I bet that sixty years from now, the more freeperish Iraq War veterans will be sending death threats to former comrades in arms who admit to committing atrocities. I'm basing that notion on what has actually happened in Japan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZUQI1yTPeI


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcxo8BwwURU&mode=related&search=


http://us10.pixagogo.com/S5zbTG1dgOCeCFGwDXVKYFnjhE!E5NzwRoQ8gZfrYlB0Hc7R4X90AuvOo6OxIW5HkHCnv5SP8xv1QxbCO65VUtM3GK!odnswADJl00ZzRA2vFE0biNImXgBQ__/Little_Admiral.jpg


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1947980&mesg_id=1948306





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoxfhfHCzb8&mode=related&search=

"HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS" Hmong Hunted and tortured -merciless!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmSWXk1nFRc&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdwfMStlmXI&mode=related&search=



Jack Austin Smith, a Vietnam Veteran and a retired career soldier

http://www.jefflindsay.com/hmong.shtml

Writing to an American who was confused about the Hmong people, Jack Austin Smith, a Vietnam Veteran and a retired career soldier, wrote the following in 1996 (quoted from his e-mail to me, with permission):

The war in Vietnam was fought on several fronts and I served in two them. The main American battle ground was in the Southern end of South Vietnam. In order for the North Vietnamese forces to fight us there, it was necessary for their supplies and troops to go through Laos and Cambodia on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and Laos was controlled by a Pro-Communist Government at that time. Therefore America was not allowed to have any forces on the ground, although we were allowed to bomb and attack North Vietnamese troops with our aerial forces. About 99% of the combat forces on the ground were Hmong irregulars who were persuaded by Americans to forget about being neutral, and to fight the N. Vietnamese regulars (not relatively poorly trained Viet Cong guerrilla forces). We supplied air cover, but every combat trooper knows aircraft can't take and hold ground. We depended on the Hmongs to do this. Without modern arms, without medical help.
After the fall of Saigon we pulled out of Southeast Asia and left the Hmongs to continue the fight without air support. When we left, the Hmong had to fight both the Laotians and the N. Vietnamese. They could not fight tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft with rifles. A great many Hmongs were slaughtered in their villages. Many were slaughtered at airfields where they waited for evacuation planes that never came. A few were able to fight every foot of the way across Laos and cross the Mekong River into refugee camps in Thailand where they were further mistreated by rather corrupt UN and Thai officials. Out of a estimated 3,000,000 prewar Hmong population less than 200,000 made it to safety. One other ill informed or stupid writer said "they were all gone" meaning, I guess, that the combat Hmongs were all dead, they are wrong. Most of the survivors are in Australia, France and here among us.

Now I don't know about those heroes who have never heard a shot fired in anger, but I am embarrassed that my country so mislead these people. The Hmongs gave up literally everything for us: their country, their homes, their peaceful way of life, most of their families, everything that we would cherish. We promised them our continued support and then we bugged out.

You mentioned having relatives who fought in Vietnam and I hope they all survived. However their chances would have been much less if the Hmongs hadn't intercepted over 50% of the N. Vietnamese troops and supplies. If you truly loved your relatives, you should be grateful for the Hmongs' sacrifices.
http://www.jefflindsay.com/hmong.shtml

Arundhati Roy on India, Iraq, U.S. Empire and Dissent

We have been wondering why progressive voices are not heard on our media much...just the talking heads. It is the control factor. They want to control what is said.



This is interesting in how the media can shut people out if they don't play the game.