Life is beautiful. What do you think our common future looks like? 

For the past few years, the reality is as follows:

A U.S. soldier from the 173rd Airborne Division, guards oil facilities in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, April 11, 2003. The United States plans to run Iraq's oil industry until an Iraqi interim authority can be formed to take it over, sources familiar with the evolving plan said. Photo by Nikola Solic/Reuters

American, I mean Coalition forces are protecting our oil wells (I meant to say the Iraqi people's oil wells). Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves of any nation.

A U.S. soldier from the 173rd Airborne Division, guards oil facilities in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, April 11, 2003. The United States plans to run Iraq's oil industry until an Iraqi interim authority can be formed to take it over, sources familiar with the evolving plan said. Photo by Nikola Solic/Reuters.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0411-09.htm

The museum in Baghdad was left unguarded. Our troops were busy elsewhere (see above) and did not have time to protect the museum from looting. Antiquities dating back 7,000 years were taken or destroyed, including tablets of the earliest writing known to mankind. But we have our priorities. 

An Iraqi civilian walks through the vault of the National Museum in Baghdad, Iraq Saturday April 12, 2003. Looters opened the museum vault, went on a rampage breaking ancient artifacts stored there by museum authorities before the war started. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)  

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0412-01.htm
 

Don't concern yourself with collateral damage.  This war was necessary to eliminate weapons of mass destruction (and other arms); I mean avenge 9/11; I mean free the world of terrorism; I mean liberate the Iraqi people. It is not about the oil. Repeat, it is not about the oil.

Ali Ismail Abbas, 12, wounded during an airstrike according to hospital sources, lies in a hospital bed in Baghdad, April 6, 2003. Abbas was fast asleep when war shattered his life. A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned and blowing off both his arms. 'It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant,' the traumatized boy told Reuters at Baghdad's Kindi hospital. 'Our neighbors pulled me out and brought me here. I was unconscious,' he said on Sunday. REUTERS/Faleh Kheiber

We watched on TV as the bombs fell on Iraq. What we didn't see was that these bombs actually killed civilians who were children, parents, aunts, and cousins. In some cases, the bombs only maimed the people. Ali Ismail Abbas was not an isolated case. There were plenty of other people who lost arms and legs, including US soldiers. War is truly a horrible thing to bring upon people, and you would think that it would only be used as an absolute last resort. If only that were the case.

My apologies to Ali Ismail Abbas, but I am not trying to exploit him, rather I am trying to illustrate the indiscriminate violence and harm that is committed on a daily basis by our military.

Our thoughts are with him.

 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0412-07.htm

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," Barbara Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on March 18, 2003. "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Some of the bodies of US soldiers who died in Iraq waiting on an aircraft to be transported back to the US. Over 100 US troops, and several hundred Iraqis died in April 2004 in some of the fiercest fighting since the war started. As of October 2005, the count exceeded 2,000 soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

To whom it may concern:

I know I feel a certain uneasiness with the current state of affairs. Maybe the problem is that we shouldn't be feeling any uneasiness because everything is going as it should.

Maybe the problem is that we are not feeling enough uneasiness as we force ourselves to be comfortable with the current state of affairs.

Maybe the fact that everyone is saying that we are living a beautiful life is also adding to my state of uneasiness. I am happy, thanks to George W. Bush, that my stock dividends won't be taxed twice.

Our McMedia keeps showing us only what they want to show us. It is not the whole picture. What is the reason for this form of censorship?  It is to protect us? Is it to protect them? Or to protect who?

How much do we want to know? The question is this - will more information make us feel more uncomfortable? Is feeling uncomfortable a good thing or a bad thing?

Maybe we shouldn't feel too comfortable with all that is going on around us.

peace,

Attila Gyenis

Peace won't arrive until we have truth and justice, and meanwhile people are dieing.

 

 

“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice.”  ~Julian Assange

War creates peace like hate creates love.     ~David L. Wilson

Pages:

How in the world is anybody still sitting on that fence? - A look at how anybody could still not realize that the president is lying about the war (by Attila Gyenis and inspired by Cindy Sheehan).

Dis-civil Obedience - If you are obedient to a government that is acting in a way that is not beneficial to society (civilization), you are practicing dis-civil obedience (by Attila Gyenis).

Links:

http://www.wordsareimportant.com/cindysheehan.htm - "Hypocrites and Liars" by Cindy Sheehan

A body count of Iraqi civilians who have died (the US military refuses to maintain a Iraqi civilian body count):  http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

http://antiwar.com/

 

 

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