article tools: email | print | read more Robert C. Koehler
"I want you to feel that Iraqi life is precious," he told them.
Well, that's not going to happen. Here, at the level of basic humanity, the occupation of Iraq -- indeed, the entire Bush administration -- begins to unravel. We can see this with excruciating clarity as requests for an apology waylay the smooth, legal cover-up (one in a series) of the latest spasm of panic and target practice by Blackwater thugs, which left 17 Iraqis dead in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September.
Even the embedded media, so valiant in their attempts to cast the American presence as well-intentioned and, you know, doing the best it can (under the circumstances), couldn't help but convey, as they reported on the investigation of the Blackwater killings, the humanity of the grieving Iraqis. In so doing, the coverage hinted, unavoidably, at the truth about the occupation: that we are, to put it mildly, the bad guys, that what we're doing there is barbaric, racist, insane.
Nothing drives this truth home quite as blatantly as America's mercenary army in Iraq, which is immune from prosecution under either Iraqi or U.S. law. And the baddest of the American privateers are the Blackwater guys, about whom a rival security contractor told Fortune magazine: "They always shoot first and ask questions later. When we're out in country, we often fear Blackwater more than the Iraqis."
Back on Sept. 16, Blackwater personnel -- not for the first time -- convulsed the people to whom we are bringing democracy with an unprovoked shooting rampage. While providing security for a U.S. embassy mission, they opened fire in the crowded square. By the time they stopped, 17 Iraqis lay dead and another several dozen were wounded. These were just ordinary people going about their lives. No one had fired at the security team first, witnesses insisted. But apparently something spooked them, and when you're not accountable under any law, why take chances?
The incident, or massacre, as the Iraqis call it, was outrageous enough to require some sort of investigation by the occupying authorities -- albeit a meaningless one, if you measure the seriousness of an investigation by the potential consequences that would flow from it. In the middle of it, the State Department renewed Blackwater's contract in Iraq, indicating that, whatever the result, nothing was at stake.
The U.S. also tried to buy its way out of this sticky wicket by offering money to the injured and the relatives of the dead. For some reason, the Iraqis refused their envelopes full of cash; they wanted apologies.
It's hard for me to read anything about Iraq in the mainstream media without being tormented by the way it's written: especially by what I would call the requisite spin and omission. Thus every travesty of our occupation, every hellish mishap, every stealth brutality that somehow finds its way into the spotlight, is presented to us context-free. This is the media's ongoing gift to George Bush (and John McCain).
The Los Angeles Times, for instance, in its May 4 story about the investigation of the Nisoor Square massacre, doesn't trouble us with references to other Blackwater shooting sprees; much less the larger context of invasion, mission accomplished, and five years of occupation in which more than a million Iraqis have died; much less the ample testimony of returning vets that "the hadjis" of occupied Iraq are routinely belittled, mistreated and dehumanized. If it had done so, the massacre in question would suddenly be a piece in a far larger picture that would make almost all Americans recoil in shame.
The story does, however, report the awkwardness of Iraqis' turning down cash settlements as a reflection of "the deep disconnect between the American legal process and the traditional culture of Iraq, between the courtroom and the tribal diwan."
Ah, so that's it. Here in America, when someone is killed by a burly goon wearing wraparound sunglasses as he walks through a public square, our cut-and-dried system of justice spits out a cash payment to the parents and they go away happy. In primitive Iraq, however, "The perpetrator admits responsibility, commiserates with the victim, pays medical expenses and other compensation, all over glasses of tea in a tribal tent."
In other words, as a U.S. diplomat is quoted as saying, "Our system is so different from theirs."
But the story in spite of itself refutes this explanation and cuts through to the human core that knows neither national nor cultural boundaries by quoting the Iraqis themselves, who are the only ones speaking in plain language: "Let them apologize by saying those were innocent people," said the father of one of the dead. "Then we will be ready for understanding."
At some point the wall of denial and lies that is the U.S. occupation of Iraq will give way and world -- including American -- outrage will demand its cessation. I believe the collapse will begin with an apology, which is why that's the one thing Iraq's grieving survivors cannot have.
_______
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
Humanity against The Corpirate Decepti-CONS!
The FAUX Media are Agents: Decepti-Cons!
FREE the MEDIA from CRASS GREEDIA!
All Media Conglomerates are
Complicit in The Deceit
Guilty as charged.
Disseminators of
Totally Improper
PROPAGANDA!
Corporate
Deception and Delusion!
Separate Man from the machine.
Humans are people.
Corporations are Tools used by the Wealthy to subjugate the Poor.
Citizens have rights.
Machines have none.
Revoke their Licenses and
Dissolve their Charters
Break up
The FAUX MEDIA
One Channel in any market, period and
One market per Person
Take the profit out and put the Information back in.
This is about our Survival, Real Journalism,
America’s Future, Truth, Freedom and basic Human Rights.
Information is the life Blood of Democracy
Right now it is Poisoned by Foul mouthed Bigots
Spewing lies, misinformation and worse.
Death and DESTRUCTION!
How do they get away with it?
Who pays them Billions to tell Lies?
Follow the money, Honey and the rest is easy.
They’re Corpirate Hand Puppets.
They focus your attention on anything but
The TRUTH while
The Corporations get away with MURDER!
You built the System, paid for it with your Blood, Sweat and Tears yet,
They Control it!
They get everything for free.
While you drowning in grief and your being swept away in a tidal wave of debt
Works for them!
For you?
It Hurts.
Their Rovien Propaganda Ministry spins a Web of deceit
The Delusion that we live in a Free country run for and by The People.
It is a lie.
Nothing could be further from the TRUTH
We live in a FASCIST STUPID STATE
A BANANA REPUBLIC
With a petty Puppet DICTATOR
Where Politicians lie and The Media swears to it.
Garbage in, Garbage out!
End Corporate Hypocrisy now.
The World is going to Hell in a Hand Basket.
See any problems or similarities here?
We are the victims now!
The Chickens (hawks) have come Home to roost
Yet the Corporations take no credit for it
For any of the mess they’ve created with their
Unbridled Imperialism.
Why should they?
That is the Beauty of the plan.
The Plum/Patsy in the pudding
They always blame it on somebody else.
Meanwhile
The BU__! SH__! Gets even deeper and
Starts hitting the fan.
Take back the Airwaves.
And
FREE AMERICA
FIRST!
Start over.
Purge,
Update then
REBOOT!
__
The US has renewed its contract with Blackwater Company despite fact that the security contractor is blamed for committing massacre in Iraq.
"The company's guards in an 'unprovoked' attack shot dead 17 Iraqi civilians while escorting an American diplomat through Baghdad in September 2007. The fatal incident enraged the Iraqi nation.
Not only the security contractor is not expected to face charges for the cold-blooded murders, it is awarded a renewal of contract by the US State Department to protect US diplomats in Iraq for another year.
The company's contract was set to expire on May 7, 2008.
Enraged by the killing, the Iraqi government sought to expel the company from Iraq. It also threatened to strip Western contractors of their immunity from Iraqi law, but the threats fell on deaf ears.
Washington attempted to brush the demands aside but was later forced to order an investigation into the killings. However, in the US no charges were brought up against any of the Blackwater guards in the September shooting.
Foreign security companies are currently not subject to Iraq law, but at the same time are not governed by US military tribunals, allowing them to operate without regard to any repercussions.
"We cannot operate without private security firms in Iraq," under secretary of state for management Patrick F. Kennedy said. "If the contractors were removed, we would have to leave Iraq."
Early in April, the Iraqi prime minister condemned the renewing of a US contract with Blackwater, saying the security firm had committed a 'massacre'.
"They committed a massacre against Iraqis and until now this issue has not been resolved. No judicial action has been taken, no compensation has been made," Nuri al-Maliki said. .."
______________
"In the desert, you can remember your name,
cause there aint no one for to give you no pain"
-America
_____
Apple pie
Al Anbar province. President Bush obsesses on this fantasy, that a germ planted there is spreading peace throughout Iraq.
To begin with, al Anbar province is unique. There is no oil, only sand and desert, and the oil, says no less an authority on the world economy than Alan Greenspan, is what this war is all about. That, and Baghdad, whose infrastructure rivals that of Chicago, despite the warring we’ve cut loose throughout the nation. Those first five desert tribes who turned against al Qaeda in al Anbar number a few ten thousands, total. Compare this to 6 million in Baghdad.
Without oil and with few people, there is little comparable strategic value in al Anbar. Truth be told, nobody much cares about this large chunk of desert, and with the countrywide ethnic cleansing we sponsor, the few Shiites that lived there have fled already. My guess is, its unimportance is why al Qaeda chose to hide itself there in the first place, where less than 5% of Iraqis live in that one-third of the country.
What else about this celebrated switching of sides has been covered up by Bush and his soul mates in the media? That the tribes made this offer to reject al Qaeda 5 years ago, something we dismissed out of hand? What made a dumb thing then such a wondrous thing, now?
What about al Maliki and the Shiite majority--those whom we’ve spent over 4000 soldiers and trillions of dollars to bring to power? He says he doesn’t care if Sunnis shoot each other, just don’t give them arms or money to buy arms. That’s not the hallelujah chorus, a ringing endorsement to match Bush’s wishes. In short, “success” in Iraq, via al Anbar, is just cynicism talking.
Moreover, the right-wing here is spending $15 million to promote this war. What’s that all about? If a war can’t sell itself on its own merits, it’s time to go.
Bush’s other plea for continuing this fiasco in Iraq says that leaving “will cause a bloodbath.” What do we care? Why is Bush all of a sudden the debutante, the coy virgin? The man who started a war is afraid of a bloodbath? That’s rich, Mr. Clown-in-chief, you dyslexic jester…you’ve just got your Georges confused--you, and Orwell. Can I presume required reading at Yale or Andover included the book 1984? “War is peace, peace is war, and war, never ends.”
Bush’s daddy ordered an abrupt pullout from Iraq, in 1991-92, causing a bloodbath. Clinton’s embargo is said to have killed 500,000 Iraqi children, by depriving them of food, formula and medicine. The avuncular Reagan broke the law to sell 10,000 high-tech TOW wire-guided missiles et al to Iran during the Iran/Iraq War in the 80's, tank equalizers, arming the other side at the same time we were openly supporting Saddam; even as Don Rumsfeld was shaking Saddam’s hand, making damn sure the killing continued, till one million total, on both sides, died. For utter callousness, Machiavelli would be proud.
But, if we can't leave because blood about-to-be-spilt in Baghdad appalls George “shock and awe” Bush, why did he invade their country? Making life hard on Iraqis is as American as apple pie.