The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday ~ Morning Edition, October 11, 2006 · A new report estimates that violence in Iraq has left over 650,000 civilians dead since March 2003. The report by a team of American and Iraqi public health researchers is by far the highest estimate of war-related deaths in Iraq. ~ More than 2,660 Iraqi civilians were killed in the capital in September amid a wave of sectarian killings and insurgent attacks, an increase of 400 over the month before, according to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry. ~ BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 — An 82-millimeter mortar round fired by militia forces struck an ammunition holding area at an American base in Baghdad late last night, igniting a fire and huge explosions when it touched off tank and artillery shells and small arms ammunition stored there, the American military said today. No injuries were reported from the incident, which the American military said would not affect security operations. Attack jets and unmanned drones were deployed to try to locate the mortar from the air, while soldiers and other personnel at the base moved to hardened shelters. Residents all over Baghdad could see the explosions against the night sky and feel the force of the exploding ammunition from a distance. “Intelligence indicates that civilians aligned with a militia organization were responsible for last night’s mortar attack,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, an Army spokesman, in the statement today. ~ More than 300,000 Iraqis have fled their homes for other parts of Iraq to escape sectarian violence, the Iraqi minister for immigration has said. The migration has picked up in the last six months amid increasing Sunni-Shia violence and is further deepening the country's sectarian divisions, Abdul-Samad Sultan said on Tuesday. Some 890,000 other Iraqis have also moved to Jordan, Iran and Syria in the last three years, he said. ~
THIS; THE SIXTH YEAR OF OUR WAR
O! The half-starved nourishment will soon be complete!
Needlework, weaver of dreams... retire them. Finish the pre-o-one warrior, end them, goddamnit! Sprout new and green and less rebellious fighters! Harvest mindless drones to foment the business of dying!
Our occupation of body and soul, of bombs, rape and thievery, of blasted hope and splintered death, I take comfort in knowing my God-spittled poems wrangled the most in them and me and the least in me and them; these warriors built of indoctrination, constructed and instructed, programmed in wholesome insanity, I can rest easy, eyes closed, knowing I am safe in this; The Sixth Year of Our War.
I want to believe that this other creature… terror, will spare me that I may watch from the comfort of my own cave, see mere bits, shards and pieces flying apart, Watch them filter in... detached from my own fading.
I would rather watch them, they, others, see them... overthere... There be blown to bits, twisted in far away wreckage than hear and see such misery before me overhere…
O! Goddamnit! God damnit! God damn it! Goddamned war is strafing my senses in the darkness of my very shape, pointing to the heavens, arcing over the eye like a meteor bringing home the dead, violently attacking and tormenting my imagination!
O! Blistering comet pulling me in, you’re the needle, I’m the thread!
~
Morning Edition, October 11, 2006 · A new report estimates that violence in Iraq has left over 650,000 civilians dead since March 2003. The report by a team of American and Iraqi public health researchers is by far the highest estimate of war-related deaths in Iraq.
~
More than 2,660 Iraqi civilians were killed in the capital in September amid a wave of sectarian killings and insurgent attacks, an increase of 400 over the month before, according to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry.
~
BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 — An 82-millimeter mortar round fired by militia forces struck an ammunition holding area at an American base in Baghdad late last night, igniting a fire and huge explosions when it touched off tank and artillery shells and small arms ammunition stored there, the American military said today.
No injuries were reported from the incident, which the American military said would not affect security operations.
Attack jets and unmanned drones were deployed to try to locate the mortar from the air, while soldiers and other personnel at the base moved to hardened shelters.
Residents all over Baghdad could see the explosions against the night sky and feel the force of the exploding ammunition from a distance.
“Intelligence indicates that civilians aligned with a militia organization were responsible for last night’s mortar attack,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, an Army spokesman, in the statement today.
~
More than 300,000 Iraqis have fled their homes for other parts of Iraq to escape sectarian violence, the Iraqi minister for immigration has said.
The migration has picked up in the last six months amid increasing Sunni-Shia violence and is further deepening the country's sectarian divisions, Abdul-Samad Sultan said on Tuesday.
Some 890,000 other Iraqis have also moved to Jordan, Iran and Syria in the last three years, he said.
~
O! The half-starved nourishment will soon be complete!
Needlework, weaver of dreams... retire them.
Finish the pre-o-one warrior, end them, goddamnit!
Sprout new and green and less rebellious fighters!
Harvest mindless drones to foment the business of dying!
Our occupation of body and soul, of bombs, rape and thievery,
of blasted hope and splintered death, I take comfort in knowing
my God-spittled poems wrangled the most in them and me
and the least in me and them; these warriors built of indoctrination, constructed and instructed, programmed in wholesome insanity,
I can rest easy, eyes closed, knowing I am safe in this;
The Sixth Year of Our War.
I want to believe that this other creature… terror,
will spare me that I may watch from the comfort of my own cave,
see mere bits, shards and pieces flying apart,
Watch them filter in... detached from my own fading.
I would rather watch them, they, others,
see them... over there...
There be blown to bits, twisted in far away wreckage
than hear and see such misery before me over here…
O! Goddamnit! God damnit! God damn it! Goddamned war
is strafing my senses in the darkness of my very shape,
pointing to the heavens, arcing over the eye
like a meteor bringing home the dead,
violently attacking and tormenting my imagination!
O! Blistering comet pulling me in, you’re the needle, I’m the thread!
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
Detainee Lawyer Must Leave Navy
The Left End Of the Dial - 655,000 perish