Showing posts with label civil war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil war. Show all posts
OF THE FAMILIAR LANDSCAPE OF LANGUAGE
After nearly four years of letting the Bush Administration set the terms of the national debate over Iraq, some major news organizations are finally calling the conflict there what it is: a civil war. The White House is howling in protest.
Here's what Matt Lauer announced on NBC's Today Show this morning: "As you know, for months now the White House has rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war. And for the most part, news organizations, like NBC, have hesitated to characterize it as such. But, after careful consideration, NBC News has decided the change in terminology is warranted -- that the situation in Iraq, with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterized as civil war." Here's some video of Lauer discussing the decision with retired general Barry McCaffrey.
Caution: Strong images.
Oh, you pitiable, puny little dismal cretins,
digging around desperately for something- anything!
A pack of eyeless and earless canine eager to alleviate your connivance.
You’ve bowed to the man,
traded away integrity,
let slip your soul,
pawned your intellect,
and asphyxiated legitimacy!
Read my lips:
“For over two miserable years now it’s been a Goddamned civil war!”
Do you think this clears you? Your veracity it proves?
Read them once more: “Not on your life!”
O! In the wake of the familiar landscape of language
we’ve now but this;
The scourge-rattled thoroughfare.
The bone-blunted blade.
The terror-stained warfare.
The narrow-minded loyalty.
The red-barreled bludgeoning.
The death-prattled prayer.
The bursting furrowed bradawl.
The blackened scream of mothers.
The hate-mottled father’s glare.
The soldiers’ futile anguish.
The caskets draped in glory.
The liars-shank inside our care.
O! In the wake of the familiar landscape of language
might you need consider your own casualty?
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
What is a Civil War? "Objectively, it must be concluded that the disorders in Iraq do not constitute a civil war but are nearer to a politico-military struggle for power. Such struggles in Muslim countries defy resolution because Islam is irreconcilably divided over the issue of the succession to Muhammad. It might be said that Islam is in a permanent state of civil war (at least where there is a significant minority of the opposing sect) and that authority in Muslim lands can be sustained only by repression if the state takes on a religious cast, since neither Shia nor Sunni communities can concede legitimacy to their opponents."
CIA Officers Warn of Civil War, Contradict Bush's Optimism
Civil War In Iraq?
Iraq's civil war nightmare
US senators warn of Iraq civil war
Allawi: this is the start of civil war
Majority Fear Iraq Civil War / Growing Doubt About Bush
Exclusive: Iraq—Plans in Case of a Civil War
Whatever it is or turns out to be, civil war or a politico-military struggle for power, it is a situation that the US must exit... and in rather short order!
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
KURTZ: The conventional wisdom is that American troops resent the media's coverage of this war as too negative. But there's a Zogby poll of U.S. forces that say 72 percent think they should leave within the year. What did you find, when you were in Iraq, military people saying about the mission and the media?..
KURTZ: …And did they think the coverage, generally, on balance, was fair or unfair?
ROBERTS: They didn't seem to have too many complaints about the coverage. They appreciated the fact that we were there and anytime you're embedded with U.S. forces, you're going to see the bad along with the good. They were always trying to put a positive spin on things, from a command level — taking us to certain areas to show us certain things they thought would play well. But by and large, I didn't hear any complaints about the coverage.
~
The claws of the monster
Thrust into all certainty,
Pushing existence down,
It ogles innocent eyes
And honest hearts
Eager to shatter their spirit.
O! Conventional wisdom!
Why must you shirk the truth
In rousing madness from its cave?
She’s as an inferno, is Iraq,
Burning in a distorted world
No one will need her when we’ve finished!
(O! Madness! We’ll not know where you have gone!)
Soon after you’ve creased her dreams
And she sees what the lens didn’t show
You’re treachery will shudder
Giving you cause to slither away and lie dormant.
Silent awhile, you'll soon crawl up again
And blast into our breathing homes...
Only this time, we’ll know.
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
C&L’s Chaos in Iraq
IRAQ'S CIVIL DISCOURSE
The bombing near the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf on Thursday ignited fresh sectarian passions that lingered over sermons in Shiite and Sunni mosques. Some Muslim clerics wondered if Iraq has slipped too far, becoming a nation where the sounds of weeping mothers and praying imams are lost in the din of kidnappings, explosions and slaughter."We lost all our feelings. We are saying goodbye to our sons everyday," said Khaled Hassnawi, a Sunni imam, in his sermon at the Sheik Abdul Kadir mosque in Baghdad. "Wherever you go you see the blood of Muslims being shed. When will this time pass? When will those playing with this fate be satisfied?"
Speaking at the largest Shiite mosque here, Imam Sayed Nail Musawi said: "These adversities that you are seeing everyday are like training for us. God is testing our patience ... The incident in Najaf, who was killed? Poor people in the market. More than 30 were martyred. Najaf's sacredness was violated by this attack."
But even on a day of prayer, violence continued across the country. The bodies of six blindfolded and tortured men were found west and east of Baghdad. A roadside bomb near of northern city of Kirkuk exploded near an Iraqi police convoy, killing two policemen and injuring three.
17 Iraqis Killed in Fighting, Attacks on the Green Zone.
--21 Killed in Series of Baghdad Bombings
When death, anon, grows teeth
And the sun hovers in certainty
And deceit’s all barren, shattered,
And quarrelling gun’s their clatter,
Splendid homes gone flat of bomb
And explosions prized over blood,
Might it then be deemed civil?
The mouth in this does now smirk,
Grins in approval of his madness.
Even as lips prepare to burst and
Limbs congregate to blow apart
The king in this sips of conceit
To the mourning’s raised blade
Far from the rough-edged street.
Tipped in the brush of confusion
Painting now in red, pink and bone;
O great Cradle of Civilization
Budding in narrations account,
Guns and bombs pierce the history
Of your ancient and joyful land,
Let not this madness be her end.
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
17 Iraqis Killed in Fighting- Attacks on the Green Zone
21 Killed in Series of Baghdad Bombings
Clerics in Iraq decry sectarian violence
SQUALLING STILLNESS
At the weekend, one top state department official called them a good PR move to draw attention", while the camp commander said it was an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us". "I wouldn't characterise this as a good PR move," Cully Stimson, US deputy assistance secretary of defence, told the BBC's Today programme, on Monday. "What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life, because as Americans we value life even if it is the life of a violent terrorist captured waging war against our country."
(With the minuscule world’s squalling stillness
Erupting solidly through the callous smoothness
Are we to downright believe the upright deceit,
To misunderstand its audacious correctness?
This finite universe lashes kindly against its void.
Words are meaningless in the silent pertinence,
Our smiling and dismal days writhe still of wishes
And turn back goodness upon their deviant constancy…)
How could words have lost their meaning that day?
Why is nothing to be believed after the plane’s shadows?
Have they so ruthlessly shattered our principles
That even our language holds no meaning?
How can we conceive serenity lying in the fatal position?
How can we erect peace with all of our words bent in war?
If we fight for other’s freedoms while our own fall away
The shrieking birds toppled more than just our towers…
Big Stick and a Carrot (The Anomoly)
CIVIL WAR
I have traveled to the edge of Iraq
And peered over.
She panted treacherously.
It is not strange coming out of
The stifled mouth of national war.
It is not easily uttered, these
Words of internal detonations.
It is not compliant, this laceration
Of autonomy `gainst thy neighbor.
She beseeched the air.
I have traveled to the edge of Iraq
And peered over.
Lunged of war.
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His hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a 20ft bronze statue of Saddam Hussein. Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad's Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.
The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."
US soldier guilty of Iraq deaths
Iraq Attacks Show Insurgent Resilience
From hope to despair in Baghdad
Death on the way to Basra
-Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War on Iraq - At Least 655,000 + +
-Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's War On Iraq 3,218
-Cost of America's War in Iraq
$409,364,138,199To see more details, click here.
Furious Event
So let's return again to treachery
And begin where we left off, with astounding loss,
Or confer with the quagmire
Next to the potent stream of scarlet on the eager soil,
Always there to remind us
With the next furious event…
Its face hanging like posthumous honors
Upon the lowering of a hero in harms way
Or, now that failure is indeed in front of us,
Both eyes wide-open as if we’d stumbled into this nightmare.
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman