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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
                Imad Khadduri's blog "Free Iraq" (scroll down for English version)

Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

After Iraq, US Troops Having Trouble Recovering
[COMMENT: This is an important Web site. It has brief stories of the lives of US troops after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. The site also includes the stories of dependents who lost loved ones in the war. Without question, Bush's unprovoked war on Iraq has been a horrible tragedy for the people of that ill-fated land. What is sometimes overlooked, however, is the price American service personnel and their families for Bush's attempt to impress his father and the Christian right. The following is a brief sampling of these stories, which sound hauntingly like those of many Viet Nam veterans.]

coming home grieving Robert Shrode can't sleep. At night, in the fly-speck town of Guthrie, Ky., in the rented farmhouse he shares with his 20-year-old wife, Debra, he surfs the Internet, roams the house. He lies down and gets up again. For a while, he sweated out his bad dreams on the living-room couch, and it drove Debra crazy. She would come down from the bedroom, touch his shoulder, ask what the problem was. Shrode would just turn his back to her and not say a word. Now she knows better than to ask, though occasionally when the silence between them gets too deep, she'll put it out there, What're you thinking about? ''Iraq,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.

coming home denied I can't believe that he is gone, that he won't be coming back." Matthew Laskowski, a chief warrant officer for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, was serving in Iraq when his helicopter crashed. "It seems like a dream," his father said. "Maybe I'll understand once his body is back with us."

coming home the parents' anger My Son Was Betrayed by the bush administration . . . He must want to tell me something. It all began to make sense, why he was there. He said, are you Sherwood's mother? Are you Sherwood's mother? And I just started to scream and scream and scream. I could hear myself screaming. And he just stood there and he -- a neighbor heard me screaming and came to me and lifted me up. He told us that -- 'I knew that someone had been killed that day.' But he wasn't able to give us information. We haven't gotten so much detail. But it was just -- just a terrible -- the really worst moment of my life.

coming home homeless Four months after giving birth, Ms. Goodwin was sent to Iraq. She served food rations at Baghdad International Airport for several weeks, then spent a few more weeks at the sports arena known as the Olympic Stadium, helping to supply soldiers with things like toilet paper and small armaments. These are among her memories: "the mortar rounds, the gunfights, the car bombings." A war veteran wearing a backpack, pushing a stroller and carrying a baby stayed in another strange hotel room last night, mostly because the city of her birth does not know what to do with her. Welcome home.

coming home a family's outrage Burying a child will no doubt be the hardest task that his mother and I shall ever have to do. The one question I have, and the one question I would like you to answer, is, "Why did my son and every other soldier that was killed maimed and wounded have to suffer settling your vendetta?" My son is gone just when he was laying a strong foundation to build upon for the rest of his life. Now, President Bush, his life has been snuffed out in a meaningless war. Where are all the weapons of mass destruction, where are the stock piles of chemical and biological weapons? Please President, pray for all our fallen heroes and as a tribute to these heroes get our boys and girls out of Iraq now, before too much more blood is shed. Since you waged this unnecessary war on Saddam Hussein the world has become a horrible place to live in. I know my boy is safe now, in a new world free of hate and prejudices where GOD is his president, but you tell me President Bush why he had to go so soon and in such a violent way. Respectfully yours, Richard M. Dvorin

[Please use a few minutes of your time to read more of these stories via the link above. At the very least, these men and women deserve to have us spend some of our time contemplating the horrors Bush's war has inflicted upon so many people.]

posted by LoZo 11:53 AM