...It isn’t the huge bombs--the ones make the news, horrendous as they are--that have the greatest impact on Iraqis. It is the ongoing, daily suffering of the Iraqi people. People dying from bad water and starving to death because there aren’t enough jobs just don’t grab the attention that bombs demand from the media.
...
Driving across the double bridge (formerly Saddam Bridge) in south Baghdad there are huge, black metal sheets along one side of the top of it. On each of them is written:
>By Order Of The Coalition Forces
>Do Not Tamper With Or
>Remove Metal Sheets
>Under Penalty Of Force
...
Um Taha was detained for 4 months. She told me that while in Abu Ghraib she knew that many of the women in the prison were being raped.
She told of detainees who would hold their Qu’ran [sic] out of their cell bars in order to have some light to read with. “And when they did this,” she said, “soldiers would hit them on their arms.”
Um Taha added that soldiers were distributing Christian Bibles in Arabic to the teenage detainees, and that soldiers were forcing detainees to speak English to them.
She told of being forced to use a sieve to separate feces from urine in a waste bucket from the latrine in Tikrit where she was held prior to her transfer to Abu Ghraib. Once this job was done, a soldier dumped gas on the feces, lit them, and made her stir them for half an hour.
During November, while in Abu Ghraib, she said many of the detainees rioted against their mistreatment. She stated that as a result, 14 Iraqi men were stripped naked and sacks were placed over their heads by U.S. soldiers, and brought into the corridor beneath her cell. Thus, she had a clear view of the atrocities which ensued.
“The soldiers made them all stand on one leg,” Um Taha recounted. “Then they kicked them to make them fall to the ground.”
She said that Lynddie England, the female American soldier made infamous in the widespread incriminating photos, was dancing around laughing while using a rubber glove to snap the detainees on their genitals. “The soldiers also made all the men lay on the ground face down, spread their legs, then men and women soldiers alike kicked the detainees between their legs,” Um Taha said quietly.
After pausing, she added, “I can still remember their screaming.”
She said that in addition to this, the detainees were ordered to crawl around the corridor on all fours and make cow and sheep noises as the American soldiers laughed at them.
On September 11, 2001, George Bush said, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”
--[Dahr Jamail of New Standard fame]. i should retch. This is what, happening right now? We're desensitized vegetables.
That sounds naive, so bloody deal with it.
Usman laughs uproariously throwing things out of the bathtub. At 'Asr today he made me want to cry of joy. It's quite ridiculous, really, that it's mid-June and [still it is 5 degrees at night]. (Global warming or reverse psychology, you tell me. O_o) Mist rises from the meadow, lifts off the pond. Irises bloom, heart-felt purple and quietly exquisite. They speak, to those with ears to hear. Tomorrow and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
