red onion

Ya'll venture over to my War Casualties blog, and take a trip down the rabbit hole. It begins with the death of one man in Iraq, shot by the U.S. military, for unknown reasons say the witnesses, and no comment from the military. It is the death of one man, but it might as well be the death of anyone killed as a result of this war. The witnesses asked why? Why?, I ask. Sometimes it is all the weapon you have left, but a formidable one nonetheless, because if we quit asking it, it is all over.

There is a strange, unreal aspect to the description in the article of this man's death. No details at all as to the why of this man's death, but there he was, slumped over the steering wheel of his car, with a bullet wound to his head. His name was Khaled Lahoumi Ahmed, said a witness, because he looked at his ID card that he had on him.

"U.S. military vehicles pushed the car onto the pavement before troops approached the car and opened fire, Mehdi said", was what the article stated.

From one man's death, we move to the U.S. plans for Iraq. They want to be the Occupying Power, under the Geneva Conventions, which means they would have formidable influence over the how the wealth of Iraq is spent and used. The U.S. resisted using this phrase, occupying power, until now, in a clever strategy to limit debate. The falsely benign phrase "liberating force" was the choice of words by the U.S. during the war.

It gets better. Many are speculating the U.S. will make a grab of ownership of Iraq's resources through "privitization". Jay Garner has already hinted at this, as a way to efficiently produce oil. Read the Nation article by Naomi Klein, on what will be the attempt to privitize Iraq, that is, if we become the "occupying power". The Security Council, and the UN are all that are between the U.S. and a complete power grab in Iraq.

Finally, there is the issue of cluster bombs. The Pentagon recently made a statement that in this entire war, only one person was killed by a cluster bomb. This statement is so patently false, purposefully deceptive, and dark and cynical as well, because no sane person would make a statement like that about this war, unless they believed that no one cared and no one was paying attention. Remember Hillah? Remember Hindiyeh? Read Robert Fisk, courtesy of Dissident Voice, on the use of cluster bombs in this war, and the death reports from the villages.

We can navigate ourselves through this rabbit hole.