I just watched the Saddam execution, taken apparently by a witness with a camera phone or small video device. It had that same snuff movie quality that you might see in the "Faces of Death" videos, or the Daniel Pearl clip if you had stomach enough to watch. It was in a dark chamber, with witnesses loudly "yell-praying", and there was also last minute cursing and taunting of Saddam. He was in the middle of his own shouted prayer when they pulled the trap door out.

It made me really question the differences between them and us. They are a cruel, war-mongering lot, punishing violence with violence which inevitably re-escalates the violence. They use human lives as ammunition in a never ending cycle of pride-fueled aggression, using religion as justification for their violence. Make no mistake here, I'm not talking about the difference between Americans and Iraqis, I'm talking about the difference between peace seekers and war mongers.

Saddam was not executed by free people. He was killed, and rather hastily so, by a puppet regime in which most law abiding citizens are currently in fear for their lives, fleeing their country at alarming rates as bodies are found tortured and killed every single day. These are not proper conditions for executions, nor trials, nor elections. There can be no true democracy in an occupied country.

The enlightened world has a place for war criminals and dictators to be held responsible for their crimes - the Hague. There is extraordinary value in examining their crimes as carefully as possible. First, to learn how such men came to power. Who was complicit in these crimes? Who supplied weapons and aid? Who provided political cover? Second, trials lasting years show more then one generation what fate should await war criminals, underscoring the importance of their deeds on the world stage. But Bush couldn't bring Saddam to the Hague because he himself might be considered a war criminal there, due to neglectful examination of evidence linking Saddam to al Qaeda and a 9-11 era WMD program, not to mention illegal detainments, torture, rendition, use of white phosphorous and officially sanctioning human rights offenses.

Saddam was tried and convicted for a relatively small slaughter of Shia in retaliation of a 1982 assassination attempt. It is well known, however that Saddam ordered a much more massive Kurdish genocide in which tens of thousands died. Saddam was not permitted to talk about this in court. He was not allowed to publicly air the nature of the relationship between he and Donald Rumsfeld, who helped Saddam in the 80s as the CEO of Monsanto Chemical, a civilian envoy sent by President Reagan. Following this unusual meeting, Iraqi forces began threatening Iranian fighters with a "special pesticide" and it wasn't long before Iranian casualties began turning up with exposure to chemical weapons banned by U.N. treaties. Saddam was also not permitted to reveal details leading up to the U.S. invasion, nor share any facts about WMD, Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. Though Saddam was not likely to tell all, it's a pretty safe bet he'd want to reveal dirty secrets about the Bushes and other American officials who used and then double-crossed him. As a former ally of Republican U.S. Presidents past, Saddam may have had historical information the world might have benefitted from.

With his death hastened before any Democrat-led Congressional investigations could be begun, the Bushes may have succeeded in covering tracks of complicity or duplicity in Iraq, just like they eluded scrutiny of connections between grandpa Prescott Bush and the American financing arm for Nazi Germany, not to mention great-grandpa Samuel P. Bush's work during World War I who through cronyism was given responsibility for government assistance to Remington Arms and other weapons suppliers, though he had no experience in munitions. Alas, the Bushes rise to national power resulted in many documents in the National Archives being burned to "make space" and indeed one of Bush Jr.'s first acts following his election was to reverse laws requiring his father's papers to be declassified. He later used the tragedy of 9-11 to enact a special law mandating his family's papers be kept classified in perpetuity depending on the wishes of his own daughters.

So it goes, with those that benefit or profit from war and death, whether they be American or Iraqi, there is a distinct cheapness to average human beings and violence is countered only in kind, without careful consideration to where it will ultimately lead.

Men like Bush and Saddam are common throughout history, but when a different kind of problem-solver comes along, it can change mankind profoundly. Non violent protests made all of America take note in the 60s, thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., causing each citizen in America to weigh in on their own morality and their guilt or complicity in racist practices. So too did Mahatma Ghandi demonstrate peaceful civil disobedience in the 1940s, forever changing the course of India and the perception of imperialism the world over. And Jesus Christ preached one should "turn the other cheek" when attacked, later martyring Himself on the cross to become the greatest figure in history and religious philosophy two thousand years later.

Though Jesus' teachings are clear, it is still the most indescribable of ironies how often violence has been committed by His so-called devotees. From the bloody Crusades ordered by the "warrior popes" to the modern day pre-emptive strike, too many people who condone violence claim allegiance to Jesus, when it's patently obvious that war is antithetical to all that is known of His beliefs. I personally consider "Thou Shall Not Kill" to be the words of almighty God. But just like modern Islam has been bastardized by those whose interpretation is corrupted by their wills. These teachers simply write in the justification for violence and Jihad. It is evil and selfishness, not religious devotion that guides the hands of Bush's war profiteer donors. With feeble resistance by an apathetic public and indifferent media, they are able to sway many good people with lies, fear or repression undoing the work of the great pacifists of history. If Bush and Saddam worship any god, it is Mars, god of war.

So ends their personal feud, with Saddam dangling from a rope and Bush swathed in opulence while Iraqis and Americans die on the ground, both sides clearly signaling they oppose this new type of war.

We The People will have a chance to speak loudly in 2008, even within this horrid system of money-tainted politics. We need to turn the tide sharply, have answers prepared for the onslaught sponsored by the military-industrial complex and those that ride the congressional-lobbyist merry-go-round. We know these things already, but we need to be prepared to shut them out. They have money and power motivating them, with powerful advertising and marketing aces on the payroll whose job it will be to manipulate us by fear or lull us into complacency.

In 1969, when we were on our way to having 50,000 young Americans killed in Vietnam, we pulled together a powerful message of unity and brought it to the man. The Woodstock generation succeeded Dr. King and Gandhi in fighting for peace, against this exact same pro-war movement, with literally many of the same people in charge. Has the Woodstock generation forgotten this? Have they become the Common Stock generation?

Time Magazine pointed out that there is still a great deal of power concentrated in the individual, naming "you" the person of 2006. But are "you" using this power at all? Are you signaling your wishes effectively to your leadership? Do you participate in political discussion, do you contribute to causes, do you pass along information the press won't?

Saddam is now dead, killed by a competing warlord with a long distance reach and paid for by a trillion hard-earned tax dollars and 3000 American lives. But Bush and those who share his ideology are able to continue to write their own ticket and exploit the resources of the American people as they have been for years, escaping accountability.

The next few weeks will be incredibly decisive in the future direction of the United States of America. I ask you to use the power "Time" has bestowed upon you - to be loud and active in supporting those few courageous, honest politicians who will fight for justice and peace. Show them that there is a difference between them and us.

 
 

Below is a very solid example of writing, not only in structure but substance. Eloquent and informative without blurring the line of fact and opinion. Subject matter is important and the underlying message? To me, finding common ground in this divided society in supporting our troops, demonstrating positivity and unity.

=-=-=-=-=-

 Supporting the Troops
    By William Rivers Pitt

    Thursday 24 August 2006

    Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address spoke pointedly of caring "for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," of the solemn responsibility held by this nation to those who served and died in her service. A plaque outside the Veterans Administration building in Washington, DC, bears these exact words. It is a motto, a mantra, and today, an utterly unfulfilled promise.

    Consider the following.

    The Bush administration's most recent budget framework includes $910 million in cuts to the Veterans Administration. 2,615 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and yet efforts to double the death benefit for soldiers killed in active duty have been forcefully resisted by the White House. Pay raises for soldiers have been capped. The tax-cut mantra of the White House has not trickled down far enough to assist the troops on the line; soldiers fighting overseas and soldiers deployed for extended periods have not been deemed worthy of even minimal tax relief, while billions of dollars in tax cuts are gifted to the wealthiest among us.

    Nearly 20,000 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, but must wait nearly six months before being seen by a VA hospital. The prescription co-pay costs for veterans were doubled in Bush's proposed 2005 budget. His 2004 proposed budget would have eviscerated funding for the education of military children. The White House formally opposed allowing National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon's health care program. Perhaps worst of all, the White House quietly attempted to cut combat pay for all soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this measure was quickly scrapped after it became public.

    This from the man whose staged photo-ops with serving soldiers have become the stuff of lore. This from the man whose defenders denounce critics with the line, "Why don't you support the troops?" This from an administration filled with officials who, almost to a man, had other priorities when they were called to serve.

    The question of how, exactly, one can and should support the troops has been a live political hand grenade over the last several years. Do you support the troops by backing Bush and the Iraq occupation to the hilt? By quashing criticism because it might affect soldier morale? Or do you support the troops by advocating for their removal from the vortex of a failed and deadly policy?

    These are, for sure and certain, questions of life and death. They are also, however, political questions all too often dominated by sound bytes and talking points. True assistance to American soldiers, within all this noise, is difficult to find.

    Enter the Patriot Guard Riders.

    It began with the funeral of Army Specialist Edward Lee Myers, who was killed in Iraq on July 27, 2005. His funeral was scheduled for August 5th, in St. Joseph, Missouri. Word got out that Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church intended to stage a protest demonstration at the funeral. Phelps and his group believe that America is doomed because of its tolerance for homosexuals, and sees the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq as divine judgment. They began showing up at soldier's funerals to broadcast this message.

    D.C. "Big Dog" Hannah and his fellow veterans would have none of it. "The Missouri chapter of Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association," said Hannah in an interview, "established a plan to attend the funeral to shield Eddie's family from the protesters. CVMA contacted other groups; notably the VFW, American Legion and American Legion Riders (ALR), Leathernecks Motorcycle Club - made of current and former Marines - and the Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club. On the day of the funeral, eight protesters stood in a ditch across the road from the church parking lot, waving signs and screaming obscenities. Among their group were four children, wearing t-shirts with obscene phrases. 20 bikers and 15 other veterans stood between them and the church. When the Phelpses chanted, the bikers drowned them out."

 
   
    "One of those veterans' groups," continued Hannah, "was American Legion Post 136 in Mulvane, Kansas. Members of Post 136 moved past talking, to action. The ALR chapter at Post 136 met on the evening of August 7, and appointed a committee to organize an ALR service mission to honor fallen soldiers and shield their families from funeral protests. The officers of ALR Post 136 recognized the need to have other veterans' groups, civic groups, and regular citizens involved, and began to make contacts across Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. The group they organized gathered for the first time at the funeral of Army Sgt. John Doles on October 11 in Chelsea, Oklahoma. At that time, the group did not have a name, because it was an ALR service mission."

    "The name 'Patriot Guard,'" continued Hannah, "was announced on October 27 at the funeral of SPC Lucas Franz of Tonganoxie, Kansas. The bikers from CVMA, Leathernecks, VVMA, and ALR, and vets from VFW and the American Legion, were joined by our brothers and sisters from the community. Total attendance was over 100 motorcycles and 200 people standing between the WBC and the family. I rode to that funeral, and stood proud and angry with good men and women who wanted to honor a soldier, and protect his family. Following a funeral Mission Ride in Redmond, Oklahoma, on November 8, Jeff Brown of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, talked to the Patriot Guard officers from Post 136, and formed a nationwide communications network. That network, the natural evolution of the Patriot Guard into a national organization, is today's 'Patriot Guard Riders.'"

    There it is. Simple, eloquent and effective actions taken to respect and defend soldiers who offered that last full measure of devotion.

    "Even as the Westboro Baptist Church fades into irrelevance," said Hannah, "our mission and focus remain to honor those who have given their lives in service, and to support their families and communities. We will be here long after Fred Phelps meets whatever justice waits for him after he draws his final breath. Because of the requests of families and community leaders to become involved, PGR expanded our mission to include funeral Mission Rides for veterans, particularly Vietnam vets; and law enforcement officers, firefighters, and emergency medical services members killed in the line of duty. We are frequently invited to sendoff and welcome home events for military units. We were invited to attend the funerals for the Sago Miners in West Virginia, after the Westboro Baptist Church announced their protest."

    "We also ride to raise funds for vets in VA hospitals and retirement homes," said Hannah, "and to visit those shut-in vets. Our 'Help on the Homefront' program organizes activities for veterans' support; activities and fundraisers for families with deployed members; and fundraisers for scholarship programs like the American Legacy Scholarship (an American Legion project for the children of military personnel killed in action)."

 

   
    Anyone seeking to paint political motivations over the actions of the Patriot Guard Riders need not apply. "In the PGR," said Hannah, a self-described pagan, veteran and biker, "we leave our politics at the curb. I know Republicans and Democrats; liberals and conservatives; politically active and politically apathetic. I haven't met any Communists or Anarchists yet, but we may have them. Among the bikers, 'small L' libertarian philosophy is common. Older vets are more likely Republican than Democrat. Younger Riders, including new vets, may lean more to the left. I don't ask, and I don't care."

    "Last month," said Hannah, "I was Ride Captain on a funeral Mission Ride for PFC Brian Bradbury of St. Joseph, Missouri. At the church, an achingly beautiful young woman wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign and 'I Ain't Gonna Study War No More' approached me. She handed me a page of poetry she had written and said, 'I feel like I had to come, but I don't know if I belong here.' I handed her a flag, walked her to the line in front of the church, and gave her a hug. She belongs, perhaps more than most of us do."

    "Caring for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," said Lincoln. The government isn't doing it; this administration, in particular, seems all too willing to create new veterans while dispensing with the systems of care that tend to them after their service is concluded. Men like Hannah, and the riders of the Patriot Guard, have taken matters into their own hands. They stand for the families of the fallen, they raise funds for disabled veterans and their families, and they do so for one simple reason.

    They support the troops.

I speak out a lot when I see it in right wing writing and commentary, so I feel I must do it here. The below article goes over the top unnecessarily. The subject matter, combined with the dramatic style of the writer is sufficient not only to inform and to outrage readers. But in several instances, I see techniques employed which needlessly leap from logic to distortion.

Specifically, to invoke Bush in the heart of the article simply because the murderous rapist GI and Bush were both from Midland is a manipulation. There is plenty to Criticize Bush for, possibly even genocidal war crimes. But to equate him with Private Green in this article is, as many right wing pundits do, a skillful distortion to enflame and then redirect our emotions.

Secondly, "The U.S. military is now a mercenary force" is, I believe a pessimistic overstatement, though it is true there are rampant abuses and perhaps in effect a "poverty draft", there is no evidence I've seen that suggests a majority or even significant percentage of our troops are this morally and criminally bankrupt. Again, as our favorite right wing pundits demonstrate, the oft repeated technique of over-amplifying anecdotal cases in wrongful condemnation of larger swaths is evident.

Finally I see the author doing something similar to what Ann Coulter did in a recent column when she laundry-listed dozens of terrorist attacks by Muslims over past decades in trying to justify the bombing of Lebanon, then somehow calling for shunning of all Democrats. By listing Timothy McVeigh, the Okinawa child rape and other sexual abuses in Somalia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the author "piles on" what seem to be more and more facts making her case, which don't if analyzed objectively. Her case as I understand it is the problem of modern day "Moral Waivers" and the war in Iraq, both of which I firmly oppose. But she includes pre-"Moral Waivers" era US military abuses, and then rapes by men of completely other countries during other eras. If the point is that we need to take a stand against our own military lowering standards today, it gets cross-convoluted by citing rapes in other times and places. Most civilized nations oppose rape already, we need to point out that this particular military conflict which we can speak out against continues to provide opportunity for such abuses.

I support this author's premise, however I think it's important that we don't tarnish our valuable messages by trying to get more out of the supporting facts then are there. It's what Michael Moore is widely criticized for and may have reduced his effectiveness in this age of sensationalist "docu-tainment" media.


WMC Iraq Commentary: Manhood and Moral Waivers
    Robin Morgan
    The Women's Media Center

    Thursday 17 August 2006

    Her birthday is August 19, her death day March 12.

    We cannot let this crime, too, pass into oblivion.

    When news surfaced that GIs allegedly stalked, terrorized, gang-raped, and killed an Iraqi woman, the U.S. tried minimizing this latest atrocity by our troops - claiming the victim was age 25 or even 50, implying a rape-murder is less horrific if the victim is an older woman. Now, Article 32 hearings - the military equivalent of a grand jury - have ended at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base in Iraq (U.S. troops are exempt from Iraqi prosecution). In September, a general will rule whether the accused should be court-martialed. The defense already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): in four months preceding the crime, 17 of the accused GIs' battalion were killed; their company, Bravo, suffered eight combat deaths.

    But as the U.S. spun the victim's identity, investigators knew her name: Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.

    Abeer means "fragrance of flowers." She was 14 years old.

    The soldiers noticed her at a checkpoint. They stalked her after one or more of them expressed his intention to rape her. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky mixed with a high-energy drink and practicing their golf swings, they changed into black civvies and burst into Abeer's home in Mahmoudiya, a town 50 miles south of Baghdad. They killed her mother Fikhriya, father Qassim, and five-year-old sister Hadeel with bullets to the forehead, and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and lit them on fire to destroy the evidence. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

    These details are from a sworn statement by Spc. James P. Barker, one of the accused along with Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan Howard; a fifth, Sgt. Anthony Yribe, is charged with failing to report the attack but not with having participated.

    Then there's former Pfc. Steven Green. Discharged in May for a "personality disorder," Green was arrested in North Carolina, pled not guilty in federal court, and is being held without bond. He's the convenient scapegoat whose squad leader testified how often Green said he hated all Iraqis and wanted to kill them. Other soldiers said Green threw a puppy off a roof, then set it on fire. The company commander noted Green had "serious anger issues."

    Who is this "bad apple"? A good ole boy from Midland, Texas.

    "If you want to understand me, you need to understand Midland," says President Bush. Steven Green understands Midland - his home until his parents divorced and his mother remarried when Steven was eight, already in trouble in school. A high-school dropout, Green returned to Midland to get his GED in 2003. Then, in 2005, he enlisted. He immersed himself in a chapel baptismal pool at Fort Benning, Georgia - getting "born again" while being trained how to kill legally and die heroically. He was 19, with three convictions: fighting, and alcohol and drug possession.

    Once, the Army would have rejected him. But he enlisted when, desperate for fresh recruits, the Army startedincreasing, by nearly half, the rate at which it grants what it terms "moral waivers" to potential recruits. According to the Pentagon, waivers in 2001 totaled 7,640, increasing to 11,018 in 2005. "Moral waivers" permit recruits with criminal records, emotional problems, and weak educational backgrounds to be taught how to use submachine guns and rocket launchers. Afterward, if they survive, they'll be called heroes - and released back into society. (One ex-soldier praising the military for having "properly trained and hardened me" was Timothy McVeigh).

    The U.S. military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and "independent contractors," we do have a draft: a poverty draft. That's why the Army is so disproportionately comprised of people of color, seeking education, health care, housing. But the military inflicts other perks: teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish that.

    One notorious training song (with lewd gestures) goes: "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." The U.S. Air Force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness."

    "Soft targets"? Civilians. Her name means "fragrance of flowers."

    Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (updated edition 2001, Washington Square Press), I presented far more evidence than space here permits on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend both spring from the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic - a pervasive message affecting everything from U.S. foreign policy (afflicted with premature ejaculation) to "camouflage chic," and glamorized gangtsa styles?

    This definition of manhood is toxic to men and lethal to women.

    But atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn't rape a staple of war long before The Iliad? Weren't 100 thousand women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? Didn't warring Somali clans in the 1990s, sometimes joined by UN Peacekeeping troops, rape "each other's women"? Weren't the five surviving Somali women then stoned to death by Islamists for "adultery"? And weren't the earliest reports from another small, troubled country - of rape attacks on villages by gangs called Interahamwe ("Our Heroic Boys") - ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

    Yet the Pentagon is shocked. "Not our nice American GIs? Must be a few bad apples." Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? The photos of sexually tortured men leaked, but photos of abased and abused women prisoners are still classified, for fear of greater world outrage. Have we forgotten two U.S. marines and a sailor kidnapping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995, battering, raping, and abandoning her naked in a deserted area? She somehow survived and reported them, though her PTSD doubtless haunts still. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that Asian feminists organized entire movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring around U.S. ports and bases, including the hundreds of reported rapes of U.S. women soldiers by their fellow GIs (plus the joint epidemic of rape and evangelicalism at the U.S. Air Force Academy).

    In 1998, a landmark UN decision recognized rape as a war crime - though this raises the question: If rape in war is a crime against humanity, then what is it in peacetime?The International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual-violence grounds.

    Sometimes, a few nice American guys are found guilty - as Green and his buddies might be. Then all returns to "normal." They're sacrificed to save the ranks of those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonize obscenely about "moral values" while issuing moral waivers.

    But this crime we cannot let pass into oblivion.

    She was 14 years old and her name was Abeer.

    It means "fragrance of flowers."

    --------

    Robin Morgan's new book, Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right, comes out in September (Nation Books). She is a co-founder of The Women's Media Center.