Iraq

So... I can apparently only do a few pics at a time... very weird! Anyways, here´s a presentation on the war in Iraq... I thought it was pretty powerful... thoughts?

Script

DISCLAIMER
Do NOT read the following unless you think you
can handle brutal, graphic descriptions of the war in Iraq.

Nathan, the Prophet: There were two men in a certain town, one rich and one poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except for one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“It is time the American people realized that in the Domino Theory we are the last domino.” –Ronald Reagan

“We are not a young people with an innocent record and a scanty inheritance. We have engrossed to ourselves…an altogether disproportionate share of the wealth and traffic of the world. We have got all we want in territory, and our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us.” –Winston Churchill

“The sanctions in Iraq combined with the destruction of infrastructure resulted in the early death of more than 500,000 children between 1991 and 1998.”

“In the year 2000, as a further result of U.S. sanctions, 800,000 Iraqi children were chronically malnourished.”

“The United States is a superpower politically, militarily and economically without a rival.” –Irene Khan executive director of Amnesty International.

“We’re an autonomous nation. We do these things because we can.” –Brian Simmons

“The United States is King Kong.” –Helio Gallardo

Nathan: Now a traveller came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveller who had come to him.

“Oil and revenge are not valid reasons to go to war.” –Sid Millson

“The U.S. invasion of Iraq was not instigated by weapons of mass or destruction or the liberation of the Iraqi people.”

“The Reagan administration battled for the control of all Central America through the war in El Salvador.”

“Without doubt American interests, reflected in their training and arming of the El Salvadoran military were inextricably linked to the Salvadoran conflict.” –John Dickson

Whit Witteman, U.S. Embassy worker, claims that the location of U.S. prison camps on foreign soil gives the United States the legal flexibility they are looking for.

“Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry.” –Woodrow Wilson

“The privatization of Iraq’s economy, the opening of Iraq to foreign, particularly the U.S., investments and the political importance of the companies benefiting from the US reconstruction program in Iraq have created a strong vested interest in continued US domination.” –Frank Brodhead

Nathan: Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him

“The U.S. sponsored counter-insurgency campaigns work to pacify political opposition, whether proven or otherwise. Consider the words of Major General Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwan of Iraq’s intelligence service: “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving terrorists. From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.”

“An excerpt from a report written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba listing human rights violations which occurred in Abu Gharaib including the following:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees,

Pouring cold water on naked detainees,

Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair

Threatening male detainees with rape

allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell.

Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light

Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

“Rural women suspected of guerrilla sympathies in Guatemala were raped before execution. Children were thrown into burning homes. They are thrown into the air and speared with bayonets. We heard many, many reports of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads are destroyed.”

“People are not just killed by the death squads in El Salvador- they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disembowelled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh fall from their bones, while parents are forced to watch.”

“I questioned some of the things I saw…Such things as leaving inmates in their cells with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell- and the answer I got was: “this is how the military intelligence wants it done.”…Military Intelligence has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.” -Staff sergeant Ivan L. Frederick.

“On May 5, 2005, 14 bodies of young men were discovered near the Iraqi town of Kara-wa-Atash. The were blind-folded, hand-cuffed and bore signs of torture. Investigations later proved that these men were not terrorists, but rather farmers en route to the local market when they were captured for questioning.”

“Iraqi Special Police, trained and funded by the CIA since October 2004 have raided numbers of mosques, shops, markets and homes, arresting and carrying away civilians who are never seen again.”

“Despite overwhelming evidence that U.S.-sponsored Special Forces were responsible for 1000s of innocent deaths, the Reagan administration continually denied any extra-judicial killings. In fact, in a January 1986 report regarding in El Salvador the government contended that Salvadoran troops involved in counter-insurgency campaigns were careful to avoid endangering civilians. They broadcast warnings to non-combatants to remove themselves from the scene of fighting and avoided firing where civilians might be located. But what the report failed to mention is that prior to counter-insurgency actions 10,000 Salvadorans lived in an area 17 miles north of San Salvador. By the end of the war, however, only 1000 remained. The rest were victims of bombings, assassination, torture, kidnappings and repopulation projects.

King David (anger): As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!

“The UN Charter outlaws the use of force with only two exceptions: individual or collective self-defence in response to an armed attack and action authorized by the Security Council as a collective response to a threat to the peace, breech of the peace or active aggression.”

“In Guatemala despite tens of thousands of civilian deaths and now-corroborated accounts of massacres and genocide not one single senior military officer in Central America was given any significant punishment for the bloodshed. Nor did any U.S. officials pay even a political price.” –John Parry

“According to the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. seeks to hold other governments accountable to promote the greater respect for human rights, including freedom from torture and strengthen the institutional capacity of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN commission on Human Rights.”

“Instead the U.S. government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to “redefine” torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees” and the rendering or handing over of prisoners to third world countries known to practice torture.” – Irene Khan

“U.S. Aid has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens and to the violators of human rights. Why? Because (they) rely on force to keep impoverished domestic populations inline while western corporations reap maximized profits.”

David: He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no
pity.
Nathan: YOU ARE THAT MAN.

“We must continually say no to violence and yes to peace.” – Oscar Romero

“Be converted. You can not find God on the path of torture. God is found on the way of justice, conversion and truth.” –Oscar Romero

“War is a defeat for humanity.” –Pope John Paul II

“A sovereign power demands allegiance, and that power does not reside in the Oval Office.” –Theodore McDowell

“Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says “Thou shalt not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order…in the name of God, in the name of the suffering people whose cries rise to Heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you – in the name of God, stop the repression.” –Oscar Romero