"The Bitch is Back"

OK, I've been trying to be a bit more "mellow." For a few days I think I was. But today I sensed those old familiar feelings of outrage welling up again. What reignited those smoldering embers follows, but before that, a little background.

First of all, I'm so very, very glad I am a citizen of one of the "civilized" First World nations of the world, like the United States.

But that was contradicted recently while reading Greg Pallast's book Armed Madhouse.

In discussing the 20th Century history of Iraq, I was so impressed with the tremendous foresight of Sir Winston Churchill of that distinguished (former) empire Great Britain, who recognized shortly after WWI the significance of air power and the role it was destined to play in future wars.

It was this astute observation that prompted Churchill, in 1920, to gas the Kurds in Iraq. He justified it as follows:

"I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes to spread a lively terror" (emphasis mine)..."against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment" (mine again, I'm guilty, sorry).

As we all know, terror isn't some new form of intimidation by way of sudden and unexpected destruction and death from some small and desperate minority of peoples being pressed into submission by those more powerful and intent upon imposing their will upon them. No, terrorism has been around for millenia and a tool likely to be used by anyone with little regard.

As I pondered a month ago today in this blog on the first day of July, the month celebrated by "the world's greatest democracy's birthday,"

"Most can agree a suicide bomber strapping explosives around his or her waist, venturing out in public to board a bus, or visit a crowded marketplace where s/he then detonates himself, killing many innocent bystanders, is committing an act of terrorism.

"But I'm just curious: What's the difference between that and strapping an F-15 around your waist and indiscriminately incinerating women and little kids?"

What follows is one small example of that. It came to me from my daily "Information Clearing House" dose of real news. And it made me sick to think how every paycheck we receive shows how much "Fed'l Inc Tax W/H" we shovel to Uncle Sam to fund blowing the legs off of little Iraqi girls. And it makes me sick. And it makes me furious. And I wish the pilots and soldiers launching those little "black things" towards children could pause and equate those kids being blown the fuck up and/or decimated for life with those of their own children, or brothers, or sisters before they push a launching button from an F-15 5,000 feet in the air a mile or two away or a trigger from a cannon or automatic rifle on the ground towards children and their parents.

So don't watch the video that follows; the video that so upset me this afternoon it brought tears to my eyes. The video that reminds us of where our tax dollars go while our president vetoes a bill for health insurance of our own kids. The video that shows us that, in the War on Terror, the terrorists aren't always "THEM"! Don't watch it, unless of course, you believe that blowing appendages off of little kids is going to win us favor in the Middle East and save us from "fighting 'em over here" if we don't finish 'em off over there.

While our own media won't remind us where we chose to spend our hard earned monies taxed away from us by the powers that be, why impose such guilts upon yourself by watching the following video unless you're a masochistic sumbitch such as myself?


And as Peter, Paul and Mary reminded us in a protest song two generations ago, "and it's been going on for ten thousand years!"