Our troops are vicious killers in a land that never harmed us. Not all, no, but like Dr Maryam points out, the attitude of these troops come from the top. The VERY top. Quite an attitude to be proud of, eh America? Obviously, we are murderous oil thieves at our top levels of government, and just as obviously, we are a pampered nation too distracted to bother ending a GENOCIDE WE ARE COMMITTING. DU: the killer that keeps on killing. MAKE yourself look at a photo of a deformed Iraqi infant, go ahead, see if you can stand it.

The you tube debate was missing the BEST presidential candidate we could nominate right now. She was busy being arrested in Conyer’s office. Doing something. Forget Nancy’s job, Cindy. The City gets too windy, foggy and cold at night.

Aim for 1600 Pennsylvania.

For anyone who wasn’t there, Dr. Maryam was incredibly blunt, and not inclined in the least to pull punches. And why should she? I felt that I learned a great deal, though I still don’t know how representative her views are. I found it amazing to hear her say that Saddam was a s.o.b. if you were a political opponent, but for the average Iraqi, not so bad.

What’s surprising about that? Since about 2003 I have seen Iraqis saying that Saddam wasn’t nearly as bad as the American occupying forces have been.

We should be deeply ashamed of ourselves, as a country.

My revelation: Dr. Maryan’s day-to-day existence is beyond my ability to imagine. I think the only path to understanding what she endures, what she hates, is coming to the conclusion that it’s me. It’s me she endures. And she’s painfully and absolutely justified in believing just that.

Rayne I’ve now served in both Afghanistan and Irak. Individually the American soldier is decent enough and courageous too.

But they are the problem. I’m sorry but they deserve what they’re being tarred with. They deserve it because they’re committing one war crime after another.

They’re the problem and they always were and because of that the war in Irak is lost and IMO the one in Afghanistan is well on the way to being lost. In each case because of the tactic deliberately used by American troops of targeting civilians.

I’m not military, but my impression /before/ either war is that Americans have:

1) bad fire discipline

2) too much concern for their own safety over the mission.

3) are trained in ways that rip too much socialization from them (one of my friends was in the US airborne, and what they do to those boys appears qualitatively different from what many other nations do in basic training. I do know something about how you strip people down and rebuild them and I didn’t like what they did in the US – they remove too many inhibitions against violence and they deliberately alienate them from the rest of the world.)

Too gung-ho, too macho, not disciplined enough.

selise @ 16

that’s what i want – an anti-imperialist democratic party.

I agree.. so long as anti-imperialism is different from isolationism… the US should contribute internationally to UN-led initiatives, in a manner proportionate to our size and wealth. The argument here is against shrub’s unilateralism and not against collective action by the world community, say in Darfur or, perhaps someday in the future, in the West Bank.

I wonder if your choice is possible. At this time I would just settle for a fair chunk of isolationism, frankly.

P J Evans @ 68

That’s an Iraqi being quoted. And as far as I can tell, the statement is true: life in Iraq wasn’t bad before Bush decided to invade them. It’s bad now. The blame is ours.

He may have been inhumanely wretched, but Saddam was theirs. He belonged to them, was of them, and might eventually been dealt with by them. The only thing that stopped the East Germans and the former Soviets were their belief systems; when they had enough and wanted change, their systems fell apart and evolved into something else.

In the same way, we must deal with our own inhuman and wretched leaders. It’s time to put aside the illusions.

Just to add to this small point. I had a Turkish student who grew up in the 90s in Baghdad, where her father had a branch of his business. She lived through the bombings of the First Gulf War. I asked her what it was like, and she said, as Maryam did, that if you kept your head down and minded your business things were generally o.k. The exceptions were more like car accidents, which can happen to anyone.

She told me the following stories, which perhaps someone with direct knowledge can confirm. The first was that people had to keep pictures of Saddam in their homes, and if the secret police happened by and didn’t find one, they were in serious trouble. The other is that on a particular day — I think it was Saddam’s birthday, they had to put a cake out on their doorsteps. The secret police would come buy and pick it up to redistribute to the poor. That’s all I recall from this particular conversation, but it struck me as entirely plausible. Iraq under Saddam was not a totalitarian state; it was a dictatorship. People should try to understand the difference, because it’s a big one. Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China and Hitler’s Germany were totalitarian.

Last night’s conversation was very powerful for all of us – and I am so pleased the Maryam was able to join us.

We clearly need to act – and we also can make sure that Red Crescent gets the funds to keep doing the work they are doing. They are the only organization still working throughout Iraq and reaching out to all Iraqis in need. Many Red Crescent workers have died doing this work – and US troops have been involved in actions against them as well particularly when RC workers have spoken up against atrocities. One small way we can act is to send them as much as we can so they can continue to distribute basic needs like food and water.

Print out copies of the photos of a the deformed babies from depleted uranium and post them where you feel would be most efffetive.

And don’t forget to send them to Lockheed Martin. They manufacture depleted uranium.

Print out copies of the photos of a the deformed babies from depleted uranium and post them where you feel would be most efffetive.

Send them to every member of Congress and the administration.