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George Capaccio visited Iraq frequently during the “sanctions years”. The “sanctions years” lasted from 1990 until the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sanctions imposed by the great United Nations on the Iraqi people were the toughest sanctions in human history. They were so bad, two senior UN representatives in Iraq resigned in protest.

George Capaccio is a writer, poet, activist.

After one of his visits to Iraq during the “sanctions years’, he wrote the poem, “I Did Not Look Away.”

I Did Not Look Away

No, I did not look away

from the things I went there to see.

In a land where hunger had become rare

until sanctions and war joined hands in prayer,

I saw women in black begging at street corners

and boys too poor for school

hawking cigarettes and kerosene

to keep their families afloat.

I saw parents rushing into hospitals

with children in their arms,

and emergency rooms flooded with patients

holding in pain on bleeding floors.

I saw ambulances on cinder blocks

rotting away in a parking lot

because ambulances are weapons of war

and can’t be repaired in Iraq.

I saw oxygen tanks standing in line,

waiting for valves that never come,

and hospital hallways stripped to the bone.

Everything gone, lugged off and sold

for even the simplest supplies —

a light bulb, a pail, a bag of diapers.

I saw an infant named Amani Kasim

curled up on a filthy blanket,

her face confined to an oxygen mask,

her body shriveled and discolored

from severe malnutrition.

I saw a fourteen-year old girl named Amira

who could not stand and could not speak

and was dying from cancer.

“Two maybe three days more,” the doctor said.

“We do not have the proper drugs

so we give supportive care only.”

She was so thin, so weak

she could not lift her head off the pillow.

I caressed her brow and cheek

and the damp ringlets of hair

fallen about her face.

A collapsed blood bag froze above her.

Mother and grandmother softly wept

and prayed to God for mercy.

I saw other mothers tending incubators,

that didn’t have thermostats

and might overheat.

I saw the blood and urine

on beds without sheets,

the nimbus of flies around bottles of formula,

the sadness in the doctors’ eyes

as they told me which infants

would live or die.

No, I didn’t look away.

I caressed each brow,

whispered through my touch,

“Your life is a part of me and when you go,

I shall weep.”

I saw a generation of mothers

keeping watch on their children.

I heard them ask me for medicine

and felt their hands open then meet

the emptiness of mine.

In Iraq today, the “sanctions years” are called the “golden years”.

For more on George Capaccio, try Google.

Frankly, I’m tired.

Filed under: The human race

The case against US Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich seems likely to fall apart. The charge of murder will be reduced to one of negligent homicide. So will end yet another trial of US soldiers accused of atrocities in Iraq. This was one of the worst. The cold-blooded murder of seventeen civilians, including women and children at Haditha, north of Baghdad.

Apparently, when America is at war, it’s fine to murder, torture, rape and pillage. After all, our beloved heroes are only human, and in war everyone is allowed to make mistakes.

Excuses for not proceeding in the case of Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich are legion:

Difficulty gathering evidence; insufficient forensic evidence; a lack of prosecution witnesses. Yes, because they were all dead, gunned down in cold blood by Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich and his merry band of US marines out on a killing spree in retaliation for the death of one of their mates in a roadside bombing.

But were they simply obeying orders; following their training procedures?

According to one of the marines, Lance Corporal Humberto M. Mendoza, “I fired because I had been told the house was hostile and I was following my training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot.”

Never mind if they are only three, or thirteen, or five years old.

According to a Washington Post of January 6th, 2007:

“Marine officials have accused the troops of failing to identify their targets before using grenades and guns to kill 14 unarmed people in the houses, including several young children in their pajamas, in a span of about 10 minutes, according to the documents.

Safah Yunis Salem, 13, who said she played dead to avoid being shot, was the only person to survive the Marine attack on the second house. Her sister Aisha, 3, was shot in the leg and died; her brother Zainab, 5, was killed by a shot to the head. She said she lost five other members of her family in the room, including her mother.

“He fired and killed everybody,” Safah said. “The American fired and killed everybody.”

It would seem US rules of engagement have little regard for innocent civilians. In other circumstances Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich and his merry band would have been guilty as hell. If they, as seems likely, escape the charges of cold-blooded murder leveled against them, it will be because America cannot bear to consider its “heroes” less than glorious super beings worthy of laurel wreaths and applause, and because the US military sees innocent civilians of the “other side’ as equally legitimate targets as those who carry the guns.

Little wonder they will never win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Three conflicting viewpoints on the Haditha incident are linked below. Personally, I go with the “Nation”.

Guardian report HERE.

Washington Post article HERE.

“The Nation” article HERE.

Filed under: Immoral values