“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.” -Rick Santorum in an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, 2006.(Citation.)
even though she died two years before i was born, there were always tabloids in the grocery store about JonBenét Ramsey’s death and “new breaks in the case”. i would always stare at them and wonder who the pretty blonde girl was that died. surprisingly i didn’t know anything about 9/11 until grade school.
“You can cheer the end of Sulaimani and still be anti-war. You can condemn the way Sulaimani was executed but still be relieved that he is no longer around to terrorize people. You can be anti-US imperialism and anti-Iranian dictatorship and brutality. Being anti-US imperialism, being anti-Trump’s reckless disregard for humanity does not mean that you should make Sulaimani a symbol of freedom, or Leftist ideology. Sulamani was a butcher. Trump is a dangerous megalomanic. The Ayatollah’s are just as guilty, dripping with the blood of millions across the region funding terrorist groups and proxy wars. Let Sulaimani die the butcher he was, with a fitting illegal end- the same he dished out to thousands-, without turning him into an anti-imperialist hero of the people- and by extension justifying the Iranian regime. The only loyalty you should have should be for the ordinary people of Iran, Iraq and the region. It is 2020, and it is about time we started viewing such issues in all their complexities, realizing that multiple truths can co-exist and that a simplistic analysis serves no one but those hungering for war.”
Important reminder that the evils of our governments does not represent the people who only want peace. The difference between you and I, my friend, is far smaller than the difference between our governments.
But during his 10-minute speech, Bush also made a verbal faux pas while referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Bush noted has brutally stifled popular dissent and had political opponents imprisoned.
“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” Bush said, before wincing and correcting himself. “I mean, of Ukraine.”
The comment left the audience in an awkward silence. Then, Bush shrugged and said under his breath: “Iraq, too.”
War criminal accidentally confesses to murdering half a million Iraqis and how US presidents are no different to Putin.
Susan Sonnheim is an American veteran formerly of the Wisconsin National Guard who served in the Iraq War. While on duty Sonnheim was the victim of a roadside bomb in Baghdad which left her body filled with shrapnel, blinding her in one eye as well as causing injuries to her spine and limbs. She only survived the attack because the bullet that penetrated her Kevlar vest and would have killed her was stopped by a tobacco tin in her pocket. Following her injuries, Sonnheim became the first woman in the National Guard to receive the Purple Heart medal awarded to wounded soldiers.
Since returning home to the US, Sonnheim has described a lack of acceptance of her veteran status because she is a woman and says there is gender bias in the care that American soldiers returning from war receive. She is quoted in The Guardiansaying“There is no reason for women not to be in combat. It’s a buddy system – you look after the person next to you whether they are male or female. Once you are a soldier, that’s the way it is, a soldier is a soldier.”
Photo credit: Tom Sperduto, sourced from TIME magazine.
More than half of the 2.6 million Americans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with physical or mental health problems stemming from their service, feel disconnected from civilian life and believe the government is failing to meet the needs of this generation’s veterans, according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
