AMERICA - The Right Way!! (Day 815) [Remember the Trade Center!!]

The Fourth Infantry Division has rolled into Baghdad, and will take over garrison duty from the Marines.

Marines searched the Palestinian Hotel in Baghdad for weapons and individuals "not friendly to the United States."

Questions have arisen as to whether Syria is harboring elements of the defunct Iraqi regime; UK Foreign Secretary Straw urged Syria to cooperate with the United States on this question.

The United States has cancelled the deployment of the 1st Cavalry Division to Iraq and will only send elements of the First Armored.

A CBS/NY Times poll finds the President's job approval rating is at 73%, up from 59% the week before the start of the war. Most telling - a full 61% of the members of the Criminal Party support his performance.

And we will not let the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington, nor the brave members of our Nation's military who have given their lives to protect our freedom, die in vain!!

posted this a few minutes ago on the sit room thread and posting here for you to see & really would appreciate yor input.. I will be back early afternoon..

Thanks again chair for all the good things... love the polytoons that you & other's ad. Polytoons. my name . not sure what officially they might be.

I have been really covered up with things past 10 days.. get here & read ALL each day, even when I am just lurcking..

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I leave for Sgt Robert Dowdys funeral in a little while. 2nd Cleveland area to be burried. They were in PVT Lynch's ambussed group.

I received an email note from local cousin today.. she & hubby VERY financially secure.. although all of us came from background of Democrats, I thought she surely had made the transition

here is her note in response to daily mailings I send with polytoons & war photos & notes (mine are all upbeat)

I probably wont get into it with her as I have found most people who are finaiciallly comfy * anti war are REALLY anti Bush.

But just to reaffirm what we already know - there are so many groups like this & letters & spin going on..

So yes, she will be off my list (which I daily get accolades about) and time wise I probably wont be continuing anyway..

Does anyone know anything about this group???

Voices in the Wilderness

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Dear Dolly

Enough of the pro-war materials for now. Please take time to read some of what is really happening in that devastated country.
This is from my friend Jackie, who has been receiving regular e-mail letters through a correspondence for Voices in the Wilderness, a Peace Team.
-----Pat

Dear Friends,

It was with great relief that we received an update from Kathy today. Only
through unreliable satellite connection have we received sporadic word
from our team still in Baghdad. We think Kathy's letter which follows,
speaks volumes to the current tragedy playing itself out on the streets of Baghdad
and undoubtedly, throughout Iraq.

Please bear with us as we discern next steps, not just with our team in Iraq
but here at home as well. As government and media pundits alike insist that
this war is "ending," we urge the doubling of efforts to call attention to
the fact that war doesn't end for those who have lost limbs, loved ones, homes, and precious sense of security to blind greed.

Hello Friends, April 10, 2003

Early this morning, Umm Zainab sat quietly in the Al Fanar lobby staring at
the parade of tanks, APCs and Humvees that slowly rolled into position
along Abu Nuwas Street. Tears streamed down her face. "I am very sad,"
she told me. "Never I thought this would happen to my country. Now, I
think, my sadness will never go away."

Wanting to give Umm Zainab some quiet time, I took her two toddlers,
Zainab and Miladh, outside to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. Several
soldiers stood guard not far from me and the children. I wanted to bring
the children over to them, to let them behold these tiny beauties. But, no, too
much of a risk-what if it would add to Umm Zaineb's pain?

Eun Ha Yoo, our Korean Peace Team friend, unrolled a huge artwork
created by a Korean artist, Chae Pyong Doh, and sweetly laid it out in the
intersection just outside the Al Fanar. As I write, Neville Watson and
Cathy Breen are taking their turns sitting in the middle of it.

A map of the world covers the top third; grieving victims of war fill the
middle third; piles of ugly weapons with various flags scattered over them bulge
out of the bottom third. Neville has set up his prayer stool and a small wooden
cross where he sits. Cathy is wearing her "War Is Not The Answer" t-shirt.

At least a dozen soldiers have stopped to talk with us since we began the
vigil at 3 this afternoon. "OK, can you tell us your side of the story?"
asked one young man. "Can I sit there with you for awhile?" asked another. Each
of them has assured us that they didn't want to kill anyone. One young man
said he was desperate for financial aid to care for his wife and child while
struggling to complete college studies and work full time. He felt he could
gain some respect in this world and also help his family by joining the
Marines. He's relieved that he was stationed at the rear of a line coming
up from the south. His role was to guard prisoners. He didn't shoot anyone.
But he saw US soldiers shoot at a civilian car with three passengers as it
approached. The child in the car survived - both of his parents were
immediately killed. "They could have shot the tires," said the soldier.
"Some just want to kill."

One soldier offered earnest concern for us, saying "You're sitting in a
dangerous place." We smiled. "Thanks," I said, "But we've been in a
dangerous place for the past three weeks." He was puzzled. "What do
they mean," said a soldier standing next to him, "is that they've been here
all through three weeks of bombing."

"Do you try to put yourselves in our shoes?" asked one soldier after he'd
respectfully listened to me explain major contradictions between US rhetoric
and practice regarding Iraq. "Well, yes," I said, "We try. We're taking
the same risk as you by being here, and perhaps an even greater risk since
we're unarmed and unprotected. Actually, just now we're lucky not to be
burdened by all that heavy gear."

"Yeah," said the soldier, "It's really hot. I don't have much of an
appetite. I just give away most of my rations, - give 'em to these people."

Hassan, one of the shoeshine boys, came over to join us, carrying a ration
packet. He opened it, came across processed apple spread, and a few
other curious items, then decided to donate it to us. Now the flies have
discovered it.

It looks like we're on "lock-down" for a while longer. Iraqi minders are
gone, --US soldiers are here. They're uncoiling barbed wire at the intersection.
Anyone wanting to walk across the street is stopped, questioned and
searched. Since I began this letter, there have been four huge explosions
nearby. Looting and burning continue, here in Baghdad. I'm sick of
war-disgusted to the point of nausea. I think all of us at this
intersection, residents of the Al Fanar, journalists in the Palestine Hotel next door, and soldiers on patrol, share the same queasy ill feeling. The line, "War is
the health of the state" makes no sense whatsoever here.

With love,

Kathy Kelly

We hope Kathy's words have moved you as much as they have us. There is
not a single person who partakes in or experiences this war, these acts of
violence, who is not profoundly effected, be they a soldier or a civilian.
War, and all the misery that it brings, is truly our common enemy.

Peace and hope,

Stephanie Schaudel, for Voices in the Wilderness

One of the tools of propaganda is to tell the truth, just not all of it.

I learned this lesson well when I lived in New Orleans.

Hurricane Juan struck the city in 1985, a relatively minor category one storm. The system stalled on the coast and proceeded to pump Gulf water up through the bayous, eventually causing a levee to be topped in the SW suburbs of the city. There were sensational pictures of water up to the rooflines of homes that were broadcast, I would learn, around the world. The impression was left that New Orleans was massively devastated.

Which was massively wrong. Only a couple of communities along the SW reach of the suburban area had been inundated. Around 95% or better of the metropolitan area was flood free (though with 30" of rainfall, one could hardly say "dry"!).

Now if you were to ask someone who lived in those communities about hurricane Juan, they will certainly tell you horror stories of the flood waters, the snakes on their return, etc. Not pretty. Ask someone in Metarie (along Lake Ponchatrain), and they will likely respond the storm was a hurricane, surely, but they had seen far worse.

IOW, it's perspective.

The e-mail you provide talks to people who were in a combat zone, and were naturally not in the best of shape (pardon the hyperbole, but I think you know what I mean). It's not pretty, you can't make it look pretty, and the people in the area will all tell you there isn't any way you could mistake it for pretty.

But it's only one area. The propagandists hope, just like with the hurricane Juan episode I cited, that you will take a specific circumstance and translate it to the general - which, unfortunately, many people do (thus the propaganda is effective). You cannot, however, move to the general from the specific, it is a logic error that is pointed out to beginning debaters. You must move to the specific from the general, otherwise any hypothesis is subject to breakdown upon the first instance of an exception.

And the "exception" in this case is the throngs of people with joy on their faces yanking down or torching every symbol of the decrepit regime that has been deposed.

That is going to more than outweigh the few instances of tragedy that anyone is bound to find in a large and complex undertaking such as this.

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