<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; "><a href="http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html">http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html</a></span></div><div><br></div><div>Among his comments…</div><div><h3>Iraq</h3><p>"They're leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in
their hearts," declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade
in Iraq. <sup><a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html#note-1" id="link-1">1</a></sup></p><p>It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up. </p><p>Enough to make him forget.</p><p>But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq,
the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The
Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or
another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed
wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost
everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean
water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their
archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their
state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their
health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious
tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents,
their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half
the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally
displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and
genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects
... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up
... an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American
invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to
spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of
blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that
may never be put back together again.</p><p>"It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the <em>Washington Post</em> on May 5, 2007.</p><p>No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't even <em>think</em>
of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to continue
paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How much will
the American heroes pay the people of Iraq?</p>
<blockquote><p>"Unhappy the land that has no heroes ...<br>
No. Unhappy the land that <em>needs </em>heroes."<br>
– Bertolt Brecht, <em>Life of Galileo</em></p><div><br></div><div>…</div></blockquote></div></body></html>