[Newspoetry] No amount of money

[emerick at chorus.net]

Civil law is funny...  the regime of Hussein is no more, so how can anyone defend the law suit, brought by American POWs, against that regime...

Could the puppets of present Iraq, or puppet-master Bremer nee Bush, seriously be expected to stand up in court and  deny the allegations of the former POWs, and present credible evidence in an American court of law (assuming jurisdiction lies there, to say what International Law would say) that the former regime did not torture these former POWs.... since the Nth-revision of the reasons for this present war have finally, although quite belatedly and far after the facts (or far from the facts), determined that if we had to give a good reason to go to war, preemptively, and all that jazz, then what we should have said was "Hussein's an evil bastard"... because there was no way that we could not make that big lie stick, if we just hammered away at the nails that hold public opinion in their thrall...

When the real accused could not possibly appear to defend himself and his interests, we have a mock trial if it is merely academic or we have a mockery of justice otherwise... but team Bush loves carnivore justice, as long as they are the top carnivores...  (In a dog-eat-dog world, it's better to be eating dog-meat than to be the main entree...)

Now, I quite agree that people who have been criminally mistreated by rogue regimes should have compensation for some of their injuries -- but, unlike the yahoo Bush, I do not think that such injuries are only caused by rogue states, but also by corporate entities that those states sponsor and host... but yahoo Bush wants "tort reform" to excuse his own kind of eco-criminals from compensatory punishment...

but, someday, oh Lord, I do believe that the eco-criminals of the Bush regime and their evil private allies will face the justice of courts -- and they shall have to compensate, to their very last blooming farthings, the withered earth and her destitute children...

until then, we all remain POWs,
hostages whose lives are mutilated,
tortured daily, randomly, capriciously,
and no one hears our screams,
no one sees or dresses our wounds,
or they laugh at our anguish,
and amuse themselves at our travails,
bruising us as if to prove their manhood

and they stage, now and then, fake shows
where they parade out some of us,
all primly dressed, neat and clean,
and say to the world, "See, it's humane
and proper according to procedures
that we write, to which we subscribe..."

AND, SO IT GOES...