Home > The War hits home with the tragic story of Lima Company
The War hits home with the tragic story of Lima Company
by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 25 May 20051 comment
The war has really hit home with the tragic story of Lima Company, an entire
squad decimated by injuries and death. A few days after losing
several men in a firefight, the last of Lima company was traveling in
a troop carrier when a remote-controlled bomb detonated beneath it,
setting off hundreds mortar rounds, bullets, rockets and other
explosives while 18 Marines were still trapped inside. All
were seriously wounded or killed.
War is Hell.
One mother wrote
that her Lima Co. Marine called at 3am, "He was crying and said ’It
sucks over here’ and that he was scared. (This is so out of character
for him.)" Why is this young kid in Iraq? Does he want to ’finish the
job’ that General Myers suggested might take 10 years.
Does that young troop really appreciate that yellow ribbon magnet on a
car, is that good enough ’support’?
Or would he rather have people
at home DEMAND action from Congress to Bring Them Home NOW.
I’m absolutely positive that at least some, if not most of the troops
would like to return home now- immediately - lest they leave behind
another grieving father like Mr. Derga, "This mission Lima Co. has
been assigned is just and is one this nation
must have the guts to stand up and fight for, regardless of the
cost. Our combined sacrifice will make
Dustin’s ultimate sacrifice have real meaning. Anything less and he died in vain."
"This mission is just" ? The truth has come out:
Bush, Blair and the neocons deliberately lied to start this war. There
is nothing ’just’ about attacking another nation, spreading radio-active waste
(depleted uranium mp3) across their country, killing 100,000 innocents and
stealing their oil. The people of Iraq will have birth defects, cancers
and a host of other diseases thanks to the hundreds of tons of DU we’ve
unloaded upon Iraq. There is nothing ’just’ about our actions in Iraq.
As Howard Zinn
said, "We’re not trying to bring liberty to Iraq, we’re trying to
bludgeon them into submission." This war is about making corporations
rich, about securing US Bases in the Middle East. Why should more young
Americans die trying to ’finish the job’ of oppressing the Iraqi people.
"Anything less and he died in vain."
? That’s the same excuse they told us during Vietnam. How many more
people have to die before we admit our ’mistake’ and cut our
losses? In Vietnam it was 58,000 Americans dead after more than a
decade. Is that where we’re headed? I think we do our troops a great
disservice by repeating mistakes from the past.
Mr. Derga is a grieving father searching for meaning.
Unfortunately he is in denial as are many Americans,
subconsciously deluding themselves because it’s easier than accepting
the ugly truth. Admitting that Bush lied and the war is
wrong means realizing that US troops have been killing innocent people,
acting as armed thugs while ’Defense’ stockholders get rich.
but do not blame the troops
They should never have been put in that position
The War was Unnecessary
It’s true America, we’re not the good guys anymore. It
is time to face that truth and right the wrong- not continue clinging to this fantasy that the this war is
noble, that we’re helping the Iraqi people. We’re Not!
All of those Senators, ’Representatives’ and ’experts’ on tv that tell
us we have to stay now because it’d be worse if we left - they’re all
LIARS. Well, maybe that’s a little harsh... but at this point, even if
it’s not on purpose, it’s criminal negligence. Like the Senator from
Kentucky that doesn’t read newspapers anymore, his only source of news is FOX tv. This man is an idiot and should be thrown out of office.
Most of Congress doesn’t even know what’s going on- you know the troops
have filtered news, so do members of Congress. So when they spew out
propaganda phrases, they may not be deliberately lying, it may be that
they’re fooled as well. Last year during the Democratic Primaries the
phrase was, "we can’t cut and run" - it’s all propaganda, both parties
and all the channels, all of the time.
The dumbing down of America, the dumbing down of Congress
It all began when JFK, Malcom, Martin & Bobby were shot
and America let it slide.
The goal of the military industrial complex is to stay as long as
possible.
Even though it’s clear the war is lost and the Iraqi people will
never submit to our military might- our gov’t refuses to leave. The
problem is in the equation: the longer we
stay the more money the war profiteers make. They do not care how
many people
die or how much money the US taxpayers waste- because they are the
recipients of those billions. It’s not patriotic to loot our money, to sink our children into debt, yet that’s what the ’cost-plus’ contracts are doing, and Congress is letting them get away with it!
GE, one of the war profiteers, also owns NBC- vested interests own the mass media. Before the war the media labeled anti-war
protesters ’unpatriotic’ - when really most of us were just saying,
’let the inspectors do their job- perhaps war is unnecessary.’ Now we
can all see:
NONE of our young men and women would have died.
The Marines of Lima Company and the rest of the 1,600 Americans killed
all died in vain (unless you own defense stocks). Why should we allow our young men and women to
continue dying when we never should have invaded. It was a mistake,
worse- it was a deliberate lie- using our young men and women as cannon
fodder for US corporate interests.
Thousands of children do not have fathers because, as Stan Goff said (mp3),
"that oxygen thieving, never did a day of work in his life, pampered,
blue-blooded, woman exploiting, coke-snortin’ piece of shit in the
Whitehouse" LIED - on purpose!
The 1600 American deaths will have been in vain if innocent
people keep dying while Halliburton and Bechtel continue raking in
OUR money.
That’s OUR money,
we should be spending it on good things like food for the hungry, housing
for the homeless, health care, alternative energy, education & jobs- not on depleted uranium
weaponry.
We must right the wrong. To paraphrase Naomi Klein, to end the war we need to change
the equation and make war unprofitable. We take away their loot. We must DEMAND and end to this war now- not in
10 years.
Let us unite America behind a simple truth:
Billions were ’lost’ to War Profiteers.
It was all a horrible mistake... perhaps made deliberately because we
have this bad equation where some people get rich from war. People
should not get rich by forcing our youth to kill poor people in other
countries- period.
Upon realizing this, our sadness will turn to
anger, then rage, then action.
1. Hold the Liars Accountable.
2. Make the Death Profiteers repay the loot.
|
DEMAND IMMEDIATE ACTION FROM CONGRESS! |
related flyers and additional audio available at
http://benfrank.net/nuke/modules.ph...
Forum posts
26 May 2005, 13:21
Maybe by this time next year, while AIPAC is chewing through “26,000 kosher meals, 32,640 hors d’oeuvres, 2,500 pounds of salmon, 1,200 pounds of turkey, 900 pounds of chicken, 700 pounds of beef and 125 gallons of hummus,” , your 20-something son and daughter will be slumped over MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) in a foxhole somewhere in the Persian desert with deadly depleted uranium blowing around.
Since there are 66,622,704 (as of 2002) Iranians, and many of them are young males, and 24,001,816 Iraqis (minus a hundred or more thousand, killed over the last couple years by “our troops” under the vicious guidance of the likes of Donald Rumsfeld), we can expect the (unphotographed) flag-draped caskets to arrive at Dover AFB in record numbers.