The Eternal Return of the Same

[...] but I think the details change,
crows' feet around the eyes of a man
who still walks around
but who died back there the last time,
the name of the President maybe,
the date on the calendar.
Something in us dies each time,
like our so-called innocence
each dawn. I light candles.
My country, 'tis of thee.

? Bill Tremblay,
excerpt, "The Eternal Return of the Same"

*****


Quotes out of the Times

Another Sunni member of the council, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, asked:
"How can a super power like the US
put itself in a state of war with a small city like Fallujah.
This is genocide"

***

Images of American-style Democracy:

In the no man's land
on the edge of an industrial zone
where some of the heaviest fighting has been concentrated,
Iraqi bodies lay decaying in the heat,
chewed on by wild dogs.

The surrounding streets were sealed off
and full of troops,
broadcasting warnings
that anyone approaching them
would be shot.

Witnesses saw bodies burning
inside the vehicles as they blazed
on the highway.

***
Yankee Broadcast

"The area is completely sealed off
by the coalition troops.
If anyone tries to get close
to a military vehicle
they will be attacked.
If anyone is carrying a gun he will be shot.
Thank you."

***

Overlooked when the coalition formed its interim administration,
the Iraqi Governing Council,
he has since recruited a militia of 10,000 men
from the poor and disposessed Shia communities
who suffered severe deprivation
under Saddam Hussein.

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr has now played his hand,
presenting himself as the firebrand militant leader
that the young and dispossessed were crying out for.

The police chief was murdered just days
before the revolt started.

Some Sunni fighters, who have seen their power wane
since the fall of Saddam, believe
the uprising may just be a prelude
to a civil war in which they would fight
to regain influence in Iraq.

He left his job as a supermarket butcher last year
to work with US troops in his native country.

*****

"The American and European news stations don't show the dying Iraqis? they don't show the women and children bandaged and bleeding- the mother looking for some sign of her son in the middle of a puddle of blood and dismembered arms and legs? they don't show you the hospitals overflowing with the dead and dying because they don't want to hurt American feelings? but people *should* see it. You should see the price of your war and occupation- it's unfair that the Americans are fighting a war thousands of kilometers from home. They get their dead in neat, tidy caskets draped with a flag and we have to gather and scrape our dead off of the floors and hope the American shrapnel and bullets left enough to make a definite identification?" via Baghdad Burning

*****