From “Baghdad Burning,”
The United States has ended its physical search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, which was cited by the first administration of President George W Bush as the main reason for invading the country, the White House has said.
Why does this not surprise me? Does it surprise anyone? I always had the feeling that the only people who actually believed this war was about weapons of mass destruction were either paranoid Americans or deluded expatriate Iraqis- or a combination of both. I wonder now, after hundreds and hundreds of Americans actually died on Iraqi soil and over a hundred-thousand Iraqis are dead, how Americans view the current situation.”
From “Healing Iraq,”
”One problem [in the Iraq elections] was the special ink that voters have to dab their fingers with. Many Iraqis were concerned that insurgents would catch them on their way back to Baghdad and recognise people who had voted.
Some resourceful Iraqis had already devised several methods to get rid of the stain. One of these is to paint your fingers with skin lotion before you enter the polling station, wipe your finger clean immediately after voting and before the ink dries, on returning home dip your finger in boiling detergent and rub it repeatedly.”
From “Free Iraq,”
“PS: “In the run-up to Iraq’s elections, the State Department’s spokesman this week ticked off the final markers of progress: 130 planeloads of voting materials had landed in Iraq, including 90,000 ballot boxes and 60 million ballots — a flurry of up to 15 flights a day to Iraqi airfields.” – MSNBC.com, January 29, 2005
There are about 25 million Iraqis, and about 15 million of them are elligible to vote (many are indeed boycotting it). What will they be doing with the extra 45 million ballots?”
From “Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches,”
“Earlier today while I was in the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad the US base there was mortared 8 times. We heard it just after finishing huge plates of kebabs at a sidewalk restaurant. After finishing the meal an old woman came to our table and asked if she could take our leftovers.
He took two plastic bags and began dumping our half eaten salads and extra bread into them. She thanked us and blessed us, then began to shuffle off…Abu Talat and I both quickly walked over to her and gave her a small wad of Iraqi Dinars. We walked back to the car not saying a word about it.”
From “My War,”
“So my AG looks over at me and with a mischievous smile says, “Watch this!” and then he starts chanting: “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” over and over again, next thing you know all these little kids, 100’s of them, started chanting U-S-A!! Over and over again, each time a little louder. We were both laughing and thought this was all funny until I saw the reaction on the older people’s faces on the side of the road. They didn’t look too thrilled about that, once I immediately noticed that, I said, “Dude, that’s not cool! Make them stop yelling that shit!” But it was too late, these kids were having too much fun chanting U-S-A! Next thing you know I saw an older middle eastern lady wearing all black pick up a rock and throw it at us, which of course started a huge chain reaction of rock throwing at us. We got out of that neighborhood in a hurry after that. Lesson learned.”
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