Wow.  What an incredibly haunting painting Joe, especially considering all that has happened during the past four years.  One can only imagine how much more sorrow would be etched on the face of the woman now.  Thank you for sharing this with the JK community.

This picture perfectly goes with a story from an Iraqi student that appeared in the Washington Post today. Ayub Nuri wrote about his hopes for the outcome of the war and how those hopes have faded away. Mr. Nuri started out talking about a trip he took around Iraq shortly after the start of the war and the hopeful people that he met then.

Three-and-a-half years later, I took the same trip I took at the start of the war.

I found the people who danced in the streets of Kirkuk disappointed and skeptical about the future of their city. Near Hussein’s hometown, angry people had kept their vows and become insurgents. In Baghdad, the streets were as lifeless as they were those first days. In Hilla, the smiles disappeared as car bombs created new mass graves.

The war has united Iraqis in their disappointment. I ask myself if our expectations were too high. It is hard to answer. But I look back and realize that the fears that I had four years ago were misplaced: If Bush had changed his mind about the war, things might be better now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801057.html

 

Today on the 4th annual rememberance of our attack on Iraq, I’m saddened even more as I remember my part in this matter.  Because I was one who believed GWB and his administration when they said there were WMD.  I believed them when they said it would be done in 2 months.  I believed them when they said it would be a good thing to topple Saddaam.

I feel like we’re living in some Greek tragedy except it’s real life! 
Maybe you remember those 7 deadly sins and the Cardinal Virtues (as taught in Greek Philosophy and the early church).

This war on Iraq seems to encompass the deadliest of those sins: lies, greed, glutteny, etc..  I feel sickened knowing that innocent lives are lost because our leaders behaved like prophets but were instead false ones.

So as Bush and Cheney and Republicans shout doomsday over the future fall of Iraq, I wonder why anyone would believe them.  They’ve already led Iraq into Hell and they are taking the world with them. 

Senator Kerry, you offer some hope that we can attempt to stop the destruction that’s going on.  You and the 48 other people who signed on with your bill are not leading us to destruction, instead you are putting a stay on the destructive course they’ve set upon us and you are making it possible to turn things around and improve the situation.

So please, keep fighting to bring the troops home alive.

Hi Jess:

First of all, thank you for your service.

Second, I was a little confused by what you found troubling in the e-mail.  (I didn’t see it.)  I don’t think people should throw terms around that imply that anything is like war, war is something that seems to be comparable only to itself.  But, in all honesty, I didn’t get the reference.  Help?

thanks!

A Letter to Senator Kerry on the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war

Dear Senator Kerry,

Thirty-six years ago, at age 27, you testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on behalf of veterans protesting the continuation of the Vietnam War.  You astounded the Committee with your grasp of the problems facing America in trying to disengage from that war, prompting President Nixon to put you immediately on his Enemies List.

Some of the general points you made in your 1971 testimony: 

        “To attempt to justify the loss of one American life. . .by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom. . .is the height of criminal hypocrisy.”

        “Each day, to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam, someone has to give up his life, so that the United States doesn’t have to admit something that the entire world already knows. . .we have made a mistake.”

        “We are asking here in Washington for some action from the Congress of the United States of America, which has the power to raise and maintain armies, and which by the Constitution also has the power to declare war.”

        “I do not believe that this Congress will, in fact, end the war as we would like to, which is immediately and unilaterally. . .[But] I would say we should set a date that is the earliest possible. . .I do not believe it is necessary to stall any longer.”

Chairman Fulbright commented on your eloquence and its enormous benefit to the country, and Senator Pell said, “I hope, before Mr. Kerry’s life ends, he will be a colleague of ours in this body.”

And so you are today—a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the country is mired in another civil war on foreign soil.  Appropriately, you are one of the Senators leading the charge for setting a deadline of a year for full withdrawal from Iraq.  But, just as with Vietnam, we Americans also need to learn from our tragic mistakes and hold our politicians responsible.  We badly need another Fulbright committee investigation of this war and this administration.  Can you push this through for us?

Tela Zasloff, Williamstown, MA

——
Author of “A Rescuer’s Story: Pastor Pierre Charles Toureille in Vichy France” (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) and “Saigon Dreaming, Recollections of Indochina days” (St. Martin’s Press, 1990).

Joe Rampulla’s painting also expresses my dispair in the way our country has been played by the Bush administration.
Fueled by misinformation, and fanned with a twisted notion
of patriotism; the way educated dissenting opinion has been
consistently sneered at.
So much of personal freedom and privacy is now threatened;
not from the mid-east but from within.

I am hoping someone can answer this question for me. Are there any plans to reintroduce the Iraq war withdrawal plan again for another vote in the near future? If so, how will it be reintroduced, can it be introduced as part of a war supplemental?