News Poem 1

Fresh wave of sabotage and violence took its toll on Iraq on Sunday

Baghdad (Reuters)

A second blaze hit a crucial oil export pipeline,
A water pipeline was blown up,
Six Iraqis were killed in a mortar attack on a Baghdad prison,
A Danish soldier was killed.

A Reuters cameraman was shot dead while working near a U.S.-run prison,
Iraq's governor (Kissinger-associate and terror expert L. Paul Bremer)
said on Sunday: the country was losing
$7 million a day due to the attack on the pipeline,

59 wounded in a mortar bomb attack on a U.S.-guarded prison,
500 Iraqi detainees,
including common criminals
and suspected anti-American guerrillas,
are being held at Abu Ghraib prison,
which was one of Saddam Hussein's
most notorious jails.

[President Bush cites progress in Iraq.]

News Poem 2

Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, 43

(Perhaps his camera was a rocket propelled grenade launcher)

New York Times/Reuters

Mazen Dana, a Palestinian working for Reuters
filming outside Abu Ghraib prison when he was shot.
Reuters soundman Nael al-Shyoukhi,
who was working with Dana at the time,
said Dana was shot by a U.S. soldier on a tank:

"I cried at the soldier,
telling him, you killed a journalist.
They shouted at me
and asked me
to step back
and I said
'I will step back but please help,
please help and stop the bleed,''
Shyoukhi said.

The soldiers tried to help but Dana died.

The U.S. military acknowledged
on Sunday
that its troops had "engaged"
a Reuters cameraman,
saying they had thought
his camera
was a rocket propelled grenade launcher...

[President Bush cites progress in Iraq.]

News Poem 3

The cost of the war on Iraq

The Costs of War growing:
About US $ 133 million a day (133,000.000)
About US $ 4000 million a month (4.000,000.000)
About US $ 480000 million a year (48.000,000.000)
just to keep the US soldiers there, just that!
Bring them home, say their families

Then...
Add all the other military costs by other countries
Add all the civilian expences
Add the physical, psychological and cultural costs
to the Iraqis...

Then add their pain

Officials say,
the international community will have to
come up with more than $5 billion in aid
at a donors' conference
just to keep the floundering economy
afloat next year

In addition:
Bremer thinks it could cost US $ 100 billion or more
to rebuild Iraq
after his country destroyed it!

[President Bush cites progress in Iraq.]

Media Poem 4

Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets

Associated Press, August 17, 2003

"Across the busy highway from the monument,
built in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy,
traders have set up gambling tables
and are openly selling
pornography,
fake ID cards
and looted goods -
including laboratory microscopes,
industrial fuse boxes
and pills stolen from psychiatric hospitals.

"Now we have freedom and democracy,"
said a 34-year-old trader
selling pornographic DVDs
with titles such as
"The Dirty Family" and
"The Young Wife,"
and photocopied postcards
of couples in various sexual positions.
"We could not sell them when Saddam was here."

This is Baghdad
four months after U.S. troops took over
the sprawling city of 5 million -
jobless, insecure, and in many cases
taking "freedom and democracy"
as license to do pretty much
what you want and get away with it.

The trader, a father of two young daughters,
was too embarrassed
to give his name.
Pornography is strictly forbidden by Islam.
"It's too bad, but there's no job for me," he said."

[President Bush cites progress in Iraq.]

Media poem 5

U.S. Fears Shiite, Sunni Cooperation Will Bolster Resistance

Washington Post, August 17, 2003

A popular Sunni Muslim cleric
has provided grass-roots and financial support
to a leading anti-American Shiite cleric,
a rare example of cooperation
across Iraq's sectarian divide
that has alarmed U.S. officials
for its potential to bolster festering resistance
to the American occupation,
senior U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The ties mark one of the first signs of coordination
between anti-occupation elements
of the Sunni minority,
the traditional rulers of the country,
and its Shiite majority,
seen by U.S. officials as the key
to stability in postwar Iraq.

The extent of the cooperation remains unclear
between Ahmed Kubeisi,
a Sunni cleric from a prominent clan in western Iraq,
and Moqtada Sadr,
the 30-year-old son of a revered Shiite ayatollah
assassinated in 1999.

But ideologically and practically,
it represents a convergence of interests
between the two figures,
who were left out of the Iraqi Governing Council...

[George W. Bush cites progress in Iraq.]

Media Poem 6

The truth shall set you Iraqis free

"Bush cites progress in Iraq"
A free and democratic Iraq will show
other countries in the region that
"prosperity and dignity
are found in representative government
and free institutions,"
President Bush said

"Bush notes Iraqi progress"
"Bush also assured
the people of Iraq and Afghanistan
that the United States will stand with them
through this transition period."

"From Morocco to Bahrain and beyond,
nations are taking genuine steps toward political reform.
A new regime in Iraq would serve
as a dramatic and inspiring example
of freedom
to other nations of the region,"
Bush says.

The President Does Not "Lie"!
Not about Iraq
Especially not about Iraq

Jan Oberg
August 18, 2003

© TFF & the author 2003

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