Dear Richard ... I am all ears!

The Iraq War and Occupation as viewed by the average American ... Arlington cemetery is so beautiful in the springtime, isn't it?

Dear Richard

First and foremost, I honor and respect your right to feel the way you do about some of the photos or other graphics that have appeared on this blog. They are repugnant to view and oftentimes unimaginably sad ...…as was the case with the picture I posted yesterday.

I sent you an email with the "rest" of that particular photo to show that even I was somewhat worried about leaving some of the more gruesome aspects of that young girl's death and her grandfather's sorrow in the picture. As you will see, her feet were essentially shredded and some of the background material was also cropped out of the picture I posted.

But to the point of the previous posting. The Title of the posting told it all, to a small extent, I think ... the posting previous to that posting was simply too antiseptic as regards its depicting the real horror behind the numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers that we constantly see in our daily newspapers or on the mainline television news broadcasts. At least the few pictures I post open a tiny crack in the Government's and mainline media's carefully constructed high wall around the realities of the real cost of our continuing to "stay the course."

Wars have consequences, Richard, and both while I was in Vietnam and again in Saudi Arabia, I was able to peek ever so slightly beyond the sanitized version of the war that was being fed to our newspapers (and other media) via AP and UPI. Even the words that we used were abstract ... BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) for the data and aerial photography I was responsible for inserting into something called, Seek Data II, in Nam. There was more ... lots more! And no, I was not titillated! When I wasn't scared, I was sickened.

When we aren't extolling war, we are busy sanitizing it. Hell, that was my job!

There is no easy answer to the questions you raised over the phone this evening nor an easy resolution of your well-mannered quarrel with me; I know that.

But do any of us know whether the tortures at Abu Ghraib would have stopped had we not seen the actual photos that were on our television screens last year? And do we know whether we would have closed down the Vietnam War earlier if pictures like those taken at My Lai had reached the American public earlier ... like shortly after they were taken?

How many Americans -- even now -- know anything at all about the human suffering that occurred during the siege of Falluja or the later fancy named "operations" that have occurred in the Sunni Triangle?

Yeh, yeh ... there is some prurient curiosity that infects the minds of many Americans ... including my own at times, I suppose ... but, censorship is censorship is censorship and at least the blogs are not fed to our children via the evening news. You were right in telling me on the phone earlier this evening that "the truth is out there anyway," but, to be honest, Richard, I think the real truth of what is happening in Iraq slides by the average American -- who is too busy feeding his or her children, driving to and from work -- often two jobs these days -- and (like me) burying his or her pets to be noticed ... unless they are "shocked" into the reality of what Bush's war is really accomplishing ... and yes, maybe (hopefully) some of us will be outraged by it.

And how do we shock and outrage the average busy American back here on the "homefront"? Right! With videocam and still photography that includes the color of blood and the pathos of a mother or father crying over her dead child ... or father or brother or nephew ... or ...…654,965 is a very big number, isn't it?

It wasn't the previous posting with the gruesome photo that was immoral or distasteful, Richard ...…it was the posting before that one wherein I belabored the efficacy of a bunch of bullshit statistics! I was showing off my knowledge of cluster sampling and bragging about my useless degrees rather than portraying what those statistics really mean ... they were ...…each and every one of them ... a mangled, typically tortured (usually by militias that are largely from the -- U.S. trained and equipped -- Iraqi military itself), oftentimes in pieces scattered over a large area ... but always ... a very dead person probably covered with bugs, flies and filth.

How many real protests of the war have you actually seen first-hand? I haven't seen any at all and I travel back and forth to Olympia, Aberdeen or Seattle relatively often. People don't protest what they can't see!

I believe that you should do what I couldn't bring myself to do, Richard; post the uncut version of that picture I emailed to you this evening on Rummy Watch and call for all Americans to become aware of the Downing Street memos for starters ... and at least begin to ask questions.

Rummy may not like you to do such a thing, but you have an older brother who would become even more proud of you than I already am.

Love

Joe

PS: Arlington House on the hill (image below) is a sight worth taking in, isn't it? ... while trying to imagine the agony of that little girl's grandfather or uncle whose picture I posted in the previous posting ... or of the girl whose skin was burning off her back from napalm (yes, I know that we now use white phosphorous) in that black and white photograph from Vietnam ... or the Vietnamese street execution that you mentioned to me on the phone or the 400 or so corpses in their homes in the little hamlet of My Lai or stacked where they fell on the dirt road or in ditches nearby ...