No Questions Asked

“For Eli”

By Andrea Gibson

Eli came back from Iraq
and tattooed a teddy bear onto the inside of his wrist
above that a medic with an IV bag
above that an angel
but Eli says the teddy bear won’t live
and I know I don’t know but I say, “I know”
cause Eli’s only twenty-four and I’ve never seen eyes
further away from childhood than his
eyes old with a wisdom
he knows I’d rather not have
Eli’s mother traces a teddy bear onto the inside of my arm
and says, “not all casualties come home in body bags”
and I swear
I’d spend the rest of my life writing nothing
but the word light at the end of this tunnel
if I could find the fucking tunnel
I’d write nothing but white flags
somebody pray for the soldiers
somebody pray for what’s lost
somebody pray for the mailbox
that holds the official letters
to the mothers,
————–fathers,
——————–sisters,
and little brothers
of Micheal 19… Steven 21… John 33
how ironic that their deaths sound like bible verses
the hearse is parked in the halls of the high school
recruiting black, brown and poor
while anti-war activists
outside walter reed army hospital scream
100, 000 slain
as an amputee on the third floor
breathes forget-me-nots onto the window pain
but how can we forget what we never knew
our sky is so perfectly blue it’s repulsive
somebody tell me where god lives
cause if god is truth god doesn’t live here
our lies have seared the sun too hot to live by
there are ghosts of kids who are still alive
touting M16s with trembling hands
while we dream ourselves stars on Survivor
another missile sets fire to the face in the locket
of a mother who’s son needed money for college
and she swears she can feel his photograph burn
how many wars will it take us to learn
that only the dead return
the rest remain forever caught between worlds of
shrapnel shatters body of three year old girl
to
welcome to McDonalds can I take your order?
the mortar of sanity crumbling
stumbling back home to a home that will never be home again
Eli doesn’t know if he can ever write a poem again
one third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops
with pretty yellow ribbons
while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands
tell me what land of the free
sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones
hones them like missiles
then returns their bones in the middle of the night
so no one can see
each death swept beneath the carpet and hidden like dirt
each life a promise we never kept
Jeff Lucey came back from Iraq
and hung himself in his parents basement with a garden hose
the night before he died he spent forty five minutes on his fathers lap
rocking like a baby
rocking like daddy, save me
and don’t think for a minute he too isn’t collateral damage
in the mansions of washington they are watching them burn
and hoarding the water
no senators’ sons are being sent out to slaughter
no presidents’ daughters are licking ashes from their lips
or dreaming up ropes to wrap around their necks
in case they ever make it home alive
our eyes are closed
america
there are souls in
the boots of the soldiers
america
fuck your yellow ribbon
you wanna support our troops
bring them home
and hold them tight when they get here

Please visit

More poems by Andrea

A recent audit of reconstruction projets for Iraq has found that the US government has wasted much of the $100 billion US taxpayers paid to rebuild Iraq. This is not the first time this has been discovered. Last year a study came out saying at least $10 billion was given to contractors who either didn’t complete the projects they were paid to do or overcharged.

Meanwhile, back home American taxpayers are losing their homes, making difficult choices between buying gas or food and those living below the poverty line are not benefiting from life-saving medical discoveries.

(See full study here)

I’m not sure what it will take to bring about enough anger to create change. Years of easy living have made us lazy, fat and stupid. WAKE UP. YOU ARE BEING ROBBED BLIND BY YOUR GOVERNMENT!

Hundreds of Iraq schemes ‘failed’

Iraq reconstruction has cost US taxpayers more than $100bn so far

An audit of US-funded reconstruction projects for Iraq has found millions of dollars have been wasted because many schemes have never been completed.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction blamed delays, costs, poor performance and violence for failure to finish some 855 projects.

Many other projects had been falsely described as complete, found the audit of 47,321 reconstruction projects.

Iraq reconstruction has cost US taxpayers more than $100bn so far.

USAID, the body responsible for overseeing Iraqi reconstruction, has responded that the database used for the review was incomplete.

‘Depressing picture’

The audit by Senator Stuart Bowen found US officials had terminated at least 855 projects before completion. Of this number, 112 were ended because of the contractors’ poor performance.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said: “The report paints a depressing picture of money being poured into failed Iraq reconstruction projects.

Finally, the NY Times prints a piece about media manipulation and gives it front page play. Of course, the paper omitted its role as a propaganda tool for the administration and neglected to mention that its then star reporter Judith Miller did a better job promoting administration goals and initiatives and defending bad judgments than official spokesman Ari Fleischer did.

A PENTAGON CAMPAIGN Retired officers have been used to shape terrorism coverage from inside the TV and radio networks.

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Is it any wonder our country is in such a mess with such simple minded twits in Congress? Rep. Sue Myrick wants to take Jimmy Carter’s passport away. Her opponent wonders why she isn’t paying more attention to improving the health care system or the energy crises or any number of things that directly impact her constituents. Her response: it’s complicated and her constituents would rather watch ‘American Idol’. I’m sure those who are about to lose their homes or their health insurance would be very interested in hearing what she has done to help the economy or how they can save their homes.

Oh, and I’m sure former President Jimmy Carter is very aware of who and what Hamas is and the political situation in Palestine.

North Carolina’s Rep. Sue Myrick wants America to “wake up” and stop allowing terrorism to proliferate — and if that means revoking the passport of a former U.S. president or examining the preaching of prison chaplains, that’s what she’s prepared to do.

The Charlotte Republican on Friday released a list of 10 items she hopes will help peel back the layers on how radical elements of Islam might be infiltrating the military, school rooms and other elements of society. She also wants to stop the government from supporting terrorist organizations through financial investments and military sales.

Earlier this week, she called for President Jimmy Carter’s passport to be revoked because he met with Hamas, a Palestinian group that the U.S. government says supports terrorism.

“His actions reward terrorists, lend support and provide legitimacy to their belief that violence will eventually get them what they want,” Myrick said. Carter could not be reached on Friday.

The co-founder of the House anti-terrorism caucus has spent an increasing amount of time trying to tackle what she views as threats posed at home by extremists, an issue that fuels her commitment to deporting illegal immigrants.

One candidate who’s trying to prevent her re-election this year, Democrat Harry Taylor of Charlotte, has questioned her priorities and said she has spent too little time fixing the health-care system, solving the energy crisis and helping her constituents’ every-day lives.

Myrick said her views are in sync with her district’s.

“When I talk to them at home about this stuff, they get it,” she said of her terrorism concerns. “It’s just that it is complicated. People would rather watch `American Idol.’ “

It is time to consider who else has benefited from the attack. Cheney, Rice, and others in the administration made millions.

The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Ma’ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.”

Right after Vice President Cheney left Saudi Arabia, the country’s leaders decided it was in their interest to guard against radioactive hazards that might arise from Iran’s nuclear facilities being bombed.

The Saudi Shura council will secretly discuss national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts’ warnings of possible attacks on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactors, media reports said Saturday.

The Saudi-based King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology has prepared a proposal that encapsulates the probabilities of leaking nuclear and radiation hazards in case of any unexpected nuclear attacks in Iran, the Okaz Saudi newspaper said.

The Saudi Shura or consultative council plans to debate the proposal on Sunday.

The power plants in the south-western Iranian port of Bushehr were built with German assistance in 1974 and resumed with Russian aid in 1992, after it had been stopped by the Islamic revolution.

WE can no longer pretend that this is not going to happen before Bush leaves office. The US is going to attack Iran.