Couldn’t protest? Join me here anti war video

Cross posted at KOS

This was meant to be posted yesterday but unfortunataly Youtube was down for maintenance, so here it is a day late.

I couldn’t be in D.C. today, I imagine that was true for most of you. My solution was to put together a quickie anti-war video. Follow me below the fold for part what this war has meant. Feel free to add you own comments, this is a protest after all.

The morning of 911, I went to my front porch and hung the flag. By noon every house had a flag waving in solidarity and defiance. George Bush had the opportunity in that moment to change the world, to move us toward peace. We, he had the world behind him and he could have led them just about anywhere. He could have honored the 3000 dead by ending terroism forever. But he didn’t, he used 911 for the basest of human pursuits.

We talk a lot about how the war has devasted this country, what we have lost and it is a lot, not the least of which was our innocence. But there are others who suffer far more everyday. Suffer the deaths of not 3000 or 4500 or even 150,000 as when we dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Iraqis have suffered the deaths of 1.2 to 1.3 MILLION of their countrymen, loved ones and friends. 3 million of them have been driven to other countries as refugees. Countries who are not equipped to provide for them. There are few prospects for work or rebuilding a life. There are another 2.5 million who are refugees in their own country with no where to go. Those who could leave left long ago, the last walking out of Iraq. I believe it is about 325 miles from Baghdad to the Syrian border though what is largely a waste land. How desperate must you be to make that walk?

5.5 million refugees and more than half of them are children under the age of 12. Refugee children are at the greatest risk. They may or may not have a custodial parent for protection or subsistance. Many of those children won’t survive and those who do will have had their lives interrupted in a significant way.

Best guess number is upwards of 8 million Iraqis are dead, maimed or a refugee. Iraq’s prewar population was between 24-25 million altho truly accurate numbers are impossible to come by. That number represents about a dozen of our least populous states. Can we even imagine?

We have destroyed the cradle of civilization, laid waste a country who was no treat to us. Salted the land with DU, something that will kill and maim thousands more Iraqis every year for generations to come.

What good is democracy to them now?

George Bush is a war criminal, he has done the unspeakable and now stands beside Pol Pot as a mass murderer of innocents.

It was important to me to be in D.C., I had a mission and it was to hand out printed memorials from the IGTNT diaries to those who watch and do not do. Because of family issues it was impossible for me to attend and OPOL stepped up in my stead to fulfill  my mission, I can not thank him enough.

Here is the Video. Word of warning, had some problems with the volume of the audio, not got the hang of my new toy yet.