So Wrong For So Long

There's a reason I use the breakin line to Greg Mitchells book So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq.

Part of that reason is an article printed in the Asian Times, I just finished reading.

The "So wrong for So long" not only can describe how our current tragic history has been evolving, and what may be coming in the short term future and beyond, in it's lack of competent leadership, it's rapidly changed policies of death and destruction of others pre-emptively for no reason or a veriaty of reasons with no foundations nor proof of existance, it's violations of human rights through arrests and torture of others on whims of suspicion or even less than that.

The 'So wrong for So long" describes how this country doesn't learn it's own lessons from it's own past in it's relative short existance.

One of those lessons is the lesson of War, especially the Wars of Choice leading into Occupations of Others and the terror those invasions and occupations bring upon them, those others haven't done a thing to deserve the total destruction of the World they once lived in and now is changed forever, with the children growing up in a World the complete opposite of what should be and shaping their lives from the experiances of that existance.

The article in the Asian Times is titled What it means when the US goes to war but could be titled with any countries name substituted or just "What it means to go to War". This is about what happens to American Soldiers sent into Invasions and Occupations of Choice, we've gone through all this before, lessons not learned, none of the lessons of!

American soldiers in Iraq daily face "atrocity producing situations", from patrols, convoys (which race along like freight trains of death), home raids, detentions and military checkpoints: the essence of war, after all, is death. Using the experiences of soldiers on the ground, Chris Hedges strips away the myths of glory and honor and discovers the uncommon "moral courage" that the veterans he quotes have exhibited by telling the truth about their war.

And moral courage it is, when for the health and sanity of the individual, that individual must let go of what's deeply hidden and speak out on what they have seen or taken part in, in the hell on earth War, man's destruction of others, man's terrorizing others to force their ideologies and beliefs on them, or simply to strip them of their individual dignity and material wealth and countries resources.

They confront the grave, existential crisis of all who go through combat and understand that we have no monopoly on virtue, that in war we become as barbaric and savage as those we oppose.

This is an extremely important read for the Uneducated and Unexperianced of War and Occupation, and for those who have but choose denial to cope, how all that one has grown to learn, in many area's of ones young life, is quickly stripped away in the reality of what man does to fellow man.

These are the already grown children, sent off to engage in these Wars, think of the experiances of the young children living in these theaters of war, this is how they are learning the lessons of the world they were born into, and growing up in as it continues, they can't be taught differant, they can hear about beauty and peace, tolerance and love, but they exist in a hell created around them, with all the fears and terror it brings, that man rages on other men.

Last night, in case you missed it, Greg Mitchell was one of the guests on the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS

If you did miss it, or would like to re-visit, you can watch it here as well as read the transcript

A few clips from the discussion:

GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, that's — again, it's different coming from the chief White House spokesman than coming from me — you know, for better or worse. But you know, I — that's what I mean. I think what's troubling to me is the response to that. The media has not responded by saying, "Boy, we really got caught out here, and we really need to look at what we did wrong. And we're, you know, we need to report on what the mistakes we made and what we — you know, what we've really learned now."

Now a few days ago the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a report about the lies the administration fabricated, and more, in the reasoning to invade an innocent country, Iraq. Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true. And what have the media placed front and center as most important, what Hillary Clinton will do now that this Historic Presidential Campaign has passed the torch of leadership to Barrack Obama, even half the time frothing over Hillary could and should have been used to report on the Intelligence Report and our Soldiers at War, but for myself even more should be reported! The PDF of the Report

JONATHAN LANDAY: What's disappoints me is that here was an opportunity, once again, but a very large opportunity for major news organizations to do the mea culpa they never did, to admit that they indeed failed to do what they're supposed to do, failed to be the watchdogs they're supposed to be.
And yet we saw exactly the opposite for the most part. And I was just I was left breathless by some of the things that I heard where you heard correspondents say, "Well, we did ask the tough questions. We asked them to the White House spokesmen," Scott McClellan and others. And you say to yourself, "And you expected to get real answers? You expected them to say from the White House podium — 'Yeah, well, there were disagreements over the intelligence, but we ignored them'" when the President made his speeches and the Vice President made his speeches. No, I don't think so.

They blew it once again this past week, and will blow it in the coming weeks!

JOHN WALCOTT: You know, if Fox News's mission is to defend Republican administrations then they're right, they didn't fail. One of the things that puzzles me about all of this, in Scott's book is this notion that it was the liberal media. I'm not — I don't understand what liberal versus conservative has to do with this. I would have thought that conservatives would be the ones to ask questions about a march to war. How much is this gonna cost us? What's the effect of this gonna be on our military, on our country's strength overseas?
I don't think it's a liberal conservative question at all. I think that's, frankly, a canard by Scott

I highlighted the passage above because that's what I've felt right from the beginning even though it was so called conservatives beating the drums louder and louder for invasion and occupation, but I've been answered over and over with the fact that Conservatism, as it once was, is dead, none existant, undefined, in this new century. What's replaced it can only be described with a word from the past, Facism, for the many resemblances to.

GREG MITCHELL: You'd have to see whether the press this time would use the phrase "taking care of Iran." Now, what does that mean? Even if you do bomb Iran, what does that do? What is the aftereffect? What is the overall effect of it? What does it do to, you know, how many people do you kill? What happens in the wreckage afterwards? So if it's the media is — which it didn't do with Iraq — does it in this case then people will have a better understanding of what we're letting ourselves in for if we do attack Iran.
JOHN WALCOTT: That's an excellent point because the failures before the war on Iraq are probably matched by the failure to ask this question about invading Iran. Is it really gonna be easy? Are we really gonna be greeted with flowers and chocolates, as liberators, which is what the defectors told us? And one of the things this Administration has never been able to get through its head is the old saying that the enemy has a vote, that the enemy, whatever you do, they will respond in some way. And the Iranian-

Can the World, and our National Security, become worse than it is today, in the near future? Yes, invaded or bomb Iran and watch the Hatreds and Growth of Enemies result from!!

A Country like ours should be Leading by Example, making friends not enemies, helping others not destroying them, setting examples of moral and human tolerance and dignity not joining those who torture and control, trying to live as we preach, not condemning others when doing the same.........................................................................!

Setting the Example that can be Admired and Followed!

A Discussion for Thought

The following is a short discussion, abit of a long read, by two Vietnam Veterans, on a VFP/VVAW, group board. The first post is a copy of a question asked and answered by another Vietnam Veteran. The two posts following that are a reply to the original than an answer to that reply.

I would hope that it might help our present Brothers and Sisters, serving in Theaters of War and when they return from, to help find the answers to any questions that may be.

With the Mutiple Tours, Extended Tours, ever Changing Reasons For, and the initial ignorance of what type of Conflict they were led into, as this countries military had already had a long running battle with Guerilla/Insurgent warfare and those lessons still aren't being applied, there will be many more questions that need answering than even we 'Nam vets have been seeking answers for, to the closed ears of our Government and the People of this Country.

"WHAT IS A VIETNAM VETERAN?"
by Dan Mouer 1996

A college student posted a request on an internet newsgroup asking for personal narratives from the likes of us addressing the question: "What is a Vietnam Veteran?" This is what I wrote back:

Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.
Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit--or a great bit--closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, tough. All in a day's work. Life's a bitch then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, sad.
We are crazies dressed in cammo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless.
We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world.
We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate cloroquine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships' berths at sea.
We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us.
Mostly--and this I believe with all my heart--mostly, we wish we had not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of "the world," shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egoized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.
And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands.
Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different--what makes us Vietnam vets--is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. But we appreciate your asking.
Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray; but in comparison with our numbers in the "real world," we were more likely black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese.
We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change...or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows and houseboats and hooches and ranchers. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.
Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but never would be the same.
We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians and Buddhists and Atheists--though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.
We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want, desparately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror. Or we want never to see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could remember.
Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don't know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask "what's wrong?" We're afraid we might have to answer.
Adam, if you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get in your car next weekend or cage a friend with a car to drive you. Go to Washington. Go to the Wall. It's going to be Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there...no, thousands. Watch them. Listen to them. I'll be there. Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. I will. I'm a Vietnam Veteran; and, after 30 years, I think I am beginning to understand what that means.

This was posted in response to the above, by Jay Janson:

Fine article, CORRECTION: THEY DID NOT SERVE THEIR COUNTRY
Excellent text except for one horribly insensitive slip into a
sickening corporate media war promoting post Vietnam War propaganda
lie:

" Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country,
proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently"

Killing Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodian in their very own lands
DID NOT 'SERVE' OUR COUNTRY! On the contrary, this brutal massive
killing and maiming in the French colonies of Indochina seeking their
independence, was a genocidal crime against humanity, the shame and
dishonor of which will forever printed in history books and
encylopedias for our children, and children all over the world will
read about for untold generations of the future.

Jay Janson's much reprinted article below, quotes Eisenhower, John
Kerry and Bob Kerry.

TITLE:
Respect Vietnamese Patriots Gunned Down by “Beloved” Swift Boats

AUTHOR:
Jay Janson, Feb. 4, 2008

DESCRIPTION:
Jolted to read in Jan. 23, Huffington Post article, “Swiftboating”,
John Kerry’s insensitive references to, “the Swift Boats we loved
while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta" -“the boats we honored
when we were in uniform in Vietnam”. Kerry experienced the death
these boats brought, called the war an atrocity. Remarks especially
sickening for those who, like Jane Fonda, sided with Vietnam fighting
Japan, France, and U.S.

TEXT:
I mean what shock do Americans need to back off from accepting,
cheering on, and aping corporate media entertainment/news adulation
of war?

This is a heart breaking subject for one, who has lived in Hanoi
among Vietnamese who all lost family during what the Vietnamese call
“The American War.” “Killed by the Americans”, they would answer
with an expression of Buddhist equanimity on their faces upon inquiry
during a festive annual dinner in their traditional custom of
honoring of a deceased family member.

The U.S. government now makes nice with the same Vietnam communist
dominated government presidents from Truman through Ford sought to
destroy, seemingly oblivious to the incredible loss of life. America
has come to respect the Vietnam it could not defeat, and could not
cut in half.

That is why this writer, was jolted to read in the Jan. 23, 2008
Huffington Post article, “Swiftboating”, John Kerry’s insensitive
references to, “the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on
the Mekong Delta" ... “the boats we honored when we were in uniform
in Vietnam”.

What chilling lack of compassion and poor taste, to call attention,
even in retrospect, to their having “honored” and “loved” war
equipment that brought undeserved death and destruction to Vietnam.

These unthinking hurtful written remarks are especially sickening for
those of us who, like Jane Fonda, were on the side of the Vietnamese
who fought first the Japanese, then the French, and thereafter
endured years of carpet and napalm bombing by the U.S. during their
American crucifixion.

What is most appalling about Kerry’s slip of conscience, is that we
have always supposed that given the memory of Kerry’s famous brave
action saving his ship and the lives of his comrades by shooting to
death a Viet patriot about to launch a rocket, that Kerry must have
nightmares about that Viet soldier’s grieving family.

Is this the same John Kerry who denounced the U.S. war in Vietnam as
an atrocity in testimony before a congressional committee?

No, one quesses it is the John Kerry who thirty-five years later
saluted the Vietnam Veterans, warriors who fought a near defenseless
population in a poor Asian French colony of rice farmers, parading
across the stage with large American flags to thunderous applause at
the convention that would nominate him the Democratic presidential
candidate? During his campaign, Kerry and commercial media made the
'Vietnam War' strangely heroic again.

With all the U.S. rapprochement in backing that same communist
government for World Trade Organization membership, one wonders if
Kerry ever try to contact the family of that Vietnamese patriot he
shot to death in combat?

One wonders why Kerry would not be embarrassed to recall love for his
swift boat. What of his memory that the crews of those boats
participated in a war on the Vietnamese that Kerry testified to have
been an atrocity?

Kerry reenlisted for a second tour of 'duty', but took discharge to
run for Congress. Did he not know when he enlisted the first time,
that Eisenhower had written in his book "Mandate for Change" in 1963,
that if there had been an all Vietnam election (blocked by Ike
himself), that Ho Chi Minh would have won by a plurality of more than
80%? Oddly enough Kerry would run in part on his military service
record in Vietnam fighting to prevent Ho Chi Minh from becoming
elected president.

Why does Kerry now believe that he or any Vietnam vets 'served' their
country by taking part in a war that killed Vietnamese in their own
country, often enough in their own neighborhoods and homes as he
deplored in his testimony at the time?

Kerry had a fine college education, which must have included a
history of colonialism, which would have included the brutality of
French colonial subjugation of the Vietnamese. He must have known
that Ho Chi Minh was decorated by our OSS as a dedicated ally of ours
against the Japanese and Vichy French. He must have known that
Truman, against Roosevelt's promise, had brought the French army back
in US ships to fight an 8-year war against our former allies, the
Vietnamese. All this because Ho Chi Minh was a communist? A top
cabinet minister of the U.S. allied French government was also a
communist, but that was OK. Martin Luther King spoke of this history
in his 1967 condemnation of U.S. imperialist war.

Perhaps it useless to fault the mature John Kerry for a commonly held
American attitude of disinterest in the suffering of families of the
millions slaughtered in America’s mistaken and unwinnable wars and
nostalgia for his stint in the Navy.

Recruiting our boys to go kill around the world is made easier for
the ‘glory’ now associated with the massive killing of Vietnamese,
Laotians and Cambodians. ‘U.S. Big Brother’ media has turned the
pre-1975 [shame] into [fame] in the new millennium. No more mention
of the war having been ‘a terrible mistake’, and every single
politician who ‘served’ in Vietnam is acclaimed as a hero!

Calling the Iraq war a mistake, as do the Democrats, does not carry
with it any horror, shame or even the slightest interest in the
million Iraqi lives lost. It’s the very few, by comparison, American
military lives lost that are worthy of attention and mourning. In
American media, a million Iraqi, Afghani, or Vietnamese dead do not
equal the weight of one American fallen in the occupation of these
nations.

The only attention non-American deaths get is in the highly heralded
insurgent, and suspected insurgent, body counts that include men and
boys who join up to fight against the American occupation of their
countries and are automatically labeled terrorists in U.S. military
reports.

The world, watching satellite TV, notices that the general American
public, indifferent to its government policies, nevertheless seems to
enjoy hearing of the U.S. killing record and body counts in the many
small nations its always heroic military invades.

There is zero interest in the suffering of the family members of
'foreigners' who die ‘in harms way' of U.S. military firepower.

With John Kerry recent acquiescing to today’s wars, it is both dismal
and disheartening, even bizarre, to recall that young Kerry
denouncing the U.S. war on Vietnam as an atrocity in testimony before
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.

Muhammad Ali did not need to go to Vietnam to know it was wrong, and
he has never changed his mind.

This is a response to what Mr Janson had posted, by George Weber who brought us Dan Mouers well thought answer to a simple question:

Mr. Janson,

I would argue that we did indeed serve our country....meaning that as young recruits our intentions were honorable, regardless
of the fact that we were deceived and ultimately used as pawns by a dishonest government in an unjust war.



Perhaps you overlooked the sentence.......


"We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear."

I would guess that there are many Vietnam vets who disagree with our point of view......but in this case you're preaching to the choir.

I think perhaps you may have overlooked the spirit in which the piece was written.



In Peace,

George Weber
VFP Tappan Zee Chapter 060
VVAW NYC Clarence Fitch Chapter

I leave you to Think on the many similarities to than and today, the many differances as well, and the perceptions of this Country brought about back than to the perceptions we live with now and well into the future!

Add-On: I posted a response to both of the above writings by my brother 'Nam Veterans, on the Morality and Reality of our Country and received this Response back; Moralism Vs. Reality: Take your pick. from another brother.

Got Kids, Meet Their Future

Thanks to us Responsible Adults!


An Iraqi boy reacts after seeing his sister and both of his parents killed in the car, in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005

As we bring Freedom and Democray at the point of a gun!



Thousands of Homeless Children in Iraq Survive by Begging, Stealing or Scavenging Garbage for Food.

IRAQ: Child beggars proliferate in Baghdad


Child beggars are a common sight in the streets of Baghdad

Ahmed said he would rather beg than steal and that he had started begging before his parents died because they were a poor family. He said his mother died in Fallujah in August 2004. She was visiting her parents when their house was bombed by US-led coalition forces.

His father fell ill and could not work so he sent his children out to beg. If they did not come home with enough money, he would beat them, Ahmed said. His father died of kidney failure in April 2005

Only four years ago, the vast majority of these children were living at home with their families.

Many of those we are have been fighting, since we invaded, are the children who have grown since the first Gulf War and through the years of Sanctions, the ones who survived!


Illiteracy increasing among Iraq's refugee children


Azhar al Haidari, 47, center, is an Iraqi refugee in Damascus, Syria. While her two daughters, Inam, left, and Mary, are excelling in school, their older brothers are illiterate because they've been out of class for so long

Illiteracy is spreading rapidly among refugee children from Iraq, with at least 300,000 young Iraqis not attending school in the countries where their families have sought safety.

"The last time my kids were in school was 2003, right before the American invasion," said Hanaa Majeed, 32, an Iraqi refugee in Damascus who can't afford to send her two sons to school. "They can barely read. I buy books and try to teach them at home, but it's not the same. My boys see other kids with backpacks on, going off to school, and they ask why they can't go, too."
Education is a point of pride for Iraqis, the descendants of civilizations that invented cuneiform, one of the world's first writing systems.

Iraq: Children with serious illnesses abandoned

Over 1.6 million children under the age of 12 have become homeless in Iraq, according to the country's Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. That's almost 70 percent of the estimated 2.5 million Iraqis who are homeless inside the country.

"There are no reliable estimates of how many orphans and abandoned children are in Iraq today but we believe, according to some data collected by local NGOs, that over 8,000 children are in the same or a similar situation to that of Faleh," Mayada said.

Few Iraqis returning home from Jordan

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, more than two million Iraqis have fled to neighbouring countries, with Jordan (500,000-750,000) and Syria (1.2-1.4 million) hosting the greatest numbers.

The plight of Iraqi refugees

Demanding of our attention and action today is the terrible plight of Iraqi refugees, both those outside the country and internally displaced persons (IDPs). They number to date a fifth of the Iraqi population.

This tragic human dislocation has been created by the active violation of the UN Charter and other aspects of international law. This violation was demonstrated during the American terrorism of "Shock and Awe", and the invasion of sovereignty, disruption of culture, destruction of civilian infrastructure that it entailed and epitomised. Irreparable damage to society and fundamental human rights has ensued. This outrageous unprovoked act of aggression brought to Iraq yet again the horrors of war. Bush and Blair's pre-emptive strike has led to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Current credible estimations put the figure at over one million since 2003.

Over and above massive loss of civilian life, is the tragic consequence of refugees. It is estimated some 4.7 million children, women and men have been forced from their homes and have fled -- some displaced within and some outside Iraq. More that 20 per cent of the entire population have been brutally uprooted by the violence of this war of aggression -- a war crime for which the US-UK, along with others, must be held responsible.

Of these refugees, and those who haven't fled, many are the children, the children who we have stripped of their childhood! Those that are still in the War Ravaged Country of Iraq will try and maintain some semblance of chilhood activities, but their games of pretend are carried out amoung the devestation and destruction around them. And much of their pretend activities are the acting out of the forces of destruction they have witnessed, the only thing they know.



Money, Time Runs Out for Iraqi Refugees

The Iraqi government, eager to claim credit for the decline in violence, offers returnees free transportation to Iraq, provides protection to the bus convoys and gives families $800 each to help with resettling.

But American and U.N. officials warn that a big return of refugees could rekindle sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites and that some returnees have found their homes occupied by members of the other Muslim sect. Even the Iraqi government acknowledges it cannot handle a huge influx.

Harsh refugee life rather than improved security spurs return of Iraqi refugees

Most returnees did so because they were running out of money or because their visas had expired, states the report, with less than 15 per cent found to be returning because they believed the security situation had improved.

Recent visa restrictions in both Syria and Jordan have made it virtually impossible for new refugees to gain access to either country, and in Syria in particular, Iraqi refugees now find it hard to remain. By being denied work permits, Iraqis across the region are rapidly depleting their savings and are facing ever-worsening economic conditions.

Iraqi International Initiative on Refugee's

More than 4.5 million Iraqis — a fifth of the population — have been displaced inside and outside their country due to the sectarian policies of the occupation and the governments it has installed since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003

The international community, the occupation powers, and the government in Iraq are legally required to support and protect Iraqi refugees

Iraqi refugees are Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, a right to benefit equally from national resources, and a right to return to their homes

The UN Security Council, as the highest body of the UN, has the power and legal duty to ensure that the needs of Iraqi refugees are met by passing a resolution to require that the Iraqi state allocate proportionate revenue to responsible agencies and hosting countries

Visit above site and sign their Petition: Humanity is in distress in Iraq. Our moral responsibility is to save it. Join us.

And follow the many links given!

The Children Of Iraq - Photo's

Most of those who led the charge to War, and their supporters, try and lay the blame for what some of these children will, or already have, do on others who they say entice these children into violence and violent acts. These children don't need to be pushed nor taught, their anger and the life forced on them shapes what many will become, and it only takes a few, but there will be more than just a few. Those who lay the blame on others fear their own guilt that eventually will catch up to them!

And this is only about the Children of Iraq. How about the Children of Afganistan, or Darfur, or Palestine, or the many many other troubled spots on this planet! The disenfranchised have been rising up from the failed policies practiced by the powerful, leaving legacies of destruction to come!