Melanie's Feelings

I got an email this morning, my email address is easy enough to find if you're prepared to put a bit of effort into to looking for it, from a total stanger in Phoenix Arizona who wanted to tell me how hurt her feelings were at my criticism of what her country is doing in Iraq. That it would all work out in the end, that America had brought freedom to Iraq and that Americans cared, really they care about the terrible things going on and that was why America had sacrificed and would continue to sacrifice so much in Iraq. I wrote back asking her what she personally had done or had sacrificed I asked if for example she had emailed her Senators or Congresspeople or if she had ever donated to a charity for relieving the suffering in Iraq. Melanie wrote back saying no she hadn't done any of those things and she wasn't going to vote in the next election either because "they're all the same" and she doesn't think any of them will do anything about "these people" "overruinning (sic) my country". Feelings: Pain Grief and Dread Haider Ali is 11 years old he was injured yesterday Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 in the bus terminal bombing in Baghdad and treated at Yarmouk hospital. The hand holding his is that of his father Swadi Ali. The grief striken teenage boy being led away from Yarmouk hospital has just identified his father's body - killed in the same bombing. The woman gesturing anxiously is on her way to the Kindi hospital in Baghdad. Her son Ali was at the bus terminal when the bombing and shooting attack was committed. According to another email I got this morning. She wasn't able to find him. Meanwhile in Basra .... "One person is being assassinated in Basra every hour, as order in Iraq's second city disintegrates, according to an Iraqi Defence Ministry official. And a quarter of all Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition, a survey of 20,000 households by the Iraqi government and Unicef says. The number of violent killings in Basra is now at a level close to that of Baghdad, and marks the failure of the British Army's three-year attempt to quell violence there. Police no longer dare go to the site of a murder because they fear being attacked. The governor of Basra, Mohammed Misbahal-Wa'ili, is trying to sack the city's police chief, claiming that the police have not carried out a single investigation into hundreds of recent assassinations. The collapse of government authority in Iraq is increasing at every level and leaders in Baghdad have yet to form a cabinet, five months after parliamentary elections on 15 December. Insurgent attacks on American and British troops are also proving more lethal, with 44 US soldiers and seven British killed so far this month, and with daily losses exceeding anything seen for more than a year. Majid al-Sari, an adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, describing the situation in Basra to the daily al-Zaman, said that on average one person was being assassinated every hour. Militiamen and tribesmen are often the only real authority. When Sheikh Hassan Jarih al-Karamishi was killed by men dressed in police uniforms at the weekend, Mr Sari said his heavily armed armed tribesmen stormed one police station in south Basra, killing 11 police, and burnt down two other buildings, headquarters for a political party." UK Independent Today Wed May 17, 2006 the bodies of the two Attey brothers - Abbas who was aged 12 and his brother Hussein who was aged 8, both of whom were murdered yesterday in the bombing in Baghdad were put into a single coffin and tied down to the roofrack of a bus bound for Najaf so that they could be buried in the Wadi-us-Salaam ("Valley of Peace") cemetary. Najaf is dedicated to Imam Ali, the Wadi is where Imam Ali is buried it's probably the largest cemetery in the world, because most Iraqi Shi'i ask that they be buried there. Now it holds two more bodies scythed down in their innocent blood at the behest of the United States the country which has invaded, occupied, and is now breaking up Iraq the country which was their home. In related news the most emailed stories on Yahoo News As I was writing this posting were: Feelings: Pain, Grief, Dread, Indifference, Contempt. Dear Melanie, I don't give a flying fuck about your feelings. Yours sincerely, markfromireland