Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

I must admit that I am stunned about what happened in Iraq. When Trump refused to go through with bombing Iraq after they shot down our unmanned drone, I knew that the warmongers around him would continue hammering him, and I figured that there was at least a 50 percent chance that, over the next year, he would attack Iraq- over something. But, I never anticipated anything like this. 

The Iraqi Prime Minister invited Soleimani to Iraq. He wanted to talk to him; to confer with him. And he, obviously, didn't think that Soleimani was a terrorist. Last July, the Russian government invited Soleimani to Moscow, and he went. They were working together to fight terrorists in Syria. And they didn't think he was a terrorist either. 

I know the U.S. government says he was a terrorist, but remember: the U.S. government has bombed 9 wedding parties in Afghanistan, killing men, women, and children. We talk about it in My Stretch of Texas Ground. Sheriff Joe does, but, he only mentions one wedding party.  A couple months ago, we killed 30 pine nut harvesters in Afghanistan. 

And just two months ago, Brown University researchers of the Watson School of International Relations, said that since 9/11, the U.S. government has killed 800,000 people- directly from its military operations. And when you include the indirect deaths, they claim a total death toll of 3,000,000 people. That's Brown University, in Rhode Island, an ivy league school.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/13/so-called-war-terror-has-killed-over-801000-people-and-cost-64-trillion-new-analysis 

It's all very surreal to me because plenty of Americans, believing what their government and media tell them, are treating this like a high-five situation, when it is such a catastrophe. The other main figure killed with Sulemani was abu Mahdi Mahandis, the head of a military unit in Iraq who claimed that U.S. forces were attacking his forces. We refer to Mahandis as "para-military" but the Iraqi government says he was legit. Mahandis was elected to the Iraqi Parliament. I thought that democracy was something we're supposed to be willing to fight and die for. Then, there were 8 others we killed who go nameless.    

If you go to the Iraqi government website right now, this is what you see:

You people who support what Trump did, you don't care about this, do you? Go ahead and be honest. I bet you've got a wise crack on the tip of your tongue. But you know, to kill 10 people at an airport in a fiery inferno, when you know that the claim of "imminence" can't possibly be true since Suleimani was on his way to meet with the Prime Minister of Iraq, it is really just as appalling as what happened in El Paso, Texas not long ago when someone killed a bevy of people at Wal Mart. And I understand that he didn't know those people, but we didn't know most of the people we killed either. The point is that the barbarity of it, the savagery of it, the total lawlessness of it was every bit as bad, and especially since it was done by the U.S. government. 

I have long known that wars make monsters out of men. You may know that in the World War II, the so-called "good war," the Soviet Army raped their way across ravaged Germany. And if they had just raped the poor girls and women and then let them be, it would have just ben that, but no, our allies had to mutilate them and kill them. But, what about on the western front? Well, the rape of French women by American soldiers was so prolific that the new French leader Charles DeGaulle had to appeal directly to Dwight Eisenhower to make it stop. As I said, wars makes monsters out of men.  But, in this case, there wasn't even a declared war, and it's making monsters out of everybody. I'm sorry, but for people, and I mean anybody, to respond with cockiness to what has happened is absolutely revolting. It staggers me. 10 people were killed, and then 40 more died from being stampeded to death at Suleimani's funeral. And I realize that that wasn't our doing or even our wish, but if the former thing hadn't happened (which we did) then the latter thing most certainly wouldn't have happened. 

I wonder if any of those 40 people, when they heard that Suleimani had been killed, thought that it was their death sentence too. Have we become so hardened and callous about violence and death in this country that we just don't give a shit, that we just don't let it phase us? If that's what America is about, then I don't know where I am any more. I'm lost.