Monday, September 10, 2007

Hearings make me sick

Watching the Betrayus and Crooker hearings I think of how many hearings I have watched starting in my childhood with my mother who was so thankful that McCarthy was saving us from the Red Menace in and out of our borders. (I will admit that I found the hearings annoying more because they conflicted with Howdy Doody and Beany. I won’t claim to have been political in grade school, but even then something didn’t make sense to me.)And we all know what an inspirational person McCarthy was.

From then on there was Watergate, Col. North, good old Monica and quite a few in between. The one that thrilled me was the one on C-Span where several Congressmen challenged the results of the 2004 election.

In so many of them, I feel as if I am watching a good fiction program. I often wish what people were saying was true. If I could have faith in the latest it was dashed, when Crooker made one more reference to Saddam’s torture of his own people. Despite the US Mantra we do not torture, saying it doesn’t make it so. Congress rejected closing of the School of Americas, www.soaw.org/article.php?id=205 or http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm where Janis Karpinski talks about Abu Grahib or the illegal flights where we sent people to be tortured. It is a variation of Bush’s statement about the terrorists killing innocent women and children. Tell that to those that were under US bombs when they landed and have been killed by US Soldiers. And as for 9/11 a few hours of terror against years and years that the Iraqis have suffered.
So thus I watch another hearing where lies fall from lips, for a war that is killing too many people. Sadly I have read too much to believe.

As I write this Crooker talks about training the Iraqis in preventive maintenance of their infrastructure. Maybe then the Iraqis can train us how to rebuild bridges starting in Minneapolis.

I also wonder what right the US has to demand what the Iraqi government must do after we attacked and destroyed it.

So far no one has mentioned the almost double the number of US Soldiers that we have hired as paid mercenaries.

No one has questioned why we can interfere in Iraq and only our allies can interfere. Doesn’t it make sense that Syria and Iran have more interest in their neighbour than perhaps Australia does?

And part of me thinks the fact that they couldn’t get the microphones to work properly at the beginning of the hearing is a great metaphor for the war. We couldn’t get that right either, but then attacking a sovereign nation can’t be gotten right.

Nor did I hear about the meeting in Finland where Iraqi ministers met with Irish ministers tried to talk about how the Irish solution might be used by the Iraqis. The US wasn’t present.
Likewise the Iraqis invited Iran engineers into the country to help fix the electricity that the US has failed so miserably do.

Why aren’t the questioners asking about the source of the stats and why haven’t they done their own based on news reports?

Overall the war leaves me feeling sick and ashamed and so angry. The hearings only make it stronger.

No comments: