Body of War - The Movie

WHAT MOTIVATES THE TALIBAN - Sunday Oct. 18, 2009 -

The New York Times' David Rohde writes about the seven months he was held hostage by a group of extremist Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and conveys this observation about what motivates them:

My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners. But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged.

Apparently, when we drop bombs on Muslim countries -- or when Israel attacks Palestinians -- that fuels anti-American hatred and militarism among Muslims.  The same outcomes occur when we imprison Muslims without charges in places like Guantanamo and Bagram.  Imagine that.  Recall, according to Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, what prompted 9/11 "ringleader" Mohammed Atta to devote himself to a suicide mission, as recounted by Juan Cole during the Israel/Gaza war:

In 1996, Israeli jets bombed a UN building where civilians had taken refuge at Cana/ Qana in south Lebanon, killing 102 persons; in the place where Jesus is said to have made water into wine, Israeli bombs wrought a different sort of transformation. In the distant, picturesque port of Hamburg, a young graduate student studying traditional architecture of Aleppo saw footage like this on the news [graphic]. He was consumed with anguish and the desire for revenge. As soon as operation Grapes of Wrath had begun the week before, he had written out a martyrdom will, indicating his willingness to die avenging the victims, killed in that operation--with airplanes and bombs that were a free gift from the United States. His name was Muhammad Atta. Five years later he piloted American Airlines 11 into the World Trade Center. (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 307: "On April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque.  It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged, and by filling out his last testament during the attack he was offering his life in response").

On Tuesday, the Israeli military shelled a United Nations school to which terrified Gazans had fled for refuge, killing at least 42 persons and wounding 55, virtually all of them civilians, and many of them children. The Palestinian death toll rose to 660.

You wonder if someone somewhere is writing out a will today. More...

BAGHDAD, Sept. 20, 2006 — A United Nations report says that 5,106 people in Baghdad died violent deaths during July and August, 2006, a number far higher than reports that have relied on figures from the city’s morgue.

The report also describes evidence of torture on many of the bodies found in Baghdad, including gouged-out eyeballs and wounds from nails, power drills and acid. Torture remains widespread, not only by death squads but also in official detention centers, according to United Nations officials. Torture in Iraq is reportedly worse now than it was under deposed president Saddam Hussein, the United Nations' chief anti-torture expert said.

Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq - Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says - By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, February 10, 2006: The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

(UPI) 1/8/2006 Experts Say Iraq War Will Cost $1 Trillion: A new study by a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a budget expert puts the total cost of the Iraq War at $1 trillion to $2 trillion. The study includes the cost of disability payments and health care for the over 16,000 injured military personnel -- one-fifth of whom have serious brain or spinal injuries. Stiglitz and Bilmes also analyzed the costs to the economy, including the economic value of lives lost and higher oil prices.

August 26, 2002: Vice President Dick Cheney appeared before a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and asserted that "simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction [and] there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

July 12, 2005 BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under.

George Bush = Kim Jong II in World's Eyes - Chicago Tribune, 11-17-03: A poll of 7,500 Europeans, done by EOS Gallup Europe for the European Commission, showed that they ranked Bush second -- in a tie with North Korea's Kim Jong Il -- among leaders who pose the greatest threat to world peace. Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ranked first.

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Riverbend Web Logging Direct From Baghdad (Now Exiled in Syria)
Buy her book - It's a must-read!

Why American Oil Powers Invaded Iraq

The Terrible Depleted Uranium Munitions

Faces of Americans Killed in Iraq

An Open Letter to U.S. GIs in Iraq from a Vietnam Vet

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power."- FDR

US War Crimes Against Afghanistan - 17. Verdict:Guilty

I find the Defendant, George Walker Bush, President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces guilty –

1. Under Article 2 of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan and under International Criminal Law, for waging a war of aggression against Afghanistan and the Afghan people.....

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