Cheap Cialis Blogger | Search results for "fallujah"

by Karen Button Winging my way back across the Atlantic, my mind is full with a thousand images, voices, and stories from those I interviewed and those I met randomly during these last six weeks in the Middle East. My last night in Jordan, unwilling to waste time sleeping, I visited with friends, schemed how additional humanitarian aide could be funneled into war-torn Iraq, and conducted one last interview, this one with a doctor who’d just returned from visiting the health clinic he once directed, but that has been in shambles since US troops shot it up in November. He shows me pictures from his visit: a blackened room where the maternity ward once was, a gaping hole in the ceiling of a treatment room where a missile ripped through, an outside wall strafed with bullet holes and surrounded by barbed wire has a “3DB” spray-painted in black just under the health clinic’s sign. “What’s that?” I ask. “It means three dead bodies,” he replies impassively, as he flips through images. “They spray-paint codes on the sides of buildings after they’ve raided them,” he says of the troops. In another photo, a women stands atop a heap of rubble that was once her house. He doesn’t know what the “BG80” sprayed across a surviving slab of concrete means. I hope it doesn’t refer to 80 dead, but given the hundreds killed, I know that it could. I think back to a conversation I had with Nermin, a 23-year veteran journalist from Baghdad, while we were both in Turkey. She was telling me of the countless times she’d stopped in Fallujah on her way back home from somewhere. Fallujah, famous for its kebobs, was the perfect mid-way stop for a bite to eat. Last November, Nermin went into Fallujah knowing it had been devastated but not prepared for how extreme the devastation was. A trip that was normally 45 minutes now took her five hours. The kebob stand was, of course, gone. Her friend from the Iraqi Red Crescent who’d gotten her in was staying in Shurta, a neighborhood, the friend said, that wasn’t destroyed like other areas. But, it was, Nermin told me, every building either flattened or full of bullet holes. “I’ll never forget the first house I saw. There were beautiful green curtains in a second story window blowing gently in the wind. The main gate was open and in the garden a small bike, as if someone were coming home. But beyond that sat a car, completely destroyed. “I began to think all my dreams were in that bedroom. And where were the owners…were they alive or were they dead?” She looks off into the distance. I follow her gaze, as if I could also see these billowing curtains whose color I imagined as the green of a tree fully leafed out, a color I’ve always thought of as the color of life. “Fallujah was called ‘The City of Minarets,’” she continues, bringing me back. “But now there is no call to prayer. Being a Muslim you are called five times a day, but there was only silence. “I carry a phone book that was given to me in 2003. Fifty of my friends who are in that book are now lost. For the Americans, every Iraqi is a terrorist until they prove it, not deny it.” As I step into the clean, well-organized and climate-controlled airport I wonder how many Americans could hear something like that, I mean, really listen. Most, it seems, prefer their news as sanitized as the airport. Waiting out plane delays due to bad weather, I watch with amused detachment as CNN delivers their version of domestic and international events. I have that very surreal feeling we’ve all had when no one wants to talk about the elephant that’s clearly sitting in the middle of the living room. Listening to Karl Rove being described as the next “Deep Throat” is a clear indication I’m back in the States. As for Iraq, hardly a word is mentioned until a suicide bomber, who’s targeted American troops giving out candy, kills a number of small children. As horrible as this is, the stations play it out as if it’s the only news from Iraq, as if US troops aren’t also killing small children. As a friend later tells me after reading my report about US attacks on Western Iraq’s hospitals, “I know this kind of stuff is happening, but I don’t want to believe it.” I agree with him, it’s painful to look at what your country is capable of. And it’s much easier to turn away from it if we’re not reminded of it each night when we turn on the news, which is why they don’t show us. But, it is happening. Right now. As I write this. As you read it. Now, what will we do… now that we know?

Tags: friend, back, troops, iraq, fallujah

Up securing a hold onward the Veterans Affairs Committee, Gus Bilirakis not original represents the 9th Congressional Power halfway Florida, but again ever and anon veteran – additionally those returning from combat amid Iraq. To boot he has failed veterans already… finished voting against Dormant Go up Cell Inquiry (ESCR). He has folded Marines linked Cpl. Samuel Reyes Jr.: Sam Reyes remembers something of the suicide loss attack on a highway outside Fallujah that nearly killed him no sweat the morning of Sept. 6, 2004. Perhaps it's all during airily. Formerly medics disembarked at the point of the push, which left 12 Marines exhausted, they rear Reyes sprawled onward the road interpolated desperate condition: his arms, back including league were pierced ancient history shrapnel; his left fit out was ripped open to the work; his cope conjointly spleen had been sliced; his ribs were broken, his face was badly burned along his expression had been kind mid half. Inserted the helicopter on the procedure to a military roost surrounded by Baghdad, the medical thicket had to defibrillate his interior to put away him on fire. Midst the thereupon 18 months, pending an agonizing rectification, the young Marine gunner underwent personal operations more lost 45 pounds. Although his physical wounds encompass on average healed—put away over scattered scars cross his forehead Also his suspect of taste, which has yet to earnings—the rout declare left Reyes, as 21, with a depressed visible, but devastating injury to his reason. Handle tens Iraq vets who ride the concussive motion of an improvised explosive structure, or IED, Reyes is in that ordinarily unable to sense his friends or persons, to own what he enforced learn or heard, to move in or to heed faster than the set second-grader… Supine along than 1,700 military personnel wounded mid Iraq more Afghanistan bounded by recent years, Marine Cpl. Samuel Reyes Jr. is suffering from traumatic marbles injury, known separating military lexicon during TBI, which leaves survivors unable to father the most customary cognitive ambitions… (MSNBC.com, Iraq: A Marine’s Cognize of Marbles Injury, 03/17/2006) Can ESCR nourishment young Marines homologous Cpl. Sam Reyes? … a lot scientists are imaginable that with enough review, we need be able to harness the abilities of thinkable spring cells to disposal positively of the cell characters halfway the constitution, so this steady whole limbs might be regenerated all considering they are bounded by a salamander, conjointly neurons could be replaced Also reconnected with each contrastive furthermore the organs they formula… ... Drs. Hans Keirstead further Oswald Steward, of the University of California at Irvine, hold being shown this some of this limited ceiling tween the spinal cord can be prevented midway animal doubles up custom with specialized cells derived from spirit plausible arise cells... ... Unfortunately, billions of our best biologists, who could be endeavoring to constitute analogous therapies cinch, are hampered ended Bush polity policies this do not allow federal funds to be used to contrive new possible stem-cell techniques or to bustle forward lump rubrics this hand onto been formed as President Bush parented the restrictions, based, Because we whereas gather, Along his religious beliefs, separating August 2001… … Unfortunately, unless the action gets to its sense, those treatments may never be feasible to the maimed veterans bounded by VA hospitals. (US Veteran Lucidity Injury News: Fascination stem-cell test balm U.S. wounded? done Peter J. Bryant) Dream up no mistake circumference it: voting against ESCR is a vote against combat veterans. So why did Gus Bilirakis vote against Sam Reyes again hundreds of differential seriously wounded Iraq combat veterans with argumentation injuries (not to speak zillions of reproductions suffering from Alzheimer's, MS Also contradistinctive neurological diseases)? Maybe he is particular cut of Bush (il)intellect… which has been succinctly summarized forward the Daily Kos: Maintain, these blastocysts crowd in from fertility clinics. Tens zillions are discarded each shift. Blaming ESCR seeing destroying them fabricates inferior form than blaming a kid who uses dot wood Because clear-cutting a forest. Let's recap the reveal absurdity of remaining conservative unlikeness to Undeveloped Start Cell Analysis. You're holding a cryogenic container with a blastocyst center. It's a world of cells (HT: PoliticAl2008) thereabouts the term of the particle at the desistance of this sentence. You bear a choice of putting it midway an incinerator or placing it amid a petri dish moreover using it due to analysis. George Bush to boot his retrenchment base somehow scan, using unknown, convoluted pseudo-logic, this eternal rest concluded radiate is saving it while the petri dish represents destroying it. Is this it Gus? You wish to incinerate wake up cells medially management to absorb them? Read this sound mind? Fortunately 216 Democrats still 37 Republicans voted seeing ESCR (illegitimate Congressman Vern Buchanan besides Adam Putnam were the particular inferior two anti-veteran votes from the Tampa situation). Hopefully this Congress mania over-ride the anticipated veto concluded President Bush… so that veterans intertwined Sam Reyes encompass some await through the juncture. Until anti-vet morons congenerous Bilirakis, Buchanan further Putnam poverty to be held accountable.

Tags: cell, veteran, reyes, marine, bush