On Iraqi painter Muayad Muhsin, see also here.
From Dutch site nieuws.nl:
Painting of Rumsfeld crowd puller in Baghdad
7 June 2006
(Novum/AP) – In Baghdad, this Monday an exhibition started of paintings which symbolize the Iraqi anger against the United States occupiers.
The biggest crowd puller is a controversial work which depicts US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The painter, Muayad Muhsin, was inspired by a photo of a sitting Rumsfeld in a plane, legs stetched, and the soles of his army boots pointed at the spectator.
“That symbolizes the soulless US power and arrogance”, the 41 year old Iraqi says.
He is very angry because three years after the US invasion, his country was divided and atrocities have become everyday life.
Muhsin and many othere Iraqis consider, apart from George W Bush, Rumsfeld as the main architect of US military actions in Iraq.
Rumsfeld’s pose – shoe soles showing prominently – is seen in the Arab worl as very insulting.
According to the painter, Rumsfeld’s general attitide shows thinking being right whatever reality is, and not caring about the rest of the world.
The painter is strongly against the US presence in his country, but also dislikes ex president Saddam Hussein.
He was forced to fight against Iran in the 1980-1988 war; and just one day after having been dismissed from the Iraqi army, he was enlisted again for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The best years of my life Saddam has taken from me, Muhsin says.
After the fall of Saddam, however, the US came.
According to the painter, they came telling beautiful stories and smiling broadly; however, they made Iraq into a nightmare..
See also here.
New Mark Fiore animation ‘Core Values Training’ on US war crimes in Iraq: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Throw out those recruiters of mercenaries
Editorial
We may be beggars but we do have a choice. Let’s throw out those recruiters.’
With Filipinos serving as laborers, nurses and caregivers in all corners of the
world, deploying them as mercenaries is probably an idea whose time has come. A
US outfit, Blackwater, has set up shop at the Subic Freeport and is now
recruiting active and retired soldiers, preferably combat veterans, to help
fight America’s war against Iraq.
Actually, Filipinos have a long history of involvement in foreign wars. They
served as auxiliaries in Spanish misadventures in neighboring countries. Even
before that, they had been drawn into wars among native rulers in what is now
the Indonesian archipelago and Malaysian Borneo with which they had kinship
ties.
In the more recent past, Filipino soldiers were recruited into the “secret war”
waged by the United States in Indochina. This was on top of the not-so-secret
role played by Pinoys in providing construction and logistical support to the
Americans during the Vietnam War. The recruiters were nominally private
corporations, but were in fact CIA fronts.
This time around, thanks to privatization and globalization, the recruitment and
deployment of mercenaries has truly become a business, albeit with the
encouragement of the US government which finds such arrangements cheaper and
more palatable to American voters who have grown angry, as in Vietnam, over
burying their sons (and daughters under a now gender-equal US military) for some
dubious cause in some place they could not find on the map.
That said, it should be remembered that globalization is not limited to
business. The US claims it is fighting a loose global network of terrorist
organizations driven by an implacable hatred toward the West.
In our people’s search for jobs across the seas in the absence of local
opportunities, we might find ourselves in the forward trenches of that war. And
we’re not talking of the Abu Sayyaf and its links to the Southeast Asian
terrorist group Jemaah Islamiya alone.
A few of our countrymen have already been kidnapped in Iraq for having been
identified as drivers, waiters and laundrymen of what are seen as foreign
occupying forces. If we take a more high-profile role as armed security guards
at US installations and as shotgun riders on convoys – which appear to be the
jobs reserved for Filipino mercenaries – we will be seen as hostiles and be open
to attacks both inside and outside Iraq.
We may be beggars but we do have a choice. Let’s throw out those recruiters. But
we’re not holding our breath. With jobs so scarce, many will be desperate enough
to lay their lives on the line.
http://www.malaya.com.ph/jun08/edit.htm
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