This is a video of a United States veteran, called Stop Iraq War Troop Escalation.
US strike kills own soldiers in Baghdad
Sunday, 13 April 2008
The US military says an Apache helicopter has accidentally destroyed one of its own armoured vehicles in eastern Baghdad. …
Iraqi police confirm that a Humvee was set ablaze in the Mashtal area of eastern Baghdad. They say two US soldiers and three Iraqi civilians were wounded and that American troops immediately blocked off the neighbourhood.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/opinion/12herbert.html
By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 12, 2008
I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”
While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home.
On the same day that President Bush was announcing an indefinite suspension of troop withdrawals from Iraq, the New York Times columnist David Leonhardt was telling us a sad story about how the middle class has fared during the Bush years.
The economic boom so highly touted by the president and his supporters “was, for most Americans,” said Mr. Leonhardt, “nothing of the sort.” Despite the sustained expansion of the past few years, the middle class — for the first time on record — failed to grow with the economy.
And now, of course, we’re sinking into a nasty recession.
The U.S., once the greatest can-do country on the planet, now can’t seem to do anything right. The great middle class has maxed out its credit cards and drained dangerous amounts of equity from family homes. No one can seem to figure out how to generate the growth in good-paying jobs that is the only legitimate way of putting strapped families back on their feet.
The nation’s infrastructure is aging and in many places decrepit. Rebuilding it would be an important source of job creation, but nothing on the scale that is needed is in sight. To get a sense of how important an issue this is, consider New Orleans.
The historian Douglas Brinkley, who lives in New Orleans, has written: “What people didn’t yet fully comprehend was that the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, was a man-made debacle, resulting from poorly designed levees and floodwalls.”
We could have saved the victims of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, but we didn’t. And now, more than 2 ½ years after the tragedy, we are still unable to lift the stricken city off its knees.
Other nations can provide health care for everyone. The United States cannot. In an era in which a college degree is becoming a prerequisite for a middle-class quality of life, we are having big trouble getting our kids through high school. And despite being the wealthiest of all nations, nearly 10 percent of Americans are resorting to food stamps to maintain an adequate diet, and 4 in every 10 American children are growing up in families that are poor or near-poor.
The U.S. seems almost paralyzed, mesmerized by Iraq and unable to generate the energy or the will to handle the myriad problems festering at home. The war will eventually cost a staggering $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. When he was asked on “Democracy Now!” about who is profiting from the war, he said the two big gainers were the oil companies and the defense contractors.
This is the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Whatever happened to the dynamic country that flexed its muscles after World War II and gave us the G.I. Bill, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations (in a quest for peace, not war), the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the finest higher education system the world has known, and a standard of living that was the envy of all?
America’s commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, and our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, went up to Capitol Hill this week but were unable to give any real answers as to when the U.S. might be able to disengage, or when a corner might be turned, or when a faint, flickering hopeful light might be glimpsed at the end of the long, horrific Iraqi tunnel.
A country that used to act like Babe Ruth now swings like a minor-leaguer. The all-American can-do philosophy has been smothered by the hapless can’t-do performances of the people who have been in charge for the past several years. It’s both tragic and embarrassing.
The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.
On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”
Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. – Mahatma Gandhi
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I find it curious how your title and the text of the story diverge. Did you just “wish” American troops were killed? Based upon the story, that didn’t happen.
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Hi NOTR, if you don’t like the headline (changed by now by Associated Press from the original headline on Sunday), then you should complain at Associated Press; not here. Every one of the over 4,000 US soldiers and over a million Iraqis killed since the 2003 invasion by George W. Bush is a tragedy and a reminder that the war should stop right now. The same goes for the wounded.
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Dear Supporter,
The cost of the Iraq War is a grave issue. At Brave New Films, we are committed to spreading awareness about the devastating financial toll the war is taking on each and every one of us, let alone our economy.
$3 trillion. That is what Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the war will cost our country. Make no mistake, this $3 trillion bill is crippling our economy and causing our Iraq recession. To put this colossal amount of cash into perspective, we’ve designed a game to help people really understand what $3 trillion dollars can buy. Get ready to go on a 3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree!
When the war was already hurting our economy two years ago, President Bush announced that Americans should go shopping-a brilliant plan to remedy our ailing economy. So follow the President’s advice in this virtual shopping bonanza and rack up a $3 trillion tab like he has in real life. All you have to do is stroll down through our online store, add items to your cart for yourself or friends, and check out. It’s just that easy!
Whether you buy serious gifts like health care for all Americans or frivolous ones like building the world’s tallest building, we hope you’ll begin to see just how far $3 trillion could go and help others understand the cost of this war.
This “game” is designed to build further awareness, and we need your help to make that happen, just as you have done on previous successful campaigns from FOX Attacks to the War on Greed to Hurricane Katrina recovery. Please buy gifts for your all your friends and loved ones, and send them e-mails to let them know you’ve found better ways to spend our nation’s money than the President. We need to help Americans understand the war’s economic toll.
Yours in shopping,
Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New Spenders
P.S. And don’t miss your chance to Invest in America’s Future. True Majority has events scheduled all across the country tomorrow, Tax Day, which are geared toward finding better ways of spending our money than on the war.
The 3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree
Congratulations, you have been given a gift certificate by Robert Greenwald in the value of:
to be spent immediately at 3trillion.org, the web site that gives you 3 trillion dollars – the money American tax-payers are projected to spend on the Iraq war – and use it in a virtual shopping spree for your friends and family. Lets go shopping!
Watch the video here.
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Brave New Films is located at 10510 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232
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