Diary Of A Rag And Bone Man

by Jack Rafter
No. 8. Desperate Times, Part III.

Previously (see below): After a night in the Mercy Hospital, our homeless hero finally gets to see the doctor. Turns out he didn’t have pneumonia after all, and is released to a bright sunny morning.

Well, I didn’t have pneumonia, but I still wasn’t feeling so hot. I had all the symptoms—runny nose, sneezing, coughing, head feeling like a split melon. I didn’t want to walk three miles to the shelter; they wouldn’t let me in till close to nightfall, anyway. And I sure didn’t have any business spending another night outside. Especially if the weather turned chilly again.

So I stuck around the hospital. I thought maybe I could smuggle myself back in without actually having to see the doctor. I just needed a good night’s sleep, that's all. A decent meal or two—if I could finagle them—wouldn’t do any harm, either.

By noon, the clouds were rolling in again and the temperature starting to drop. I was glad I’d decided to stay near the hospital. Avoiding the walk-in clinic entrance, where I was sure to be recognized, I walked in the far end of the building. First, I had to leave Vincent tied up in the bushes near the door. He whimpered a little and looked up at me with those big sad eyes. I told him not to worry—I was going to smuggle him in, as well. That seemed to have a calming effect on him, so he laid himself down and got ready to wait. I went on in and made my way to the cafeteria, bought a cup of coffee with a bummed half-dollar, found a stray newspaper and settled down for awhile.

Around four, I decided things might be getting busy in the walk-in clinic, so I headed that way. At the double swinging doors, I stopped and peaked through the window. Sure enough, the red-haired day nurse was still on—working the clipboards, handing out forms to newcomers.

In the hallway, there, I could see a dozen or more gurneys parked along the walls. A few were occupied, but most were free. Judging from the night before, I knew the later it got, most, if not all, the gurneys would be taken. I was hoping to snag one while they were still available.

Yeah, I hear you say, “How dare you take a bed someone else might really need.” To that, I say, look—I didn’t make this country that is so indifferent that it doesn’t bother to provide decent health care for its people; a country that preaches “Homeland Security,” while thousands are losing their homes, children are going hungry; and where huge corporations pay little or no income taxes while sending all our jobs overseas. I figured they could spare an extra gurney for the night.

Just then, I was startled by a voice behind me. “Are you lost?” I turned, and there--so help me--stood Nurse Margaret, her own self, the dreaded night nurse! With her big breasts and stern face and lips the color of Heinz 57 Ketchup. Her mouse colored hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it looked like she was trying to give herself a face-lift. I was so taken aback, I almost passed out. My knees were wobbly. Luckily, Vincent seemed to have frozen between my legs; he must have sensed the danger. Meanwhile, nurse Margaret was frowning at me—that severe, disapproving frown I’d seen the night before, as if I were a bug she thought she’d already smushed with her shoe. I was afraid she was on the verge of recognizing me. After all, it was she who had listened to me through her stethoscope the night before and pronounced me sick with pneumonia, a diagnosis which proved incorrect.

Somehow, I resisted the urge to tell her she’d gotten it wrong, which probably would have resulted in her calling security and having me escorted out. Or maybe she would have done it herself. Instead, I said, “Uh, could you tell me where the restroom is?”

At that, she squinched her nose at me, almost as if I’d just presented her a crudely drawn picture of what I intended to do in the restroom, instead of merely asking where it was. Then she said, “Back that way. Up the hall. To the right.”

“Thank you, Miss.”

She nodded, then passed on through the doors.

I watched her go up to the red-haired nurse. They conferred a moment. The red-haired nurse handed her the clipboards, then they moved off toward the office. Now was my chance. I scooted through the doors. Having spent a night there already, I’d gotten the lay of the land. There was a utility closet right there in the hallway. I opened the door to the closet, grabbed the nearest free gurney and rolled it in, closing the door behind me. Then, I switched on the light. On the shelves were stacks of every kind of form you could imagine, in all colors—pink, blue, saffron, green. I tore one off, folded it lengthwise down the middle, found a pen, and printed a sign on it:

“This gurney reserved for Dr. Welby.”

I was thinking of Marcus Welby, the TV show doctor, played by Robert Young, who, in his later years, attempted suicide. Then I stood the sign up like a tent on top of the gurney. I figured anybody that saw the sign would leave the gurney alone, even if they thought it was odd. In my experience, most people—-nurses included-—seldom question anything a doctor does; even other doctors aren’t likely to meddle in each other’s business.

While I was there, I decided to look a little more. You never know what might be useful. Well, there weren't any drugs or anything like that. I guess they keep all that locked up. But I did find something a little more valuable. Five rolls of red tickets—all just like the one Nurse Esther had given me that morning for a free meal in the cafeteria. Each roll had a thousand tickets. The mother lode! I slipped one roll in my coat pocket, switched off the light and scurried back to the cafeteria.

Needless to say, I ate good that night. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, cream corn, broccoli, and, finished off with a nice little tapioca pudding. I kept some back for Vincent and took him out a plate. I also took a big wad of napkins to blow on, since my eyes were weeping and my nose was dripping like a leaky faucet.

By then, it was around seven o’clock, getting dark. Now, I wanted to smuggle my dog in, and maybe you’re wondering how I got that done. Well, I’ll tell you. I have this canvas coat I normally wear, that almost reaches my knees. So, what I do is I take the coat off and tie the sleeves around my waist, so it almost drags the ground, like a skirt. Vincent likes to get under there and walk with me. He thinks it’s a game, you see. All he has to do is see me tie the coat around my waist and he scoots right under there without waiting to be called. So that’s how I’ve managed to smuggle Vincent into a number of places undetected.

And that’s what we did. Soon as he was under the coat, we entered the building and started down the hall. Vincent usually gets right between my legs as we putter along, so walk a little bow-legged to keep from kicking him. But no one seems to notice. We passed nurses, orderlies, doctors, guys in suits, all kinds of people; most of them treated me with indifference. Some of them nodded and said, “Hello.” I nodded back and smiled. All they saw was some poor bum walking along with his coat tied around his waist. No idea there was a dog under there.

When we got to the walk-in clinic, I stopped and peaked through the windows of the double doors. Pure chaos, just like the night before. The red-haired nurse was off duty, now, and there was Nurse Margaret wandering around with her clipboards, the only life raft for miles around. No wonder she was strung so tight, I thought. Meanwhile, I noticed all the gurneys were now occupied with sick or wounded people.

When the coast was clear, I squeezed through the swinging door with Vincent scooting along under my coat flaps, like an appendage. I made for the closet and ducked inside, pulling the door behind me. So far so good.

Then, I smelled something funny, like cigarette smoke. I flipped on the light and looked. There, on the near end of the gurney-—my gurney-—sat a large woman. She looked Hispanic. She had one arm folded under her breasts, the other propped on it, holding a cigarette. She looked at me with stunned surprise, her eyebrows arched up around her hairline.

I noticed her dress was a pale green, a kind of uniform, with a nametag pinned over her breast. The name on it was Merry Ann Alonzo. Clearing my throat, I said, “Uh—excuse me.”

“Who are you?” she said with an accent.

“Um—that’s my gurney you’re sitting on.”

“What? Are you--?” She picked up the little tent sign and looked at it. “You are Dock-tor Welby?”

“That’s me,” I said, sneezing suddenly. “S’cuse me.” I fished a napkin out of my pocket and blew into it.

“You’re kidding, right?” she said.

“Nope, not kidding,” I replied hoarsely.

“’Scuse me, sir. But you don’t resemble no doctor, here.”

“Oh, you’re referring to my clothes. Well, I was just working outside. I do a little gardening on the grounds, hereabouts. When I’m not in surgery. Kind of a hobby. But right now, I’ve got a patient who needs that gurney.”

She jumped up. “Oh, sure thing. Sorry, Mister, uh—Dock-tor Welby. I was just taking a break.” She indicated the cigarette. “You don’t mind, I hope.”

“Not at all. Take your time—uh—Miss Alonzo. I know you work hard.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it.” Then I sneezed again. Once, twice, three times. I took out some more napkins, blew my nose and dabbed my eyes.

“That’s some cold you got there, Dock-tor.”

“Yes, it is,” I muttered.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be working outside with a bad cold like that,” she said.

“Well, you know us doctors,” I smiled. “We’re our own worst patients.”

“Oh, yes, do I know that!” she laughed. “My husband is a veterinarian.”

“You don’t say.”

“Oh, yes, I can never get him to take time off when he’s sick.”

“Well, there you go,” I replied. Then, taking down a folded sheet from the shelf, I said, “I just need to make this thing up.”

“Oh. Okay,” she stepped out of the way.

I spread the sheet over the gurney, letting the sides hang down till they skimmed the floor. At that moment, Vincent shot out from my coat and disappeared under the sheets.

“What was that?” said Merry Ann Alonzo.

“What was what?” I said.

“Something just ran under that sheet. It looked like an an-ee-mal of some kind.”

“Oh, that’s Vincent-—my dog. He makes the rounds with me sometimes.”

“The rounds?”

“You know—-see patients and stuff.”

“Wait a minute. You saying your dog goes around with you—-here, in the hospital? No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

She laughed. “Making the rounds with you! That’s funny!” Then, pausing, she took a drag on her cigarette and looked at me a long moment sideways. “You aren’t really a doctor, are you, mister?”

“No.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“I just need a place to sleep the night. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

She looked at me a moment, smiling, shaking her head a little. “No,” she said, finally. “I don’t tell on you. Go on, whoever you are.”

“My name’s Jack.”

“Okay. Buenos noches, Jack.”

“Buenos noches, Miss—-Senora Alonzo.”

I turned the light out and cracked the door to have a look. Nurse Margaret was now the center of so much calamity I knew she wouldn’t notice a bum pulling a gurney up the hall. Under the sheets, I heard Vincent’s paws clicking on the tile floor as he followed along. I parallel parked the gurney between two others, and hopped on, shed my coat, rolled it up and threw it underneath. Then, I laid down, pulling the sheet over me. Within minutes I was sound asleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up coughing—-really miserable. It seemed to go on and on. I was afraid my lungs were going to come up. Then, I felt a hand on the back of my neck. “Sit up,” said a voice. The hand supported my head as I sat up. I was so groggy I could hardly focus on anything. The other hand swung toward me holding a spoon with a red liquid. “Take this,” said the voice. I opened my mouth and took the liquid. Cough syrup-—strong. Codeine, maybe. “Now, lie down.” I laid down, looking up as I did. It was Merry Ann Alonzo. Smiling. “Sleep,” she said. And I dropped off again.

* * * * *

I awoke to Katie Couric’s voice. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The hall was cheery and bright with spots of sunlight dancing in from the waiting room. I felt like a new dime. Whatever Merry Ann gave me worked like an elixir.

Most of the gurneys were empty. There were a few others with people crashed on them, some of whom looked like they could be dead. I wasn’t sure. There was a guy in the next gurney up from mine, propped up on his elbows, having a look around. He was an old guy with a turkey neck. No teeth, mouth sunken in. Whiskery face. His ears were big and stuck out from his head, like flaps, and hair was growing out of them. I think he had just awakened. The expression on his face seemed to say, “Where the hell am I?” He regarded me with the same look, only then it became, “Who the hell are you?”

His tongue darted out, swabbed his cracked, flaky lips, then disappeared. Suddenly, he called out: “Martha!” And again, louder, “Martha!”

I looked around. I saw the red-haired nurse glance this way, then she started for us. “Oh, shit,” I thought, and pulled the sheet over my head. “Martha!” I heard the old geeze shout again.

The nurse squeaked past me in her rubber soles. “Who are you?” I heard her ask the guy, to which he replied, “Who are you?”

“I’m the day-nurse here. My name is Flynn.” I heard her rifling through some papers. “I think you’re Mr. Mabry. Are you?”

“Am I what?” he said.

“Mr. Mabry. Charles A.? Is that you?”

“My name is Arthur,” he ranted.

I heard her take a deep breath, to give her patience. “Okay, then the A stands for Arthur, is that right?”

“Well, of course!”

“All right, Arthur, you’re going to see the doctor in about the next hour, or so, I hope.”

“For what?”

“We’re going to x-ray your hip. We’re going to replace your hip-joint.”

“My hip is just fine. Nobody’s cuttin’ on me.”

“No, your hip is totally gone, Mr. Mabry. You can’t even walk.”

“I’ll crawl, then. Where’s Martha?”

“Who is that?”

“Martha! My sister!”

“Is she waiting for you out there?”

“Out where?”

“Out in the waiting room.”

“How should I know?”

“What does she look like?”

“Looks like my sister!”

“All right, just wait a minute. I’ll go see if I can find her.”

Nurse Flynn squeaked off to the waiting room. In a moment, I heard her call out, “Is there a Martha Mabry here? Martha Mabry?”

Nobody answered. I pulled my sheet down and looked at the old man. He was sitting there, staring with his mouth open. A little slip of spittle was starting to peter down the crease from the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe Martha went for breakfast,” I offered.

He blinked and looked at me. His tongue slithered out, then went back in again. “I hope she brings me some eggs,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m plumb starved to death.”

“I’ve got some free meal tickets in my coat pocket. If Martha doesn’t come back soon, I’ll go get you some breakfast.”

“Thanks.” He looked at me. His face seemed to soften for a moment.

About then, I saw where Katie Couric was coming from. There was a TV mounted high up on the wall. So they had one in the waiting room, and one in the hallway, as well, I suppose so they could bother the sick and dying in both places at once.

This morning Katie was interviewing some actress I didn’t recognize. The actress was talking about Jennifer Lopez. Apparently, they had recently worked together on some TV sitcom. She was describing J-Lo’s butt—how mesmerizing it was—how you couldn’t take your eyes off of it, and so on. While they chatted about that, and Katie laughed hysterically, a little line of type slowly inched its way across the bottom of the screen. Our Air Force had just bombed a mosque in Fallujah.

I remember the Today Show of the ‘50s, when I was growing up—-was played on a simple set with big round clocks in the background, so you could keep an eye on the time; the host was Dave Garroway. Arthur Godfrey was on the other channel with his own morning show. They were not very flashy, as I recall, those guys, but they had a lot of humor. They were soft-spoken, folksy. Dave Garroway wore horn-rimmed glasses, a crooked bow tie. The pace of those shows was easy going, even gentle, I suppose you might say, as if somehow they had gotten the idea that people would rather be brought more gently into their day, as opposed to being rudely grabbed by the lapels, jolted, and revved up. I don’t think it would have occurred to either Dave Garroway or Arthur Godfrey to hold forth with one of their guests at an early hour in the morning about some girl’s ass.

Nowadays the Today Show features a posh livingroom and a kitchen straight out of Architectural Digest, fully operational. It’s a set that must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to create, so it looks as if the show originates from inside Donald Trump’s house. This version of the Today Show is very busy. It lurches from one topic to another, from one guest to the next, with hardly a moment to draw a breath or to allow for the possibility of a real thought to take shape. There’s a yakky, frenetic quality to it, as if the hosts and their guests are hopped up on methamphetamines or just mainlining caffeine.

Suddenly, Nurse Flynn appeared out of nowhere. Standing over me, she said, “Who are you?”

“Me? Uh, I’m—“

She frowned. “Weren’t you here yesterday morning?”

“Uh, no, ma’am. I think my brother was in here, though.”

“You have a twin?”

“No, ma’am. We do kind of resemble each other, though.”

She looked skeptical. “Listen, I don’t have time to fool around. You were in here yesterday and you had pneumonia.”

“No, ma’am, I don’t have pneumonia. You can check me yourself.”

“What’s your name?”

“Donnie,” I said. “Donnie Rafter.”

“Wait here. I’ll see if I can find your chart.”

When she was gone, I hopped off the gurney.

“Where you going?” said Arthur.

“Going to get you something to eat. I’ll be right back.”

“What if she comes back?”

“Tell her I left.” I winked at him.

“Right,” he said, and winked back.

I told Vincent to stay put a minute. Then I reached in my coat pocket and tore off a ticket. In the cafeteria, I got a double helping of eggs, some apple sauce, yogurt and cottage cheese. All soft stuff. I figured Arthur Mabry, sans teeth, was gumming it. Then, I went back to the clinic. Nurse Flynn was nowhere around. I handed the plate to Arthur. His eyes got big and he said, “Thanks! Man, this looks good!” He sat up and started right in. Moving to my gurney, I snatched up my coat, tied it around me and gave a soft whistle. Vincent came out and went under again.

“That your dog?” said Arthur between bites.

“Yep.”

For the first time that morning, he actually smiled. “Well, good for you!” he said and shoved a spoonful in his mouth.

“Well, see you around, Arthur,” I said. “If the nurse asks you where you got that food, tell her Dr. Welby brought it.”

“Sure thing,” he grinned.

Vincent and I stopped off at the cafeteria, grabbed some breakfast, then took the plate outside by the far exit. The sun was out, it was nice and warm. I was feeling more my old self after a good sleep. There was a little park across the street. We headed over there, sat down under a tree and had our breakfast.

Then, we laid back and napped awhile. When I woke, the sun was almost straight overhead. I thought about hanging around and using another ticket for lunch. I reckoned I had about nine-hundred ninety-seven free meals left on the roll. But the cafeteria staff was starting to look at me funny and I didn’t want to push my luck. So I headed for the Bizzy Bee Griddle. Maybe Johnny Blair would be back by now. He’d been gone a couple of days due to a death in his family. I was curious to know who died. And I could tell him about my two days in the hospital.

NEVER THINK MY THOUGHTS by Copeland Morris

In Arianna Huffington's biography of Picasso, she quotes poet Michel Leiris on the subject of Guernica: "In a rectangle of black and white such as that in which ancient tragedy appeared, Picasso sends us the announcement of our mourning: all that we love is going to die."

The Basque town, Guernica, came under high-explosive and incendiary bombardment on April 26, 1937. The Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe was on loan to Francisco Franco, to help put down the Spanish Republic during Spain's Civil War. Of some 7,000 souls, about 1,600 were killed; and the town itself burned for 3 days. When the shock wave, that news of the slaughter of civilians reached Paris, thousands of people poured into the streets to protest. Picasso, who had been procrastinating for weeks over a commission, a large mural for the Spanish Gallery, was among those who mingled with the stunned Parisians. He began living out of his studio, as he completed a work of abstract art, that is considered by many to be one of the most compelling anti-war statements ever conceived. It was only after Franco's death in 1975, that it was possible for Guernica to come back to Spain as a national art treasure; only when democracy had been restored.

Not just anyone can pose in front of Picasso's Guernica, with the chilling and sinister effect of John Negroponte. Half-turned to the camera, he offers only the ghost of a little grin; and the gestalt of that abstract bull stares with such intensity from the tapestry. It's not the original Picasso, to be sure; but rather a reproduction that was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, a tapestry that has hung at UN Headquarters in New York for many years. And it's a bit curious that this image first surfaced on the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) website that originates in Iraq. As American Ambassador to the UN, Negroponte has been highly visible in the run-up to the invasion, and throughout this year of occupation. Now, his latest nomination has cleared the Senate; and he will become ambassador to the New Iraq, sometime after June 30th.

In February of last year, this particular Guernica made a splash of its own in the news. When Colin Powell was making the US case for war with Iraq in 2003, a controversy was raised over this copy of Picasso's masterpiece. The whole tapestry was covered by a blue curtain, in that UN reception area that normally served for press conferences. It was discreetly masking Guernica, so as not to embarrass Secretary of State Powell. Reporter Maureen Dowd summed up the situation, writing at the time that, "Mr. Powell can't very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men, children, bulls and horses."

Clearly, one has to look back to 2001, when Negroponte was facing close scrutiny. He was then proposed as the new US Ambassador to the UN. Mr. Frank Del Olmo, an associate editor for the LA Times, referred to Negroponte as a "warmed-over Contra paymaster"; and in his article, Olmo stresses the importance of a series which appeared in 1995 in the Baltimore Sun. These well researched articles dealt with Ambassador Negroponte's tenure in Honduras in the 1980's.

"Through interviews with former Honduran soldiers and some of the people they kidnapped and tortured, the articles laid out in gruesome detail the activity of a CIA-funded death squad run by the Honduran military during the Contra war."

"Those articles also made a credible case that Negroponte knew about the Honduran death squad, officially known as Battalion 316, and other covert operations taking place under his nose, and he ignored them."

'The Sun documents the fact that embassy staffers knew about human rights violations and duly reported them to their superiors in the embassy" (including Negroponte).

But questions about John Negroponte's past in Honduras fell by the wayside in the hysterical response by Congress after the 9/11 attack. George W. Bush's nominee was waved on through the Senate, pushed by the obsession to install a UN Ambassador quickly. The rationale was to avoid any display of partisan rancor during a time of emergency. In that year, Sister Laeticia Bordes wrote about the personal dealings she once had with Negroponte during his posting to Honduras. She essentially described how she was stonewalled by the Ambassador, when she tried to learn the fate of thirty-two women who fled from El Salvador to Honduras. These same women were subsequently kidnapped, tortured, and thrown to their deaths from helicopters.

Referring to events surrounding Negroponte's confirmation in the Senate in 2001, Sister Laeticia writes, "Since Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people have been "disappearing", so to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on a sudden deportation of several former Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have provided shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings."

An April 27, 2004 piece, from the Council On Hemispheric Affairs adds:

"Negroponte's objective in Honduras was eerily familiar to the Bush administration's present goal in Iraq. The U.S. government, again, is attempting to implement a democratic format on a country that has not yet chosen to do it on its own, and not necessarily by democratic means."

American mercenaries and CIA operatives were behind the recent torture and humiliation of Iraqi captives; and it is now reported that one captive has died from this abuse. What more can be done to discredit our so-called liberators, than crimes that they commit within Saddam Hussein's infamous Abu Ghraib prison? Another shock during the previous few days came from an article in the UK's Daily Telegraph. A British officer in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity, made these comments to Sean Rayment:

"The view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing."

"The problem was that American troops viewed the Iraqis as untermenchen" [my italics]. The British officer explained the word, the historical expression used by the Nazis, which translates as subhuman."

We must stand down from the butchery we have seen in Fallujah. The Bush Administration aims for propaganda victories. They sanitize this carnage with political slogans and ideological props. But some part of the facade is always slipping. What?-American Marines shooting women and children? Civilians burned and mangled by cluster bombs? Artillery and 500 pound bombs leveling city blocks? They mask the truth with euphemisms. Torture goes by another name; it is called softening-up.

The nightmarish quality of this Occupation scenario is only heightened as veteran reporter, Helen Thomas, asks the obsequious Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, if the United States intends to turn besieged Fallujah into another Guernica.

Into this New Iraq comes Ambassador John Negroponte. "In a rectangle of black and white such as that in which ancient tragedy appeared, Picasso sends us the announcement of our mourning: all that we love is going to die."

The body of the Iraqi boy is still. A photographer blinks at him through the lens. The light is resonant in black and white; it is antique. The boy's head is tilted by gravity slightly, as he lies on his side on the gurney. A chaos of small, dark puncture wounds cover his stomach, arms and legs. What breathed in him has sunken. His skin has drawn taut like the head of a drum. It looks like rigor, except for those dark, dark eyes, that pay homage to privacy. Dark eyes, black shreds of cloth at his waist and shoulders, rigid flesh; he was all of 12 years old.

This writer at least wants a statement that is urgent and evocative. It would be something, owing to his taste, that the Greeks have said. Sophocles will do, in the CHORUS of his Antigone. In Robert Fagles translation, the CHORUS sings the marvels of Man, and at the end, it sings its sharp warning:

"Man the master, ingenious past all measure

past all dreams, the skills within his grasp--

     he forges on, now to destruction

now again to greatness. When he weaves in

the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods

that bind his oaths together

         he and his city rise high--

                    but the city casts out

that man who weds himself to inhumanity

thanks to reckless daring. Never share my hearth

never think my thoughts, whoever does such things."

Sources via Billmon
Images via indymedia argentina and Atrios

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY, THOLOS OF ATHENA

Diary Of A Rag And Bone Man

by Jack Rafter
No. 7 Desperate Times (Part II)

See below for Part I. Previously: Jack shows up at the charity Hospital with a case of walking pneumonia. Sitting in the waiting room all night with nothing else to do, he watches replays from the 9-11 Commission on TV.


Well, it was the dead middle of the night and Colin Powell was droning on about the planes hitting the towers and how he knew right then we had to go after Al Qaeda and bin Ladin; I couldn’t believe the Commission just sat on their hineys and let it go by without asking the obvious question, “Then what the hell are we doing in Iraq?”

So, it looks like they’re all in on the big lie, and the whole thing's a fraud and a sham. What other conclusion is there? I commenced yelling at the TV, “Why don’t you ask him why we’re in Iraq? Go on! Ask him! Ask him the question! Jesus Christ on a crutch!”

That’s when the nurse suddenly appears and says, “You’re going to have to be quiet, sir. People are trying to sleep.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I mumbled, hanging my head.

She stood there a moment, glaring at me with a severe frown, the kind of look I imagine she would give a child that had just dashed to pieces one of her treasured family heirlooms. Then, she turned and stalked off, shaking her head.

* * * *

Yes, and it’s a whole country of people sound asleep, like babies. Now and then they wake up and whine for some soft sweet food or mother’s milk. Then, it’s back to sleep. Colin Powell was followed by the sinister Paul Wolfowitz, and then Rumsfeld. Watching kindly old Donald tell his lies, it’s easy to see why child stealers are so successful.

I left the waiting room, looking for something to eat. Passing through a double door, suddenly the halls were as quiet as a mausoleum. After wandering around awhile, I found a little snack shop. Abandoned. The food machines lined the walls, bright and sterile in the cool florescent room, like Hal, the computer, waiting for someone to engage them.

A lone table stood at one end of the room. There, a whole sandwich sat uneaten on a clean paper plate. Probably some nurse was called to an emergency and had to leave it. I checked the halls for some sign of life, then, returned to the table, snatched up the sandwich and wolfed it down. I was that hungry, despite walking pneumonia.

I found some more scraps in the waste basket, collected them in a piece of paper, and took them outside to Vincent. He was waiting patiently by the door. He just about peed himself he was so glad to see me. And equally glad to get a few bites of food, which he lapped up in an instant. I had to grab the paper away from him or he would have eaten it, as well. I felt so sorry for him making him stay out there in the cold that I decided to try and smuggle him into the waiting room.

The mouse-haired nurse was nowhere around and the white haired one was still bent over her mountain of papers. The whole time I was there, I don’t think the pile got any shorter. I slipped Vincent through the door on his rope and quickly tucked him under my chair. Then, I put a pillow in front of him and you couldn’t tell he was there unless you looked close. Poor fella dropped right off to sleep, adding his snores to the others in the room.

Meanwhile, the 9-11 hearings were still going on. Now it was Little Miss Condoleezza in the hot seat. Now, there’s a piece of work! What is it about her that gives me chilblains? Watching her, I kept looking around for a blanket. I wanted to cover up, like when I was a kid, to keep the bogey man away. For some reason, she just surpasses all the others for sheer creepiness. Maybe it’s that permanent scowl in the middle of her forehead just between the eyes that her smile can never quite erase. Maybe it’s that odd little bobbed hairdo that never changes, even the tiniest fraction. Someday, I suppose we’ll find out she was a robot. Yes, I can picture her being dismantled piece by piece with fine little calibrated screwdrivers and wrenches, all the parts of her head laid out on a stainless steel table. Not a drop of blood anywhere. Her brain just a pile of computer chips. I can see her dead eyes sitting there on the slick steel.

In fact, maybe all of them are robots--Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell. Creations of the mad Karl Rove. But not Bush. No, sadly, he’s the most human of them all.

But the one thing they have in common is they’re all programmed to lie. Condi could give them lessons in the lying arts. She spins her lies like a spider spinning its web, all beautiful intricate lacework. By the time she gets done, you have no idea what she’s said, and it could take days to get it all untangled. I hear some press people have nicknamed her “Mushroom Cloud.”

Now, I suppose lying must be among the worst scourges of our times. Perhaps in its own way as bad as the spread of hunger, homelessness, even AIDS. Certainly as much a scourge as war. Where would war be without the big lie? Without lies, we would have had no Viet Nam War, no Korean War, no Philippine War, no Mexican War. We would not be in Iraq today. All that killing, our wealth wasted on these terrible weapons that could end all life on earth, the endless planning and preparation for war, none of it could progress one inch without the lie. Lies are the fuel for wars. Lies are the fuel for all other scourges.

Yet, we put up with it. Why is that? Why is everyone asleep? Is it because our brains are so fogged by the great Praying Mantis of TV that no one can think clearly anymore? When Bush and those other characters enter a room, the odor must be abysmal. How can anyone stand it? Poor, stinking homeless people don’t give off as bad as that. I suppose the only reason the members of the sham Commission are able to tolerate it at all must be because so many of them are tainted themselves with corporate bribes. Maybe if you allow your integrity to be compromised enough over time, your sense of smell diminishes, dries up. They say if you stay around scum long enough, you get used to it. Humans can adjust to anything, they say.

* * * *

Around five a.m., I must have dozed off. When my eyes popped open again, sunlight filled the room and there was a flurry of renewed activity. Doctors, orderlies, nurses swishing by. Janitors mopping floors, emptying waste baskets. The mouse-haired nurse and her white-haired counterpart had gone home, replaced by a fresh out of college red haired nurse with freckles handing out clipboards and forms; behind the window, a black male nurse with white hair and a white mustache. The sheaf of papers in front of him was as thick as ever. I had the feeling whoever drew that duty was destined to experience premature white hair.

A lot of chairs were vacant in the waiting room. But numerous familiar faces remained—maybe twenty of us, all told, looking stale and frazzled, as if we’d just staggered off a bus we’d been riding all night.

Meanwhile, the somber mood of the 9-11 Commission was now replaced with Katie Couric’s flashy morning makeup face. A chef in starched white chef’s hat was showing her how to make crepe suzettes. He talked a mile a minute, knowing he had maybe that much time or less to show her how it was done. Katie kept inserting little chirpy remarks, like a chipmunk, and everyone was laughing and cutting up. The whole thing was kind of pointless, like all those morning shows that millions of people supposedly watch as they ready themselves for work or wherever they’re going.

Checking under my chair, I found Vincent awake and more or less alert. I gave him some pats on the head and whispered to him to be patient and stay put awhile longer. Food was uppermost in my mind, though I was feeling shot and weak. But I was afraid to leave the waiting room for fear I’d miss my turn with the doctor.

Just as I had that thought, I heard my name called. I looked around. Maybe I just imagined it. Then, I heard it again. A nurse I hadn’t seen before was standing there looking around the waiting room. “That’s me,” I said, raising my hand.

“Come on.” She turned and started off. I leaned over and told Vincent to stay put. Then, I got up and followed her out. She lead me through a doorway and down a narrow hall. She stopped at an examining room. “Come on in here and have a seat.” I had a seat on the—what-do-you-call-it—raised bed kind of thing you sit on when they examine you. She proceeded to take my blood pressure and temperature.

She was pretty. She smiled at me. Her badge said her name was Esther. Unlike the bleary eyed night staff, she looked all bright and morning fresh. There was the faint smell of coffee on her breath as she spoke. “So, you’re down with a bad cold, huh?” she said.

“Well, I think it’s pneumonia, actually.” I said.

“Pneumonia?” She frowned a little.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what the nurse said last night.”

“Who said that?”

“I don’t know her name. She had her hair up in a bun. She carried a lot of clipboards.”

“Oh, that’s Margaret. She’s a bit of an alarmist. I don’t think you have pneumonia.”

“Really?”

“Well, you’re not running a fever. Let’s have a listen.”

She listened to me through her stethoscope, telling me to breathe in and out. She put it on my back and listened there, too. “Well, you’ve got some congestion, but I don’t think you have pneumonia.” She smiled and patted me on the arm. Wait here. The doctor’ll be here in a minute.

Pretty soon, the doc came in. Another young one, fresh out of medical school. Perfect hair and teeth. He looked like Clark Kent. He listened to me and pronounced me sick as a dog, “but you don’t have pneumonia,” he said, grinning. He started to write out a scrip for some meds, then he looked at me a moment. Sizing me up, he rifled through a drawer and gave me a handful of pills and a bottle of Robitussin. "Get some rest," he said, and sent me on my way.

As I was heading back to the waiting room, Esther met me at the door. “Are you hungry?” she smiled.

“Starved.”

She handed me a ticket. “Take this down to the cafeteria and get some breakfast. That’ll do you more good than all that stuff he gave you. And whatever you do, stay warm for a few days.” I nodded.

So I ate a huge breakfast and took some out to Vincent. Outside, the sun was coming on bright and strong and everything was warming up. Steam was wafting off the grass and shrubs, looking almost like thin smoke in the air. I stood there a long moment letting the warmth melt over my face and get into my bones. It’s amazing how much better you feel when you find out you haven’t got pneumonia.

NEWS OF THE WAR

PHOTO: TAMI SILICIO

"What in our lives is burnt

 In the fire of this?

 The heart's dear granary?

 The much we shall miss?

 

 Three lives hath one life--

 Iron, honey, gold.

 The gold, the honey gone--

 Left is the hard and cold.



 Iron are our lives

 Molten right through our youth.

 A burnt space through ripe fields,

 A fair mouth's broken tooth."





 --Isaac Rosenberg, August 1914

"The cherry trees bend over and are shedding

 On the old road where all who passed are dead,

 Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding

 This early May morn when there is none to wed."





--Edward Thomas, The Cherry Trees

"In twos and threes they have not far to roam

    Crowds that thread eastward, gay of eyes;

 Those seek no further than their quiet home,

    Wives, walking westward, slow and wise.



 Neither should I go fooling over clouds,

    Following gleams unsafe, untrue,

 And tiring after beauty through star-crowds,

    Dared I go side by side with you;



 Or be you in the gutter where you stand,

    Pale rain-flawed phantom of the place,

 With news of all the nations in your hand,

    And all their sorrows in your face."





--Wilfred Owen, Six o'clock in Princes Street

image via Sisyphus Shrugged and Seattle Times

UPDATE: Read Hal Bernton's article in The Seattle Times, that reports how Tami Silicio and her husband were fired in reprisal for this photograph of flag-draped coffins. Link via Orcinus.

Diary Of A Rag And Bone Man

by Jack Rafter
No. 6. Desperate Times, Part I.

Dear Mr. Mowgli,
Well, we had Spring for awhile, then we had a cold snap, and now we're back to Spring again. I'd forgotten how hard this time of year can be on the sinuses, especially if you happen to find yourself living out-of-doors. This is my first Spring since losing my home, by the way. But at least I survived the winter.

Vincent and I spent the last three days in Red Dunkel's tent by the freight yards. I've been recuperating from a spell of sickness. Red has a brother in Tucson he goes to see every Spring without fail. He hopped a freight train three days ago, and left me in charge of the tent. So that was lucky. I don't know when--or if--he'll be back, but I expect the dog and I will have the tent to ourselves for a couple of weeks, if not longer.

Anyway, it's been nothing but rain for two days--that slow, misty, drowsy kind of rain that makes a day seem longer than it is. There's a crop of woods here along the south side of the Southern Pacific tracks and you can just look out through the shinnery and see the box cars, flats and tank cars pushed or pulled along by the big yellow-orange switch engines rattling back and forth all day and all night.

There's the beginnings of a little Hooverville in these woods. Or maybe I should say a Bushville: an assortment of crude shacks made of cardboard boxes, discarded pallets, packing crates, sheet metal scraps and tents. I don't know where Red got his tent. It's a nice one, practically brand new, big enough for three people, and you can stand up in it. Red says he doesn't dare walk off and leave it with all the sticky fingers lurking around. So he breaks it down every day. He showed me where he hides it in a fallen tree about twenty yards from here, hollow at one end, where it was uprooted. So I stash the tent in there when I go off to town on a forage.

* * * *

Back during the first warm spell, Vincent and I were walking by this house one day and saw these funny looking contraptions standing in the yard--five or six of them, different sizes, all for sale, from small to large and in between. It's not the first time I've seen these things. It seems to be a little cottage industry in this part of the world, what I call The Wishing Well Fetish.

A hundred years ago, back in the days when things were actually what they were and not just what they seem to be, you'd see these things close to peoples' homes built over water-wells. That was before the utility companies got hold of the water and everything else we need to live and started robbing us blind for them. Anyway, these well-houses had little roofs on them, and a spindle with a bucket that you could lower down into the well and crank back up, and the bucket would be full of delicious cool water. The ones Vincent and I saw were fakes made out of cedar board. They have no function, other than to stand in somebody's yard and look "cute" to passersby. They might have a sign tacked up on them that says, "Wishing Well," or "The Smiths Live Here," or some other nonsense. But there's no actual well underneath. There's no water there, except what runs under the ground through a pipe up to your sink, or to your toilet. The bucket hanging on the spindle wouldn't hold an ounce of water because it's not a real bucket. And the spindle doesn't turn and the crank doesn't crank anything.

And when I look at what's happening in the country lately, for some reason, I seem to think of those wishing wells.

Then we had the cold snap and the very first night nailed me. By the time I got to the shelter, it was full up. I went out to the Bushville looking for Red Dunkel, but he and his tent were nowhere around. Somebody said he might have moved further down the track, but nobody was certain, and I didn't feel like traipsing around looking for him. So Vincent and I headed back to town.

Well, it was a pretty dismal night. We just couldn't find a warm spot. We walked clear over to the Bizzy Bee Grill, but the place was dark. A sign on the door said:

Sorry.
Death in the family.
Come back in two days.
Johnny Blair.

He had glued black crepe paper around the edges. I hoped Johnny was all right. Later, I learned it was his father that had died.

I ended up huddled in the doorway of a bank, of all places. But it was tucked in the building and sheltered from the sleet that was starting to fall. By morning, I was down with a cold. I had a few coins and caught a city bus to the library, hoping to spend the day there and get myself warmed up for the coming night. But when I got there, it was closed. Then, I remembered it was Sunday, and the library's closed Sundays. I could have kicked myself for wasting the coin, but I was feeling too poorly to do it.

At that point, we weren't far from the bookstore, so Vincent and I slogged up there and hung out in the coffee bar till they closed, around nine p.m. At least I got the chill off, but I was starting to feel pretty weak.

It was too late to go back to the shelter. I knew I couldn't stay out in the cold another night. So I headed over to the Mercy Hospital, a good four or five mile walk from where I was. By the time I got there, it was around eleven and I could hardly stand up. I hate that place, but I had no choice. So I left poor Vincent in the bushes and walked in.

First thing that hit me were the lights--bright fluorescents everywhere. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see the place was jammed. Every form of pitiful humanity lined the walls; every chair taken, people sitting on the floor and even lying down, sicker than dogs. Still others were being wheeled in with stab wounds or gaping gunshot wounds. I stood there dizzy and bleary eyed. Then a nurse with mouse colored hair rolled in a bun shoved a clipboard in my hand. "Fill it out," she barked, and kept walking. I found a place on the floor and sat down with my back to the wall to fill it out. The form was seven pages long, and took about an hour to complete.

When I finished, I took the clipboard to the window and started to hand it to another nurse. This one was bent over a sheaf of papers two inches thick. "Don't give me that," she said without looking up. She was about fifty, white hair rolled in a bun; black framed glasses with wings on the ends. A shiny chain hung from the stems.

"Who do I give it to?" I said.

"Give it to the one who gave it to you," she said.

"I don't know who that was," I said.

She looked up, frowning, stabbed the air with her index finger. I looked in that direction and saw the mouse haired nurse wandering around, handing clipboards to the walking wounded. So I turned and went over to her.

"Wait over there," she said after handing her the clipboard. The waiting room was packed like a sardine can. Some folded chairs were set up down the hall to handle the spillover. I spotted an empty and made for it. A few minutes later, I saw the mouse-haired nurse handing my clipboard to the same white-haired nurse behind the window where I'd just come from.

Well, the whole place was pretty surreal. I noticed a number of gurneys parked up and down the halls like taxis waiting in line at an airport terminal. I thought about lying down on one, but they all had people sprawled on them, either passed out or moaning softly. On one gurney near where I was sitting, a bare arm had fallen out from under the sheet; it hung there, as still as the pendulum on a stopped clock. Nobody seemed to notice or care.

Every so often the mouse-haired nurse would bark orders at people, calling out names, sending them this way or the other. She sounded like the foreman on an assembly line. Now and then, she'd remember she was a nurse and would stop to take the pulse of some poor wretch or do a blood pressure check or shove a thermometer in some germ-ridden gob. She performed these acts almost gratuitously. I had the feeling it wouldn't have made the slightest difference to her if someone just keeled over while she stood there counting their feeble heartbeats. On the other hand, she almost seemed put out with some of the strays that staggered through the doors, even some that to me looked almost frighteningly sick, as if it was all she could do to bring herself to wait on them. And I think she included me in that bunch. So she made a great show of her contempt, to let us know, I suppose, that we were siphoning off precious minutes from the truly sick and wounded and dying.

So the time passed. Somehow amidst the cacophony of moans and coughs and wheezes, the rubber-soled shoes of nurses and doctors and orderlies that squeaked as they walked briskly by, the gurneys bumping against doors and the doors constantly flapping as people shoved in and out, somehow I must have nodded off, I was so beat down and tired. Then, in the middle of a dream, I felt the shock of cold metal against my bare chest, and jerked awake. It was the mouse-haired nurse standing there listening to me through a stethoscope. Up close, I noticed she had very red lips, and her perfume--if that's what it was--gave off the scent of strawberries. Her breasts also looked rather nice and full even under the starched white of her uniform. Still, she was all business. "Good, you're awake," she said. "Give us a deep breath and blow it out."

I gave her one. She frowned. She moved the cold steel an inch or two to the right. "Again," she said. I did it again. Then, with a great, tired sigh, she muttered, "You have pneumonia." And walked away.

I sat there blinking, looking around. I was hungry, but I lacked the motivation to try to ferret anything out. There were a few empty chairs along the walls. It seemed the place had cleared out a little. I got up, kind of wobbly, and staggered to the waiting room. Some seats were open there, too. The remaining refugees all looked like they'd been there a long time, hours or days; some just sat blinking stupidly, others were collapsed over onto each other, passed out. A TV blared, mounted on an arm up on the wall. It was a hockey game in progress, taped earlier in the day, I supposed. It was all charge and counter-charge, the sound of manic, cheering fans rising and falling like the rush of a blast furnace. Nobody was paying it any attention, so I sidled up and changed the channel. Jay Leno popped on, asking Ben Afleck something about his breakup with J-Lo. It was maybe the hundred-thousandth time someone had raised this question over a period of months, on whose answer the fate of the entire world seemed to hang in the balance. Ben made some off-hand remark which roused Jay and the whole audience to hysterical laughter.

I switched it again, and there was the 9-11 Commission. Apparently, they were just playing excerpts from a week of testimony. So, I sat down and watched awhile.

Right now, it was Colin Powell sitting there giving his version of things in his reasonable, measured way. At one point, he said, "The moment those planes hit the towers, right then I knew we had to go after Al Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin. I just knew it."

"Then why are we in Iraq?" I hollered at the screen. Woops. It had popped out before I knew what I was doing. I glanced around. A few people were staring at me. I looked back at the screen. There was silence as Powell droned on. I couldn't believe it. Here was this elephant in the room and no one on the commission was looking at it. No one was asking the obvious question. "Ask him! Go on! Ask him the question--why are we in Iraq! Ask him, ask him, goddamnit!" I'd worked myself up so much now I was hacking and coughing. "Jesus Christ! What's the matter with you people? I don't believe this! Lies! Lies! Ah, to hell with it! You're not looking for the truth! It's all a sham! A side-show!"

Suddenly, the mouse-haired nurse was standing there, hovering over me like a police helicopter. You're going to have to be quiet, she snapped. "Can't you see people are trying to sleep?"

"Sorry," I mumbled.

A Little One-Man Activism--An Exercise In Futility?

Mr. Lee R. Raymond
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Exxon Mobil Corporation
5959 Las Colinas Blvd.
Irving, TX 75039-2298

Dear Sir,

I notice in your current Public Relations statement concerning the 1989 Valdez oil spill, you make a claim for a “fully recovered Prince William Sound ecosystem.” Later in that same statement, you claim that the ecosystem of Prince William Sound is “healthy, robust and thriving.”

If those statements are true, how do you explain the severely depressed economy of the region in the years since the 11-million gallon spill covered 1,500 miles of coastline? Why hasn’t there been a herring season in ten years? Why are a third of fishers in the Port of Cordova experiencing clinical depression? Why do sixty percent of Cordova commercial fishers have to take second jobs to make ends meet? Before the spill there were fishers in Cordova whose permits were worth almost a million dollars. Today, those permits have depreciated by 90 percent. Don’t you find that just a little strange, given that the ecosystem of Prince William Sound is, as you say, “healthy, robust and thriving”?

It has been ten years since a federal jury awarded the people of the region $5.2 billion in damages. But your company has hired hundreds of lawyers and fought this ruling every step of the way. And you have hired your own scientists to negate or deny the damage that Exxon did there, just as they deny the science on global climate change.

Furthermore, in some court arguments, Exxon claims that under the Federal Clean Water Act, crude oil is not a pollutant. Crude oil is not a pollutant? Do you really believe that, Mr. Raymond?

I doubt that Prince William Sound is “robust and thriving.” But it seems that lies, corporate greed and corruption, are, indeed, robust and thriving. And what’s sad is that a company as rich as yours somehow believes it has to conduct business this way. Indeed, thinks it’s normal.

Yes, $5.2 billion is “punitive damages,” and you have the right to fight it, I suppose. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if there isn’t still some room in the human heart for what’s right and decent. Do you suppose there still exists a place where people behave ethically toward one another now and then, and not just at the behest of lawyers and judges?

You see, I so want to believe that we’re not all of us lost, Mr. Raymond. I can’t help but think how easy it would be for you to reach out to the people of the Sound whose lives and livelihoods have been shattered.

What do you suppose it would actually cost in the whole scheme of things for you to make that kind of choice? What would it mean in this cynical world of ours, were a company like Exxon to seize the initiative in that way? Imagine your company transforming itself under your leadership—becoming an example for the rest, thereby perhaps signaling a real change in the way business is conducted, and how corporations treat ordinary human beings? I’m no expert, but I should imagine the impact of such an act would reverberate around the world. And what do you suppose that might be worth?

Am I an idealist? Yes. A “bleeding heart”? Probably. But I must tell you, Mr. Raymond: By not doing this thing that I believe is right, but instead turning your back on it—turning your back on these good people—there must be a cost for that. In dollars? No, not in dollars.

What then? What would be the cost? Perhaps only you know the answer.

God bless you, Mr. Raymond. And God bless the people of Cordova.


Sincerely,
Grayson Harper

Ring Any Bells?

"We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.

"And so, by these Providences of God--and the phrase is the government's, not mine--we are a World Power."

--Mark Twain, commenting on the Philippine War, 1901.

"I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies."

--Mark Twain, writing in the New York Herald, 1900.

BLOODSTAINED FALLUJAH

PHOTO:EPA


"In a testy news conference [Easter] Sunday, [Brig General] Kimmitt said that the widespread Iraqi perception that civilians were being killed indiscriminately in Fallujah by U.S. forces was based on irresponsible and inaccurate reporting by the two most popular Arab-language channels, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya."

"To Iraqis who were angered by the American actions, he said: "Change the channel,...The stations that are showing Americans killing women and children are not legitimate news sources"."

--Nicholas Riccardi and Tony Perry, The LA Times (registration required)


Riccardi in Baghdad and Perry in Fallujah reported eyewitness accounts from survivors fleeing besieged Fallujah; and these confirmed earlier reports of civilian deaths at the hands of American soldiers. Marine snipers had been shooting anyone who ventured out into the open. Ambulances were targeted, people waving white flags, burial parties, and people trying to flee the scene. Even after the first lulls in heavy bombardment and strafing, which were characterized as cease-fires, it was clear that American sharpshooters carried on with their work. They continued to shoot civilians, as well as armed men. The latest estimate of Iraqi losses in Fallujah is put at 600 dead and well over a thousand wounded. Iraqi doctors, working at clinics in the city, provided these statistics.

At the scene, Reuters reported, "There were too many dead and wounded for hospital workers in the besieged city to deal with. Outside a hastily erected field hospital, Reuter's television footage shows corpses lying in the street, wrapped in bloodstained white sheets."

"The dead include small children, women and old men, and a new born baby. Beside the corpses there is a pile of body parts which no one has had time to deal with."

As the US military continued to discount the reports from Arabic media, concerning the targeted civilians, there were still a few western sources which could validate the stories, during the week that ended on Easter Sunday. On April 11th, a report from Jo Wilding, a British activist, supplied some pertinent information. Ms. Wilding tells the story of how a journalist alerted her, late at night, about the desperate situation in Fallujah. The journalist convinced her to help bring medical supplies into the embattled city, telling her that it was crucial to have westerners along who spoke English, in order to get the medical supplies through American checkpoints. With courage, Jo Wilding committed herself to this, and began a harrowing journey toward Fallujah, where she also helped bring wounded into the clinics. She writes compellingly about her experience serving with an ambulance crew, which came under sniper fire:

"We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US Marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings. Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the window, past my head. Some, it's hard to tell, are hitting the ambulance. I start singing. What else do you do when someone's shooting at you? A tire bursts with an enormous noise and a jerking of the vehicle."

"I'm outraged. We're trying to get a woman who's giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you're shooting at us. How dare you?"

But Wilding and the ambulance crew are unable to reach the house where the woman is giving birth. Azzam, the driver, has to wheel around and lurch over the median. They flee for their lives back to the hospital. The next morning they find the ambulance out of commission, and they head for the streets in a pick-up.

"We go again, Dave, Rana and me"...We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag with a red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from the building, cover this side and Rana mutters, "Allahu akbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.."

"First we go down the street we were sent to. There's a man, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small round red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies have got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I'm by his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the stretcher Dave's hand goes through his chest, through the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly through his back and blew his heart out."

"There's no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive, his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed, they scream. He just went out to the gate and they shot him. He was ...55 years old."

Jo Wilding got onboard the same bus that brought her to Fallujah, a bus filled with badly wounded who needed to reach Baghdad.

"We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so we look more western. The American soldiers are so happy to see westerners they don't mind too much about the Iraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave the women unsearched because there are no women soldiers to search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things are going to be OK."

"Al-melaach wiyana, I tell him. The angels are with us. He laughs."

"And then we're in Baghdad, delivering them to the hospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt man off groaning and whimpering."

"And the satellite news says the cease fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, "I know what we're doing in Iraq is right"."

"Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalize people so much that they've nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anesthetic because the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and the city's under siege and aid isn't getting in properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you're in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man's chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house."

"It's a crime and it's a disgrace to us all."



Sources via Jeanne d'Arc and Brooke Biggs

IMPLAUSIBLE DENIAL by Copeland Morris

The testimony of Condoleeza Rice reminded the nation that it was visited with tragedy in 2001, owing to "structural problems" that preceded the catastrophe in New York. The National Security Advisor appeared poised because the staging and time-constraints worked in her favor, as she sat before the 9/11 Commission. The broken skyline of Ground Zero was still represented by the 9/11 families, who made up a segment of her audience.

Dr. Rice, a self-possessed raconteur, demonstrated that the lie, per se, is not important; it is the packaging of the lie that matters most of all. David Corn, writing for The Nation, reported her repetition of this lie before the Commission:

"She also took the occasion to cheerlead for the war in Iraq, claiming that by striking Iraq the administration attacked the threat of terrorism "at its source"."

The interested public understood that the 9/11 Commission was gathering testimony, and other evidence, in order to reconstruct the events that led up to the September 11th attack. The central question pointed to the lack of effectiveness of President George W. Bush and staff, in evaluating and acting upon the al-Qaida threat. The secondary and unspoken questions were conjured up in the minds of the better informed, like a stairway that leads only to a wall of secrecy. But through a crack in the masonry one must examine, for instance, the political and commercial ties between the Saudis and the Bush Family, or the positioning of corporations to leech away Iraqi resources, or the confederation of appointees set aside to govern Iraq, or the labyrinth into which ordinary Iraqis disappear, as they resist occupation and seek legitimacy and sovereignty.

Rice testified that the Administration had no "actionable" evidence prior to 9/11. And she underlined this by saying "I know that, had we thought there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it." The Aug. 6 memo (Presidential Daily Briefing), which was a subject of prolonged discussion, was described by Dr. Rice as primarily historical in context, and not outlining any precise threat.

In a Salon article by Joe Conason, titled The Artful Dodger, the reporter writes:

"The pertinent question is not whether the president would have tried to stop an attack whose details were thoroughly placed under his nose. The real question is whether the Bush administration paid sufficient attention to the stream of warnings it received about al-Qaida, or whether, due to its preoccupation with Iraq, missile defense and other matters, these officials simply failed to act."

Commissioner Bob Kerry resisted Rice's attempts to charm him, and said this to her: "In the spirit of declassification"..."this is what the Aug 6 memo said to the president: that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."

And in the conclusion of his article, Conason added, "The true narrative is seeping out, and the hidden facts are leaking out."

A transition from these proceedings to the theatre of Iraq, is not an obscure one, by any means. The ground of desolation moves from South Manhattan to Iraq. This new disaster is unnecessary; and the people of Iraq did nothing to provoke it. People who are still dealing with grief can grasp this solidarity, soldiers killed and broken, civilians dead and wounded, a young Iraqi man weeping in solitude, standing at the bottom of a bomb crater. Whoever we are in this conflict, it is possible to know that desolation surrounds us; and if this keeps up, the bitter tears will even invade our dreams.

Here is a depraved war, a war waged in utter contempt of democracy. And from the point of view of the American system, a corrosive betrayal of democratic process. And here is a corrupt war.

Even dedicated religious adversaries, like the Sunni and Shi'a, are driven into each others arms by the American subjugation of their resources and landscape, their politics and culture. The Bush Administration's denials are finally implausible. The dislodging of Saddam Hussein was not the end; and everyone can see that the proposal for holding elections was rejected in the early stage of the Occupation.

The Iraqi scene is being prepared to accommodate permanent US military bases, without regard to Iraqi opinion. And already the wall of a mosque has been knocked down, to deal with a single insurgent. Reprisals are to be visited on towns and communities, and desolate, broken landscapes will multiply throughout Iraq. This unmitigated monstrosity, this blood-spattered offense to everything we cherish, was an institutional objective of the Bush Administration, preconceived and premeditated. What then will we say, as Americans? What will we say in November, as we vote? What must we do when we have wept and the tears will no longer come?

There should be a consensus among all who mourn.


Sources via Orcinus and Zizka. Image via efflog.

Couldn't Express It Any Better

The following is a letter from the April 5th issue of The Nation, Letters, submitted by one of its readers, Marianne Brown, of South Haven, Michigan. Sometimes you run across something, and you realize the truth that it speaks just can't be expressed any better.

One Woman's War

South Haven, Mich.

I am furious. I knew when the neocons stole the Florida election, things would go sour, and, yes, I marched three times against this cabal. But little did my husband and I know then that the election would effectively take his son, my stepson, over to Iraq. I have followed this barbaric slaughter from the beginning. I watch it with new eyes now. I wonder every time an explosion occurs or a soldier is killed, Is that my loved one?

His name is Michael. He's 21. He's an Army reservist. No, he didn't join the reserves to go halfway around the world to be part of the occupation of another country for a bunch of neocons who have been planning this for years. He went into the reserves for training so he could be a police officer someday. (You see, they think like that at 21. They think that's a good idea, no matter what you tell them.) He was a weekend warrior, a kid who lacked worldly experience and hoped for a college education.

A beautiful young man is somewhere in Iraq right now, sent over with scoliosis (the Army conveniently lost his X-rays) for no damn reason except to prop up short-term profits and giveways to US corporations. We don't know if we will ever see him again. What we do know is that he just walked into a civil war that is erupting daily into unadulterated hell on earth. We know he may come home in a box, or maimed for life, or psychologically damaged beyond comprehension.

You cannot imagine the anger we feel as we watch the laughing, tittering talking heads on corporate TV run puff pieces as news and ignore the horrors of wondering where a child is in Iraq: Will he come home? Is he OK? What's it like for him to endure 120-degree heat? Is he afraid? Will someone be with him if he dies or is wounded? Will someone hold his hand and tell him we love him?

That child is ours. He does not belong to the neocons. They don't care who these kids are. They demand warm bodies to send into this black hole they created. I will spend every breath of my life working to get that lowlife fratboy dragged out of the White House in chains. This is too much to bear. --Marianne Brown.


We reprint this letter in honor of Ms. Brown. . . and all mothers of soldiers everywhere.