{"id":1738,"date":"2008-05-11T00:51:18","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T00:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-05-11T00:55:09","modified_gmt":"2008-05-11T00:55:09","slug":"chocolate_fount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1738","title":{"rendered":"Chocolate Fountains And Bubblegum Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, when they talk about antiwar folks saying that there were chocolate fountains and bubblegum trees in Baghdad before the war, I usually take it as a kind-of-lame attempt at snark. And then there’s this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There’s more shots from this photographer at this album<\/a> and others have posted more. Iraq was beautiful<\/a> before the ‘war.’ None of this<\/a> will ever be the same.<\/p>\n

\nI think a lot about the people of Iraq. I look at the shots at the last link, of ordinary people smiling, the kids with innocence still intact in their eyes and it breaks my heart. I haven’t been able to get through the whole nine minutes yet. I find it physically painful to think of all those normal comfortable lives forever disrupted for the crass ambition of politicians.<\/p>\n

\nTwo weeks before the invasion Baghdad was a happy place<\/a>. The people smiled on the lighted streets, filled with sidewalk vendors and laughing party goers. An American traveler was safe to wander them at will. Now you need a flack vest and an armed guard to leave the Green Zone.<\/p>\n

\nTwo weeks before the invasion, the Tigris river was blue<\/a>. Today it’s a different color<\/a>. The lights don’t go on in the city at night. The remaining vendors stalls are nearly empty and no one laughs in the streets. This is the legacy our tax dollars have bought. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Libby, meet Geraldine Brooks, writing in Salon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

And then in 1988, on a searing summer day, I stepped off a plane in Baghdad and began my acquaintance with a regime of such unfathomable cruelty that it changed my views on the use of force.<\/p>\n

\nI learned from Iraqi dissidents about mothers, under interrogation, tortured by the cries of their own starving infants whom they weren’t allowed to breast-feed; about thalium, the slow-acting rat poison Saddam Hussein used on his enemies; about Iraqi government employees whose official job description was “violator of women’s honor” — i.e., prison rapist.<\/p>\n

\nOne bright spring day during the Kurdish uprising, I followed Kurds into the security prison they’d just liberated in northern Iraq. It was dim in the underground cells, so my face was only inches from the wall before I was sure what I was looking at. Long, rusty nails had been driven into the plaster. Around them curled small pieces of human flesh. One withered curve of cartilage looked like part of an ear. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There just aren’t enough Flikr galleries from those torture sessions, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some things are just beyond parody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}