by George Capaccio

The President sits at his desk in the Oval Office. In front of him is the speech he will present to the American public in less than an hour. The TV crews are on their way. The door is locked. For now at least, he is alone. He feels the weight of the presidency pressing down on him. He imagines his father there in the room, slowly lowering his hand on the shoulder of his son and whispering, “What is to be done must be done.”

In the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad a boy runs from his home to the market. He buys a few kilos of bread–freshly baked, warm, steaming up the plastic bag he carries them in. The boy’s name is Amir. He loves soccer and has received a medallion from his school in recognition of his skill. Amir races home, kicking a few stones along the way. It is still early but already the streets are rippling with heat.

American foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority of American people. And that this is due to a media that in this country is suppressed by Washington and by the owners of this media, who often tend to be corporate entities close to the [White House] and very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans do not actually get both sides of the story.

I believe that Americans are basically decent people. If they understood that Iraq is not made up of 22 million Saddam Husseins but made up of 22 million people — of families, of children, of elderly parents, families with dreams and hopes and expectations for their children and themselves — they would be horrified to realize that the current killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by the U.S. Air Force, or what happened in the Gulf War, is being done in their name. Read more…