Spinning Out of Control
I've just seen a Channel4 documentary 'The War We Never Saw' showing another side to Gulf War II. If I could watch al Jazeera then I already know much of this and, to be fair as an opponent of the war, I knew much of what was happening anyway, in theory, but some times you've just got to see it.

A little boy, he looks about 6 and winces and cries as shrapnel from a cluster bomb is removed from his leg. It makes me angry. He should not have this happen to him. He's not responsible for Saddam, he wasn't even born during Gulf War I. There should not be cluster bombs. But there are.

I saw pictures on the news of governor Blair on PMs Question Time grinning as he laughs off a question about sustainable forests. Grinning like a skull. He's a religious man. A man with principals and authority. He ordered the strike on Iraq that dropped the cluster bomb that put shrapnel into the little boy's leg.

A bomb with no military value in a war with a army whop offered no military threat. A war dreamed of for years by armchair Neo-Con Chickenhawks. Pax Americana. Pax Britiania. Pax Cluster Bomb.

They offered this was on September 12th. It was a good day to buy bad news. Bad news for a 6 year old living in Baghdad. A Good day for ExonMobil, Bechtel, Carline Group, Haliburton. A war without end. Pax NASDAQ.

I am smoldering with rage at what has been done in my name with my money. Governor Blair, the ginning skill, the grinning murderer. This was not self-defense, there were no WMDs to threaten us. This was a corporate acquisition. A hostile takeover. The cries of 6 year olds were just part of the downsizing process. Pax Britannia.

You see I remember 1991. I remember the uprising against Saddam. I recall not understating why Bush the First and Powell gave permission for Saddam to move his forces and to crush the freedom fighters; "We couldn't support the rebels without knowing if they would support US policy." I'm not the only one who remembers. In the Channel4 documentary at a protest in Baghdad, a wiry 17-year old-ish lad confronts a burly US solider:

Iraqi: "Out Iraq, you. I am sure."
Solider: "I am here is the reason you're able to speak freely."
Iraqi: "I don't need you."
Solider: "You leave or we take you away."

For many Iraqis it seems that operation Iraqi Freedom does not end with the signing of oil concessions to Haliburton, but freedom. This might be uncomfortable for the subjects of Pax Americana to hear, but they want blood. They remember 1991. They remember Rumsfeld's visit in 1983. They remember the British occupation of 1914. Picture the scene, a firefight on the streets of Baghdad, 1st June 2003. As the camera records US forces battling with unidentified gunmen, a civilian sheltering in a shop turns to the camera and grins. His grin of death says; "We see them kill three soldiers American. And the Iraqi people kill every solider of America."

He might be a Saddam loyalist. He might have lost family in the bombing. In 1991, in 1983. Who knows? But what is clear is that the writing is on the wall. In Washington DC it says 'Pax Americana' but in Baghdad it says 'Romans Go Home'