Letters@wsjournal.com
SUBJECT: Letter to the Editor
As the mother of a soldier currently serving in Iraq, it is troubling to me that you have received so many letters from people who are appalled that you published the photographs of the mutilated bodies of Americans hanging from a bridge, surrounded by cheering Iraqis.
I would like to suggest to those who are so appalled by images that they consider the horror of the REALITY that is happening in Iraq every day, to which our national media (mostly servants of the current administration and their corporate paymasters) rarely allude. Almost every day soldiers are killed and mutilated in the most painful ways. Over 500 have died and thousands more are maimed and injured. Yet, our President has forbidden the press to shoot pictures of soldiers? bodies coming home in flag-draped coffins, much less allowing actual footage of their deaths to be televised. Why? They don?t want you to see it because you might actually start questioning what they did in this ill-planned and unnecessary venture.
If people would just pay attention to the news and what is going on around them instead of hiding their heads in the sand to protect their pre-conceived ideas, they would realize that the current administration intended to go into Iraq when they first took office. The neo-cons, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, stopped at nothing to undo what they thought was Bush Sr.?s fatal error in not ?finishing the job? by invading Baghdad in the first Iraq war. They even wrote books about their plans, long pre-dating, the current administration, talking about their goals of engaging in ?preemptive war? and how they would arrogantly show the rest of the world that America was such a great power that it could do whatever it wanted.
The real truth is that this administration has lied at every turn, trying to push this war and to justify it based on the ludicrous idea that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved with Al Quaeda in causing the events of 9/11. Even now, in spite of the fact that this idea has been utterly discredited, they keep up the litany, knowing that the average person can be swayed emotionally to vote for them if they just repeat the same lies often enough.
I ask the readers of the Winston-Salem Journal, what does it take for you to wake up and see what is going on around you? Our democracy is threatened by the takeover of the media by our corporate-owned government. You consistently vote for people who don?t care a lick about you. They only care about their rich friends and want to force their arrogant, undemocratic ideas down your throats. They take away your jobs, your freedoms, they are intent on destroying the environment. They consistently lie to you, as they did about Iraq --on every subject, counting on your knee-jerk, emotional responses to red-flag issues, such as abortion and immigration. They cynically use these issues to stir you up emotionally, distract you and keep you from seeing the scams they pull on you every day of the week.
If images of war were all we had to worry about, we would be lucky. But it is REAL war, REAL loss of democracy, REAL loss of control over the media, REAL loss of the environment, REAL redistribution of wealth from the poor and the middle-class to the wealthy and the corporations. Those are the issues you should be mad about! What?s the matter with you?
Think about it. My son?s little three year old boy cries for him constantly. But his father is halfway across the world for an entire year and maybe more, as the army is so overstretched that they have a stop -loss order, meaning that soldiers whose enlistment periods are over are not being allowed to quit. So my son is putting his life on the line and, for what? So global corporations can take over the world, our jobs can be shipped to India and China, our standard of living destroyed, our freedoms destroyed?
Please wake up and realize what the important issues are here. They aren?t pictures.
Posted by Hannah at April 5, 2004 09:11 AM