Sunday was quite nice as my last day of freedom. I got up early and made an actual breakfast (see? I didn't consume that much beer!) and watched The Ground Truth. That was kind of depressing. It's a documentary mostly comprised of interviews with veterans from Iraq who now oppose the war. They spend a lot of time describing how they're trained to see the enemy, how the dehumanization process has gone beyond even previous wars, and how they all had moments of revelation when they realized they had no idea why they were there. (They didn't spend as much time on the last part, suffice it to say they all assumed it was because of 9/11). There was no view point on how many Iraqi deaths there were--well, they did address it, but only from the viewpoint that the images of all those dead bodies haunt these veterans and will for the rest of their lives. Lots of time on post traumatic stress syndrome. It was very good, but it also didn't try to tackle opposing views. Just sort of a "war is bad" take, which hey, fine. But this war in particular begs "uh, remind us why we're here?" so intensely (false pretenses *cough*) that it's hard not to address it. Especially since otherwise, in retaliation, you get veterans from other wars saying we should be lucky our death count is as low as it is.
Anyhoo. Then it was a beautiful sunny day so D and went to Home Depot and blew a large chunk of our xmas gift card for the backyard. A portion of the backyard is going to be rocks and pebbles, mostly the area I want to designate for the grill (which we also got!) and a nice reading area. Bought red lava rocks, black Mexican pebbles (which are quite large and not at all pebble-like). Got more holly for the front of the house since the foundation people killed the ones that used to live there.
This one's going to be short and sweet, I'm ravenous and D should be home soon. Completed the first day of work, whee. It was actually really good and everyone is very nice. It actually borders on Stepford. Everyone loves working there and is extra friendly and speaks highly of everyone else.
Too hungry to type.
2 comments:
The death rate is lower but the numbers of soldiers being maimed in this war hasn't been equalled since the Civil War, a fact Republican hawks like to omit. As for the lead up to the war, i've been having deja vu with all the talk about Iran. If a Democrat like Pres. Clinton had taken us into this mess, the Republicans would've had his head on a pike. And Bush's harping about a balanced budget and a line item veto power is fucking infuriating. Sorry, ranting done with..
Ooh, thank you, thank was another point they made that I totally neglected. They did spend a lot of time saying the number injured is really not known and that those "injuries" often mean both legs gone, hands blown off, severe burns...
One interviewee who had a grenade take off his hand and shatter one of his legs said that when asked how he lost his hand he said, "In the war."
"What war?"
"The war in Iraq."
"That still goin' on?"
I'm sure crap like that doesn't help, either. (Or anything Bush does...)
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