... Nothing civil about war
“Civil war this, civil war that.”
--Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
--Aug. 7, 2006
“It promises to be a long summer. We're almost at the mid-way point, but it feels like the days are just crawling by. It's a combination of the heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere.
"The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60.
"The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.
"At nearly 2 pm, we received some terrible news. We lost a good friend in the killings. T. was a 26-year-old civil engineer who worked with a group of friends in a consultancy bureau in Jadriya. The last time I saw him was a week ago. He had stopped by the house to tell us his sister was engaged and he'd brought along with him pictures of latest project he was working on- a half-collapsed school building outside of Baghdad.”
--Riverdance
July 11, 2006
“Civil war this, civil war that.”
--Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
--Aug. 7, 2006
2 comments:
I will say Rummy tends to be pithier than, say, Bush.
Bush struggles to put words together even in the best of circumstances, and these days are not the best. He tries to cover his callousness and incompetence and barely manages - and sometimes fails.
Rumsfeld, though? "Stuff happens." "Civil war this..." Quick, gritty sketches that illustrate the bankruptcy of this administration and its policies. For that, at least, I guess we could thank him.
Actually it's Bush who said civil war this, civil war that.
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