Casualties of war -- who weeps for Abeer?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/03/13/EDGOJN7AUD1.DTL

As the anniversary of the Iraq invasion approaches, another milestone has quietly passed, leaving a window into the protracted and unimaginable human costs of this war in Iraq and here at home. A year ago, 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Al-Janabi was stalked, gang-raped, shot in the head and her corpse burned in her own home in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers and one former soldier are charged with the crimes.

The soldiers were so confident of their abilities to achieve their intended crimes that they rounded up the Al-Janabi family from their daily chores in broad daylight. Pfc. Stephen Green allegedly shot Abeer's parents and 5-year-old sister to death in the room next to where she was being raped by Sgt. Paul Cortez. His buddy, Pfc. James Barker held the struggling, crying teenager down while two other soldiers, Pfc. Jesse Spielman and Pfc. Bryan Howard, reportedly stood watch.

All this in the middle of the day under the hot afternoon sun, March 12, 2006.

Such are the unpleasantries of invasion, war and occupation. The medical journal Lancet estimated in 2004 that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed, more than half of them women and children. Today, in the absence of accurate figures, that number likely has been far surpassed. To Americans, far from Iraq, these are presented as the sanitized statistics of collateral damage. But the Al-Janabi rape and murders were too well documented to ignore, just as the souvenir photos taken by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison forced Americans to see the torture being committed by their own troops.

[Monkeyman]

1. This Vet Weeps for all who have died for a war of lies

[brer cat]

2. I remember and weep for Abeer.

Thank you for remembering the anniversary. I had not remembered that.

May she rest in peace.

[Journeyman]

3. I'm sure the families of PFCs Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker still weep...

as do those of Spc. David J. Babineau, all three brutally murdered by members of the Mujahideen Shura Council in retaliation for Abeer's rape and murder, and the slaughter of her family -- this, before the guilty became known or were arrested. Menchaca, Tucker, and Babineau's crime? They had the misfortune to be in the same outfit as the rapists and murderers.



What a twisted, fucked up scene George W's created, waging war for a lie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Menchaca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lowell_Tucker


http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/06/two-captured-american-soldiers-and.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Immediately after Bush's invasion, it was announced the Iraqi government wasn't going to count dead

citizens.

What country would NOT want to know how many of its people were gone, after all, and to try to keep track as well as possible?

I think _Bush's organization decided it was going to write itself a blank check in Iraqi blood. I haven't seen anything which would dissaude me. If they could only find a way to keep the Prsidency, they would never end their bloodfest.

How did these demons get into this world, anyway?

How could ANYone do what was done to that child, Abeer? I'm sure everyone remembers how all the corporate media attempted to conceal her age, repeating over and over that she was a 26 year old woman. Yeah, right.

They only overlooked the lie it was self-defense on their parts, after she came at them with an axe.

[nam78_two]

5. K&R

[Catherine Vincent]

6. K&R!

And to think this kind of tragedy isn't the first time. :(

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

7. Did our media ever get around to covering this story in depth?

The soldiers I guess have already been convicted and sentenced and are now serving time, one for 90 years and the other for 100, I believe. I don't remember seeing more than about 30 seconds at a time of this story in our glorious independent media. I doubt that the average American even heard of this news story and certainly not the legal proceedings that followed it. What a different between now and the days during Vietnam when the My Lai massacre actually got more than a few seconds of TV coverage and networks weren't blasting Britney Spears, Antonella Barba, or Anna Nicole Smith stories at us 24/7.

[UpInArms]

8. ....

[Pachamama]

9. I weep for her and her family and will never forget the image of her from her passport

She symbolizes for me everything that has been done and wronged to the innoncent....May she and her family rest in peace.... :cry:

[LeftishBrit]

10. May she rest in peace - that was an unimaginably evil crime

Peace to her and her family and all other victims of the cruelties of war; and may it NEVER happen again!

[leftchick]

11. for Abeer and the thousands like her

:cry: