Note: Check the comments for a photoessay comparison, and a commentary on Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".

"The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune." -- Plutarch

What is the measure of a man, a political party, an ideology or an Administration? Is the collective whole of one's lifetime achievements enough, or would a subset of the timeline through which a lifetime passes provide an adequate sampling so as to derive a concept of what one might expect in the future?  If our answer to this question is the latter, then the second term of George W. Bush, along with the GOP-controlled Congress and Justice Department, has presented us with the opportunity to see up close and personal several key examples embodied in the form of two cities located nearly half a world from each other: New Orleans & Fallujah.

What we behold isn't pretty.

I am putting this up as is for discussion.

   

  First Periodical Report of Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (link to full MHRI document)

  MHRI – November 23, 2005  Baghdad

               

                The Monitoring Network for Human Rights (MHRI), which consists   of more than 20 Iraqi organizations for Human Rights, made this report about the crimes and continuous   violations of human rights in Iraq.

               

                1.      Crimes of War and Crimes Against Humanity 

               

                -  First crime:

               

                Some of the ugliest      crimes committed by the occupation forces and by Iraqi military units are the ones committed in the city of      Fallujah in the battles of November 2004, and which we summarize in the following: 
               

by Chris Floyd

Behind the Phosphorus Clouds are War Crimes Within War Crimes (Guardian)

Although George Monbiot gives perhaps undeserved short shrift here to the Italian documentary that reignited the controversy over the American use of incendiary weapons in Fallujah, he has unearthed – along with blogger Gabriele Zamparini – smoking gun evidence of even more barbarity in the Bush-ordered destruction of the city: the use of thermobaric weapons, whose effects are even more horrendous and uncontrollable than white phosphorus.

Al-Jazeera has published the graphic images from the Italian video from the Fallujah offensive. They have also published a DU image as well. Many people today do not understand the graphic nature of war today. We have lived a sheltered life, and have not known the meaning of human suffering. The media treats it like a big video game, as does the Bush administration.

The Vietnam War ended because people came to understand the graphic nature of warfare. The Pentagon and the Bush administration know this well. Therefore, they do all they can to sanitize war news with fake stories like Jessica Lynch or Pat Tillman.

Today, I will do my small part to change that. Please distribute these pictures as widely as possible, especially to your right-wing friends. Maybe then, we will effect some change.