This morning I am sick at heart.

[cali]

A line from Yeats keeps running through my mind:

"Consume my heart away; sick with desire
and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what is is.."


As a tragic punctuation mark to Petraeus' and Crocker's testimony, to the lies, to the endless disaster that is Iraq, two of the soldiers that wrote the OpEd in the NYT a few weeks ago, decrying the Iraq Occupation and the lies about progress, are dead.

Yance Gray and Omar Mora died on Monday in a vehicle accident.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/12/0926/28618

[shaniqua6392]

1. They are our fallen angels.

How incredibly sad. :cry:

[cali]

2. I'm not sure why some things hit so hard

I took this like a swift, hard blow to the solar plexus. May their families find comfort in their courage.

[H2O Man]

3. Very sad.

"Having done what men could, they suffered what men must." -- Thucydides

[CTyankee]

21. I have often compared Athens' corrupt and tragic empire to our own.

The debacle at Siracusa is certainly a lesson for every empire. Athens actually predicated its campaign into Sicily on the premise that it was "spreading democracy"!

Thucydides should be read by anyone who would like to learn how the world's first democracy came to such a sorry end.

Unfortunately, the history of the Peloponnesian War is missing from lots of history texts...

[Mythsaje]

4. The same two words

that came to mind after the shock of 9/11 wore off come to me now.

"How convenient."

[cali]

5. I don't know. And I don't think it really matters

and actually it's not even convenient. They'd already published their article in the paper with the biggest megaphone in the country. Either way, my grief and outrage could hardly be greater. bushco is responsible for these deaths- and so many, many more.

It's a travesty.

[madokie]

29. no kidding, me too

[cali]

6. link to story about the accident

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jFlzwt-w7rJ85KCFpLZT8m-WPAcQ

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. Our Nightmare Is About A Year From Being Over

.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. This Will Make You Feel Better

Just visualize 1/21/09

[StClone]

8. Solemnities

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in
you;

--Walt Whitman

[cali]

11. Thank you

That's beautiful.

[avrdream]

10. Ouch, that hurt.

As a mother, imagining my own son trying to put a stop to the war he had been sucked into supporting, this absolutely grieves me.

I'm just so worn out and utterly embarrassed that this man, George W. Bush, claims himself as the Commander-in-Chief of friends of mine. Enough already, you bastard.

[cali]

12. Ithaka- for Yates, Mora and

all those who have perished in this misbegotten war.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.


Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.


Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.


And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.

C.P. Cavafy

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. Aeschylus

"He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. "

[Totally Committed]

14. An excerpt from their NYT Op-Ed from August 19, 2007:

"In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a ''time-sensitive target acquisition mission'' on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse -- namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force...

...In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, ''We need security, not free food.''

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities."

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F5071EFC385A0C7A8DDDA10894DF404482

I'll let that do my talking for me. My grief over this is overwhelming, but nothing, I'm sure, compared to their families and friends to whom my heart sends sincere condolences this morning. RIP to both these fine young men.

I don't even want to consider, as Mythsaje said, the "convenience" of their deaths, and the silent lesson it has probably taught any other soldiers who feel the need to speak out against this war.

TC

[cali]

16. Thank you for posting that, TC

It does speak loudly.

[Totally Committed]

17. And, to you, cali....

:hug:

thank you for this thread.

TC

[jonnyblitz]

26. here is a link to the complete editorial reprinted on Truthout

for those who don't have NYT select:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081907A.shtml

[mzmolly]

32. Thank you. nt

[GeorgeGist]

15. But if the animal listens to it's

heart, it will learn to follow and heal itself.

[Vinca]

18. Was it really an accident? nt

[cali]

19. I don't know. And right now, I don't care.

They're dead either way. Either way, bushco is responsible.

[Junkdrawer]

24. Supposedly, it was two independent accidents....

What are the odds?

:shrug:

[Zodiak]

31. The odds are extremely long

But then again, coincidence is a friend to BushCo.

[cali]

20. kick for Sgts Gray and Mora n/t

[Tesla]

22. Thanks for their courage

they are true Americans.

[cali]

23. And more than that

They were good human beings. And brave as hell.

[CoffeeCat]

25. Thank you for that...

I love that poem, "Sailing to Byzantium". It's the only poem I've ever memorized.

Another excerpt, if I may...

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

[cali]

28. One of my favorite quotes from any poem

and I've memorized masses. Just extraordinary.

Did you read the poem I posted up-thread, by C.P. Cavafy? Also extraordinary, and one I've memorized.

[Mnemosyne]

27. I'm there, cali.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

:hug:

[cali]

30. Thanks vickiss,

I'm really digging all these quotes- some of which, like this one, I've never seen before.

[Mnemosyne]

34. The quotes in this thread have been wonderful. And

you are welcome. Anytime.

[YOY]

33. Hey Cali don't forget what's happening in Russia

Wooo Hooo! Cold War is on again! I'm living at ground zero!

If that's not enough to make you sicker...