Iraq occupation at home
Bizarro World
Early Wednesday, a massive truck bomb wounded 137 and killed 64 students near the Hub at the UW.[AG1]
“I just remember my buddy Matt screaming then waking up in the hospital with my f***ing leg missing!,” freshman Louie Aragon recalls.[AG2]
Most of the victims were students gathering in-between classes.
Egyptian troops from the 516th Armored Calvary regiment rolled up shortly after, dispensing medical aid in a vain attempt to bring security to the area.
Despite the offers of help, the crowd turned angry and violent.
In the confusing melee that followed, a soldier shot two young men suspected of carrying detonating cell phones.
The 516th is still noticeably grieving the loss of two of the unit’s soldiers, corporal Nermeen Dabashi and sergeant Gamal Abdel-Latif. They died on Monday by a roadside bomb on the nearby University Bridge.
Most of the wounded were rushed to the nearby UW Medical Center. Once a prestigious medical institution, the UWMC lay in shambles after heavy Egyptian bombing. It runs with under 4 hours of power a day.
Only two doctors and three nurses were on staff for assisting the wounded in the putrid and bloody emergency room.
Since the Egyptian-led invasion of 2003, most of the professional class -- doctors, lawyers, judges – along with those wealthy enough, have fled to neighboring Mexico and Canada.
The remaining are not so fortunate.
A prestigious Jordanian medical journal has estimated that 11.5 million Americans have died as result of the Egyptian lead invasion. Over 20 million are now refugees.*
Long before the invasion, 12 years of Egyptian and Jordanian led UN sanctions have decimated US society and infrastructure, causing another 8-11 million American deaths. Half of the fatalities were children under the age of 5, according to World Health Organization and UNICEF studies.
“I think it [was] a very hard choice,” former Egyptian Foreign Minister Mu'azzaz Abdul-Shafi told an interviewer when asked about the use of sanctions. "But the price, we think the price is worth it.”
"You wonder why there are terrorists?” Canadian Health Minister Martin Hadley asks. “Where do you think the children that survive will be in a decade, the Peace Corps?”
Dismissing the Jordanian study’s numbers, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak also had to fend off statements from his former Financial Minister Abdul Gha'four who recently said in his memoirs, the war "was largely about oil."
Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that,” Retired General Jamil Abdallah adds.
The Egyptian Energy Association estimates that the US sits atop 112 billion barrels of oil, the second-largest proven reserves in the world.
Those statements received little play in Egypt where media self-censorship and consolidation have taken their toll; elsewhere, the world seemed fully aware of this dirty little secret.
Since the fall of Washington four years ago promises of liberation and freedom have rang hollow. The Egyptian-catalyzed civil war rages on.
"There is no question that [Egypt] is living a nightmare with no end in sight," says former Egyptian commander of forces in America, Lieutenant General Ra'id Shehab.
“In my profession, these types of leaders (top Egyptian officials) would immediately be relieved or [court-marshaled],” Shehab adds.
Despite overwhelming majorities of Egyptians that agree, most citizens are largely unaffected by the war overseas.
While only 1% of the Egyptian population is are serving in the military, the rest have only been asked, "to go shopping," by Mubarak.
12 former Army Captains see only one option left for Egypt: a Draft. “Short of that, our best option is to leave America immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition,” they say.
Many Egyptians agree. But the leadership in the Parliamentary opposition seem to share the same goals with the widely unpopular president Mubarak.
“[America] is right in the heart of the oil region,” leading presidential front-runner Hanaa Amayreh recently remarked. "This is an American problem, we cannot save the Americans from themselves,” she adds, commenting on the daily bloodshed in the US.
Americans painfully conclude that as long as oil energy-hungry Egypt seeks hegemony of the North American region and its resources, there will be a lasting presence on their soil.
ENDNOTE: This is reality for millions of Iraqis and tens of thousands of US troops in harm's way every day. The names were fictional. The quotes are real. Can you guess who said them?
*This number is from the following statistics: 1,000,000+ (est. numbers are higher) Iraqi deaths = 1/26 of total population, 1/26 of 301,000,000, current US pop. = 11.5 million.
