whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

War Is Kind

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment
Little souls who thirst for fight
These men were born to drill and die
The unexplained glory flies above them
Great in the battle-god, great, and his
kingdom -
A field were a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Swift, blazing flag of the regiment
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die
Point for them the virtue of slaughter
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand of corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son
Do not weep.
War is kind.

War Is Kind, 1899 Stephen Crane ( Newark 1871 - Badenweiler 1900).

Guantanamo -- A Holding Cell In War on Terror Prison Represents a Problem That's Tough to Get Out Of By Scott Higham, Joe Stephens and Margot Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 2, 2004; Page A01

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- The newest prison in the war on terrorism is a multi-winged $31 million complex of gray concrete and steel designed to hold 100 captives for years to come. It stands in stark contrast to the original detention camp here, a collection of chain-link cages used two years ago to hold suspected terrorists and Taliban fighters caught when their sanctuary in Afghanistan collapsed.

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TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?

General Karpinski, who had wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is a business consultant in civilian life, and was enthusiastic about her new job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times, she said that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, “living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn’t want to leave.”

A month later, General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating.

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