Iraq Beyond The Acronyms

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I was struck by the poetry of the language:



end result of vehicles

trying to make something good out of something bad

disposal remediation

small team, big operation

running out of room

doubled since I got here

stewards

return the land back the way we found it

at the end of the day

our footprint

What happens when the government, in the role of guardian, engages in wretched aggression and deceit but pretends — to its charges and to the outside — that harm does not exist and that nothing is out of place?  The balance of the pain, the damage, the loss then becomes that much more freighted in symbolism.

On the one hand, it’s just about a junk-and-salvage yard.  But what opens up — between these images and the simple compassion of its undertaker — is the gaping hole between a mindless neocon fantasy and its incalculable short-changing.

In the wish just to get somebody out there a tire … and to “keep safe,” this atrocity meets its day break.  And at that point (just past the denial), there’s not that much separation between the physical and emotional; between the exploded and the deformed; between the vehicular body, the political body the human one.

Military Times video here.

(h/t: Wayne. image: U.S. Army Camp Al Asad Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO) junkyard, December 7, 2006. Iraq. militarytimes.com)