Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Mind of Mansel: Blackwater

There are hammers in the wheel well this evening and as the road passing by underneath at a high rate of speed the swinging goes on. You don't have to be on the road to the airport in Baghdad to know that the situation is out of control. These days the gangs of america run through the daylit streets of another country heavily armed and funded by the occupying force shooting indiscriminately.

My short story J. R. and I in Iraq (posted on this blog as well as chrismansel.blogspot.com) tells the story of two correspondents gettng caught in the middle of a wave of gunfire on unarmed civilians by a private armed security force who might as well be named Blackwater. I wrote this story in December of 2006 and currently there is strong debate over just such an event having taken place. Who will handle the out of control gunmen of Blackwater? Who will stop the U.S. government that obviously has no problem with their tactics? The My Lai massacre didn't stop the Vietnam War, and neither will the secret bombing of Iran/Cambodia.

- Chris Mansel (The Mansel Report)


"...all the rockers on the roads and all the boots in the streets."

- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake


"Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere."

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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