War in Iraq, This Mothers Opinion

I wrote this in early September. just thought i would repost it since people are actually reading my blog now.

On Monday September 13th, CBS Evening news showed an angry Iraqi crowd holding a dead infant over their heads. The infant died as a direct result of a building collapse, due to military strike on insurgents. CBS also had footage of screaming children in hospital receiving treatment for various wounds.

We have been in Iraq for 18 months. We have captured Saddam Hussein, killed his sons and toppled his regime. We have given Iraq back to the people. At what cost? What cost to the Iraqis, who didn't ASK for liberation? What cost to the American armed forces, with over 1000 lost to date?

We went to Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction, on false information from the CIA, and harsh words and strong language from our president. When the WMD's were not found, the focus became finding Saddam and his sons and bringing them to justice for crimes they committed against the Iraqi people. Then, things changed again, "there is a connection between Saddam and Osama" although no such evidence existed.

Iraq is a mess.

We have lost over 1000 troops. I know, on September 11th, 2001, 4000 Americans died when the twin towers collapsed. Was Iraq and Saddam responsible for those horrific acts? The answer is NO. Did we really have a right to go over there and tear up their country and kill innocent people?

As a Muslim woman and a mother it breaks my heart to see what I saw on television last night. To me, it really brought home how horrible and senseless this war really is. We have no idea how many innocents have died in this. We know how many soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice; that is really the only number the media hammers home to us nightly.
(I found out from Iraqibodycount.com that it is over 15K)

I think that it is time that we see the coffins coming home. It is time that we see more of what I saw on CBS last night: injured children in hospitals crying. Mothers wailing over dead children and family members. Without these images we're only seeing a portion of the true Iraq war.

There are some people who say that showing those images would anesthetize the American public. I think we already are anesthetized--this senseless war is still going on. We are being bullied by scare tactics of the Bush administration, in the name of safety and security. How safe are the Iraqis? How secure? How will this situation be resolved? I don't think anyone knows how to resolve the situation. There truly is no end in sight.

This war is good for the president, and good for Dick Cheney and his Halliburton cronies. That seems to be it. Troops are going over there with out proper body armor, Iraqi neighborhoods are being leveled. Our country is billions in debt, and most of the world hates us. How is this war and Bush policy helping us to build "a safer more hopeful America"?

We are due for a change. In November we have the opportunity to let our voices be heard. We need to remove this administration that doesn't have our best interests at heart. So in November remember: Anybody but Bush.

New questions

Please leave a comment.

Are you surfing thru on Blog Explosion?
What type of blogger are you? (political, mom, angsty teen, weirdo)
What is your all time favorite movie?
Your biggest blog pet peeve?

Discuss.

Me:
Not surfing thru, I live here.
Blogging mom, trying to keep my family from slapping me by talking about my son too much, so I do it here.
I think Forrest Gump. ( I was Run-ning!)
Pages that take to long to load, conservative Bush types.

Talk to me people!

Motoki Log

Motoki Log
This is an amazing blog about an amazing boy. Motoki was born 15 weeks premature at only 14 oz. Lots of pictures and stories.

Blog Explosion Surfers

First if you are not on Blog Explosion, and you want traffic, you should be on it.
You can click on the link to the right if you want to go.
If you are on Blog Explosion, can you take a quick second to rate my blog? Let me know what you think.
Thanks!--The Management

Mom 1 Baby 0 (depends on when you started keeping score)

 
I am at that point where I just don't know what to blog about. I am sitting here hoping for an idea to come to me.
Pathetic.
I am seriously multitasking right now. The TV is on: Jimmy Kimmel Live.
I am surfing Blog Explosion.
I am blogging, about nothing.

I can tell you that as a mom, I am going crazy these last two days. My darling boy has decided that sleeping in his crib is not for him. Last night he was up until 2:30 am. Yep, you heard right. 2:30 am. No problem. If you read my blog you can see that I post around that time, but do you have any idea how HARD it is to blog when your son is screaming hysterically from his crib in the next room?
I got a headache, took three Advils, with no results. I needed a cigarette, but that isn't my bag anymore. Bummer. Nonetheless, that baby woke up at 11am. I was kind of looking forward to him sleeping later since he went to bed later, but I guess I was smoking crack or something. No such luck.
Typically, the baby needs a nap about two hours after he wakes up. So, I tried to lay him down at 1:30 pm today. Mind you, he was in his bouncer, bouncing with his eyes closed. I put him in the crib. You would have thought pinched him or something. He cried and cried and CRIED.
Crap, I thought we went through this last night.
So I thought, you know what? It is 1:30 in the afternoon. He is not sick, he is tired, and dammit, SO AM I. I will lay down in my bedroom with the door closed, and he can CRY IT OUT.
Yes, I said cry it out.
Yes, I know I have spoke of this before, We have tried this before, my husband and I, but today is different. It is just me. I can deal with it without being nervous about Amr not being able to sleep. I will have the baby CRY IT OUT.
So I did.
And he did.
It took an hour and 15 minutes of intermittent crying but he went to sleep. Apparently, he plopped over from a sitting position and passed out. It was weird. I feel like I really accomplished something. I also feel like the Worlds Meanest Mommy.
At 2:33 I looked at my alarm clock after about 20 minutes of trying to tune the boy out. I was startled really, not realizing that I had fallen asleep. He was still crying. WAAAAAAAAAAuh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.....
Okay I thought, fine, cry all you want, I can tune it out.
Can it be possible that my angel is testing me at the tender age of 10 months?
I think that may just be what is going on over here.
My husband says it is because I let him stay up too late. I don't totally buy that. I know how important it is to have a baby on a schedule, blah , blah, blah. His schedule is the same way it was two weeks ago, just kicked up 2 hours. Everything that happened before, still happens, in the same order. It just happens two hours later.
BABIES CAN"T TELL TIME!
So anyway, when Daddy is home, crying it out lasts until the first shriek. Moms, you know what I am talking about. The point where an unanswered cry turns into that shriek. The one that puts your hairs on end, the one that if you didn't know your angel was fine, just throwing a fit in the crib, you would run to them because it sounds scary. At that point, my darling husband thinks he will not calm down, and goes in there to get him.
Today, I didn't do that.
It is mommys watch.
We do things mommys way.
I only heard him shriek 3 times.
Then, the door to my room opened, the baby came walking in, and hopped into bed with me.
I jolted awake.
It was 3:15
It was quiet in the apartment.
The baby doesn't know how to walk, let alone hop.
WE HAD CRIED IT OUT! YAY! I HAD BEATEN THE 10 MONTH OLD!(not literally folks, don't call child welfare)
I WON!
So, of course, I had to check on him to make sure he was still breathing, and not lying on the floor unconscious, next to his crib. That is the disturbing part of me, I am always imagining the Stephen King angle of things. Some terrible demise. So much so, that I have to go in and check. Someone tell me I am not the only one who has pulled their car over to check on an ominously quiet baby in a rear-facing carseat, actually thinking he had choked on something or worse, (what I ask?) only to see that yes, he is sleeping? I could go into detail, these brief flashes.But honestly, they freak me out too much. Half the time, I don't even allow myself to finish thinking them.
Like I said, he was sleeping. Soundly.
Chalk one up for mommy.
Thankfully, I think he cried the fight out of himself today, he went to bed with no objections.
Right now he is sleeping.
Like a baby.

Snuggly

*Sigh*....I love to cuddle with Grampa. 

I wanna hear from you.

So what do you all think of John Kerrys chances in the election anyway?
How about Sinclair broadcast changing their tune about "Stolen Honor"?
Ben Affleck: Better with J.Lo or no?
Let me know.

Suave and Debonair

Thank you Grampa, for my new pjs! 

Naked Dinner

Bare skin on plastic, with a side of peas, please. 

What diaper?

I think I feel a breeze.... 

Super Wal-Mart

Tonight was preview Night in the brand spankin' new, one and only, Northern California Wal-mart Supercenter right here in good ole' Stockton, Ca. This place is enormous. It has its own weather systems. Someone got lost when we were there and they had to send out dogs and a rescue chopper to find them. No, just kidding, but the place is soooo big. I want to do my shopping there. I don't want to hear all the bullcrap about how huge corporate superstores are squeezing out the little guy. I think that is a load of crap. It is a huge beautiful store, and we will see how long it stays that way before the ghetto Stockton natives turn it to crap. We can never have anything nice for long. But basically that is all I have to say for now, so, I'm out!

The Sneeze - Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.

The Sneeze - Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.
Okay this guy eats things, and writes about it. Pork rinds, Potted meat, Breastmilk, BEGGIN' STRIPS. I was laughing so hard when i read his reviews i was crying. too Funny. Check it out.

View from the Cairo Tower

Giza , the Nile and Cairo. 
as seen from the Cairo Tower. This tourist spot was built by Nasr in the 60's. It is about 15 stories high, or at least that is what the elevator buttons said, I am guessing more like 30 stories. You can see all around, but unfortunately Egypt has some wicked bad smog (air quality regulations? What for?) Had the day not been so polluted I could have photographed the pyramids from there as well.

King Tutankhamen at the Egyptian Museum

 
In King Tuts room there are Egyptian policemen there to tell you "NO FLASH" so you cant take pictures with a flash, DUH. I enhanced the photo of Amr and the second sarcophagus (I think) on its right you can see a larger outer sarcophagus. The mummy of Tut and the inner inner sarcophagus is still in Luxor.

King Tut

The boy king and me....kinda 
A very famous piece of the collection. I was so excited to see this. I mean, you see it in history books, and things like that when you are a kid. Never in a million years did I ever expect to be standing right there, in the room devoted entirely to the treasures of Tutankhamens tomb, in Egypt. Wow.

a bunch of Mummies and a mommy.

 
Still at the Egyptian Museum, they have a whole bunch of cases like these with mummies in them. These are the less famous mummies, hence the barracks-style casing.

Crash and Burn

 
Tonight was another one of those hellish I-refuse-to-go-to-sleep nights. Once again I attempted "cry it out" it did not work but, did succeed in working him up into a truly historic hissy. I gave up and let him play for a while. I noticed he kept putting his head down on my husbands prayer rug. Then I had a brilliant idea-- what if I put a pillow and his blanket on the rug? Well this is what happens (above photo) It took about 2 minutes. I don't know how he got so stubborn.

I love you, pacifier

It's all about the bzaza, baby. 

Pacifier Appreciation

My son has been a pacifier fan since way back. When he was born he had to spend 3 days in neonatal intensive care because my water had been broken for too long. They started giving him a pacifier there, when they would start his IV . I wasn't happy about it, but how can you argue with a cranky NICU nurse who says, "It is comforting him, but if you don't want that, we wont give it to him." I always said that when his top teeth started coming in, (they have not yet) I would start weaning him from it. I am starting to think that will be easier said than done. When he was an infant my mom and I had what we would call "Pacifier Appreciation" he would cry, we would give him the pacifier, and if you didn't physically hold it in his mouth, he would spit it out and the crying would begin all over again. So I would take it away, hoping that he would "appreciate" it more when he got it back. Now, it make no sense to me whatsoever, because I am a more informed mommy. The pacifier was too large. It was a size for a six month old, and I didn't know it. Hell, I didn't know they made them in sizes until I had to buy a replacement set and found out all along the darn thing was too big for his mouth during those days of Pacifier Appreciation . Eventually, he grew into the pacifier (which around my house is called a Bzaza, the Arabic word for it. Actually, it is the Arabic word for bottle, but hey, I don't speak Arabic and it stuck. It is pronounced as it looks--bZA-ZA) As I was saying, I think weaning him from bzaza is going to be hard. Today it really hit home when I noticed the baby taking a few leisurely steps crawling, stop, and sit, pull his bzaza out of his mouth and look at it. He looked at thing with such love. He would turn it over and over, and kind of wave it around a little, then put it back in his mouth. I observed this about three times today. Then fear struck in my heart.....My son graduating college, walking across the stage at graduation, taking his diploma from an important looking faculty member, and turning to wave at his father and I. Stuck in his mouth is his favorite baby blue bzaza.
Yikes, somebody is going to have issues with this for sure. I think it is probably going to be me.

Aymans First Big-Boy Dinner

Mmmm, rigatoni and peas. My mom is an excellent cook.