battle(s) for bagdhad
smart bombs shriek as they descend through the sky, their heat and fire a blinding white against an unnatural green field of a camera's night-vision lens this is (antiseptic combat) (decapitation) (regime change) we do not see the bodies of the children: s i l e n t . . . s t i l l as heat e v a p o r a t e s from pools of cooling blood or twisted in agony as shrapnel imbeds in bones, faces, spinal cords... the global coalition of Americans damage collateral: sending children into combat to kill enemy kids, destroying culture and history, installing democracy through overwhelming force, terrifying now-homeless civilians with shock-and-awe precision while high-ranking leaders live in bunkers in relative luxury in the end, war becomes the battle for the airways: battles for bridges and oil wells hover above minefields of public opinion: "life" and "death" lose concrete value and become issues of semantics as we conquer a land of burning oilfields we have no right to own and the Iraqis taste freedom through sweat, blood, and death.
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