WeAreTheKey

IRAQ BODY COUNT EXHIBIT
Body: Start: Mar 9 2008 - 9:00am.End: Mar 9 2008 - 6:00pm

200 VOLUNTEERS needed for set up of



IRAQ BODY COUNT EXHIBIT


March 9th, 9:00 am (till finished) PSU Campus, outside Millar Library (big grassy area). There are 124,000 flags in the Iraq Body Count Exhibit. White flags represent at least 6 Iraqis, and red flags represent 1 American killed as a result of the 2003 invasion. The purpose of IBCE is to raise awareness of the number of people killed in the war. We are nonpolitical, and believe the Exhibit speaks for itself. It will be up from March 9th-20th. This is a powerful Exhibit to be part of, and I hope you can find the time to help out. Any questions at all, please get a hold of me.Thanks, Rudy Dietz..Iraq Body Count Exhibit.@iraqbodycountexhibit.org.(503) 381-6264. iraqbodycountexhibit.org.




pdxpeace.org

iraqbodycountexhibit.org

these kinds of things make me feel weird any more... i mean it's good because more people are aware of how many folks die, but I remember dead friends... it makes me feel different

I am curious of what you mean? How did you feel/feel now?

I think it is important for people to see how many people have died. Not out of glorification or disrespect, but as a way to show the effects of engaging in combat. People are so removed from the situation of actual combat that the reality of these lives being snuffed out (despite all the facts ect..) has yet to truly hit home. And by having this disconnection to this reality, it enables repitition of similar events and similar ways of 'problem' solving{that results in deaths of others} I believe that if people really grasped that decent people (on all sides) are essentailly wiped from the planet due to humanites failure to find a less violent way of resolving their differences, they would be less likely to allow it to happen.

i just think that death is a really intimate thing, you know? I'll try and illustrate it a bit, but i don't know if it will work.

I was in my first IED attack, and my interpreter was thrown from his vehicle. he was in the back seat, seatbelt strapped on with a helmet and everything. After forming a perimeter and all, I got my camera and took some pictures of the wreckage. My interpreter (an afghan born man who fled to pakistan and then to the united states, where he lived and worked and payed taxes and called home) was dying there on the ground. his face was bloated and puffy, and there was schrapnel all over him. the medics have to strip you naked, so i could see that all his skin was somehow fucked up.
Well, I'm taking pictures of the wreckage right, but as i turn to him, i feel dirty. I feel like if I take a picture of this, I have no soul, no compassion. It's hard to discribe a turning point like that... what it feels like inside... I saw many other terrible and wonderful things, but that first time shaped my consciousness more than anything up to that point.

I just think it may help riase awareness to have that kind of art show or whatever, but i feel like i felt looking at my friend lying there for the first time.

That had to be rough, man.
I will probably never know how that really feels, but I can empathize with your strong feelings on the subject because of it.
I agree with Alluscion though on the fact that far too many people have a mental disconnect with the reality of war and its bloody consequences, and in a way it's good to bring it into a real realm where people can atleast look at something and have somewhat of a better understanding of the numbers involved, and know that every one of those people suffered and/or died.
I don't want anyone to die, but people in general need to wake up to the horrors involved in a situation that they "support" back home by slapping a magnetic ribbon on their car and then going about their daily routines...