Read This Book

Before you groan and say “Oh no, not more Iraq War crap”, give this blog post a chance. I, too, am often turned off when there is nothing in the news but politics and war… But this book is, simply put, amazing.

Kevin Sites is another war journalist. He spent years covering war stories on television and in print before being tapped to become Yahoo News’ very first correspondent. He had a webpage on Yahoo dedicated to his work through Yahoo News - which centered on various wars and conflicts around the world. Some are infamous - like the ongoing wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. However, other wars/conflicts covered were ones I’d either never heard of or had long forgotten and thought they were over.  However, aside from reporting on the conflict itself and the players in that conflict, Sites focus much attention on civilians, human suffering, and the stark reality of it all. One thing that I re-read over and over again in disbelief was “There is laughter too”. Despite the worst conditions you and I can think of, people are resilient and do their best to live their lives despite (or perhaps in spite of) what is going on all around them.

Sites is indiscriminant too. There is a story about some captured Iraqis that are in a room with him and have surrendered to the US Marines. Despite being weaponless and having surrendered, the men are shot. One man plays dead to avoid being killed. Sites actually captures it all on video. His boss’s want him to give to the media immediately but he is hesitant that it would get blown out of proportion or that he would become a target or labeled anti-American.

I simply do not know what to say about this book. It was astonishing and captured me from the very minute I picked it up and I really could not put it down. Each country is a chapter so you can read the same chapter over and over and then sit there in disbelief over what you’ve just read. Yes, I did so - some of these atrocities that Sites has witnessed firsthand are underreported or misreported by our media and as a result, we’re grossly misled. One would like to believe that we live in a civilized world but civilized people simply do not act this way. Honestly, I’m quite surprised that Sites came back to the US after this project with his life.

I don’t want to give too much of the book away, but here are a few key points that I hope will engage you enough to want to go read this and share it with your friends:

*Columbian genocide… supported by US

*rotting flesh everywhere after Asian tsunami

*results of poisons dropped on Vietnam to try to kill the jungle cover…. Millions now suffering from lasting effects because of USA

*anybody that is anti-Israel is labeled by US politicians as a terrorist

It goes on and on and on. I will end this blog with one last idea from the book. If this doesn’t make you want to read it… I throw my hands up in defeat….

……we are not the good guys - we have lost our humanity.

We are not anti American (myself and Sites) but it is time for people to open their eyes to the crumbling world around us… and look at who is causing it.

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