March 31, 2003
A Must-Read: Blood Remains On the Hands
Powerful prose by the inimitable Jimmy Breslin:
… Blood from a bombed baby in Baghdad goes over the wide choking sands and it crosses mountains and then great land masses and then suddenly, over a channel, it is in Westminster, in London, and people look at the sidewalk and wonder where these large blood spots came from, and the officer on duty in front of 10 Downing Street looks at the door handle and worries, how did this get here without me seeing this and having it cleaned? He has a servant rush to the door with cloth and polish and he wipes the blood and polishes the door handles and then walks off and the guard happens to glance at the door handle and the blood is back, smeared bright new red over the polished handle.The baby’s blood is off to rush over the ocean, a strange red cloud poised to rain and it floats over the green of the Washington parks and goes down a sloping street to the State Department, where as a man opens a car door for Colin Powell he suddenly notices blood on the door handle and he quickly unfurls a handkerchief and wipes the handle and Powell gets in and the car goes off and the man who held the door is left in the driveway and he sees the red that is still on Powell’s door handle. …
The red cloud then comes down on the White House lawn and it does more than sprinkle, it splashes the helicopter of the president and he strolls out with his wife, his dog and his chesty walk and slight smirk and the wife at his side is smiling, for it is the end of the week and we are good, decent Christian people, God bless us and God bless everybody, and as they are about to get into the helicopter, an Air Force officer rushes up in alarm and says, please, just give us a moment, and he has three people scrubbing so quickly to clean the blood from the helicopter and then Bush and his wife get aboard and they fly off to Camp David, for where else would you go on a weekend, and as they have neglected to have two men hanging out of the windows and inspecting the sides of the craft in midair, nobody can see the blood back on the helicopter. …
Filed under: Colin Powell, Iraq
