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Gepetto Comes Clean / Poem for the People of Iraq by Dan Vera You will forgive us
for treating your country, your children, your blood, your gardens, your
livestock, your homes, your resources, your livelihoods and lives, as
a puppet show for our driving pleasures. You will forgive our rallying his troops, your numberless dead children as he waged war against our hated enemy. You will forgive our putting lethal weapons and technologies in his puppet hands, our fingers, our defense secretary smiling in photos with him as he terrorized your lives and country. You will forgive our sudden turnaround, as we pulled the puppet off our hands and shrieked in shock "That cad!" and moved to demonize the one whose horns we had sharpened all those years. You will forgive our washing our hands of the whole thing after the puppet had magically risen Pinnochio-like to terrorize your country and your neighbors. You will forgive our bleeding you and starving you through a process that was bound to bleed you and starve you as it rested on the humanity of the scoundrel we knew was barely human. You will forgive our waging war upon you again, this time with our tanks and our weapons and the well-armed sickles of our armies (we ask forgiveness to these poor souls we trick and empoverish into waging war, at the exact moment we slash VA benefits, but that is another poem for another time). You will forgive the insanity of our claiming to have liberated you of a tyrant we placed and kept in power. You will forgive our amazing amnesia that allows us to forget all of this. You will forgive are constant asking for forgiveness.
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