Route Irish (2010, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and others)

Aichi Insurance Physicians’ Newspaper

The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center shook not only the United States but the entire world. Since the Civil War—excluding the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan—there had been no war-related casualties on U.S. soil. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, envisioning a clash between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds, launched the invasion of Iraq under the pretext of a "war on terror." Although Saddam Hussein was captured and executed, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Bush justified the baseless invasion by declaring, “Eliminating Hussein was the right decision. A man like him would surely have created weapons of mass destruction.”

In 2007, in Liverpool, a funeral was held for Frankie, a soldier who died in Iraq. His best friend Fergus, who attended the ceremony, had received a message from Frankie on the day he died, saying he had “something important to tell” him. Frankie had perished in a car explosion in “Route Irish,” the most dangerous area in Iraq. At the funeral, Fergus was handed a letter and a mobile phone left behind by Frankie. He asked Halim, a man from Iraq, to translate the images stored on the phone. What he saw was a scene of two innocent boys being gunned down—and the shooter was Nelson, a soldier stationed in Iraq. Outraged, Frankie had apparently discovered this before his death. Witnessing this, Fergus began to harbor doubts about the circumstances of Frankie’s death.

It was a private military company involved in the war business that had recruited Frankie into the Iraq War. Fergus’s relentless pursuit of justice for the war crimes that took the lives of women and children was driven by a conscience and sense of camaraderie that sought to uphold human dignity.