An uncelebrated milestone: this week marked the 1,000th mercenary death in Iraq. The casualty figure for US military soldiers moved up four in one blast to 3688. This week also saw the highest number of US troops in Iraq, 162,000. Counting the estimated 180,000 contractor-mercenaries that figure is 342,000.
Also this week: extrapolating from last year’s Johns Hopkins estimate for Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, the current number of Iraqi casualties is estimated to be rounding ONE MILLION. One million Iraqi lives lost, in violent deaths, as a result of the US illegal war. One million Iraqis definitely better off with Saddam deposed.
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
I imagine that the Bush administration’s unstated goal is to get rid of ALL Iraqis. Then he and his cronies can make their home, like his beloved ancestor Adam, in the Garden of Eden.
I once wrote a script for a short film to be called “The Night Watchman”. The title was based off Rembrant’s painting “The Watchmen”, a portrait of soldiers and community in confused huddle and preparation.
The “Night Watchman” script was written shortly after the first Desert Storm, For the most part, the fighting was over at that time, and like most Americans, I was very glad to see our soldiers were home to safety. The film was inspired by a news report of war casualities from that entanglement. Like the blog above, this news story reported (estimated) the deaths from both sides. Not only were the figures extremely disproportionate, but I could not help but feel sorry for the loss of all lives, no matter how naive such sentiment may seem.
In every war, innocents are lost, innocence is lost.
The film script depicted a man running a paper tape adding machine. Outside his window was a river. As he typed in numbers out came the printout, mostly news storys of death and injustice. No matter what numbers he put in – out came the red tape of death. And outside his window, the river slowly turned to blood.
Beyond the realm of politics and nations, and beyond the watchmen’s accounting, one factor was missing. A formula for peace, in the number of One.
How sad. I’m going to cry me a river (over Jordan). El Rio de la Paz. Peace.
Your river, the Colorado river, does not make it any more to the sea of Valdez, sucked dry by California broccolis and populace. Well, the silver lining is that your river of blood will not bother us here is Baja, dry as stone this year. Why can’t you impeach the murderous bastard? In most countries of the G7, the governments fear the people, especially when they take to the streets as they do on a regular basis in France. In your country, the people fear the government. How else can you explain why not a peep came out of the people after supreme court ruling of the contested election. The black caucus were the only ones raising a raucus of any kind. Hard to understand. At least here in Mexico millions took to the streets when a similarly close election was suspected of having been rigged. Oh that’s right, it was football season. How silly of me.
J.