BLOGSWARM 031908 - Part 4

Meteor Blades at Daily Kos has a reminder of something I intend never to forget:

But we will never know the names of more than a handful of the Iraqis who have died because of the invasion. Dead because of a war whose rationale was concocted by the liars who still occupy the highest positions of power in our government: unimpeached and untried, still lying just as they have done without stopping since the events of September 11 gave them the excuse they so avidly hoped for before President George W. Bush was a gleam in Dick Cheney’s eye.

and

No good statistics exist. Depending on which source you trust, the ratio of Americans who have lost their lives to Iraqis who have lost theirs is anywhere from 1:37 to 1:300 – 150,000 to 1.2 million dead. There's no point to arguing over the accuracy. Any way you count, the numbers are awful.

On this St Joseph's day I think of the Iraqi fathers (and mothers) holding their dead children. Of children losing their fathers (and mothers). This is a graphic I put together around last Christmas (hence the Christmas tree in the upper left corner).


The United States made it a policy not to track the numbers of Iraqi dead. Estimates vary widely but the official policy seems to be: "they don't count."

Precious in the sight of the LORD *
is the death of his servants.
--Psalm 116

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.

She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies.
--Lamentations 1:1-2

I am one who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s * wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
against me alone he turns his hand,
again and again, all day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away,
and broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me sit in darkness
like the dead of long ago.

He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has put heavy chains on me;
though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
he has blocked my ways with hewn stones,
he has made my paths crooked.

He is a bear lying in wait for me,
a lion in hiding;
he led me off my way and tore me to pieces;
he has made me desolate;
he bent his bow and set me
as a mark for his arrow.

He shot into my vitals
the arrows of his quiver;
I have become the laughing-stock of all my people,
the object of their taunt-songs all day long.
He has filled me with bitterness,
he has glutted me with wormwood.

He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, ‘Gone is my glory,
and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.’

--Lamentations 3:1-18

I honor, support, and pray for our troops. [More on them in a while]

I abhor, reject, and renounce our leaders responsible for this war.