[Cross posted at Daily Kos]

A World Bank report released today gives us the horrifying news that 11 million children under 5 die each year in poor & under-developed countries from easily treated diseases.

This is appalling. Where are all the right-wing religious screamers demanding President Bush save the children… the poor, poor children.

Hypocrites. One and all.

….most of them from causes that are easily prevented in wealthier countries…

The causes include diarrhea, measles, malaria and acute respiratory infection, which together account for 48 per cent of child deaths in the developing world, said the World Development Indicators report, released Sunday.

“Rapid improvements before 1990 gave hope that mortality rates for infants and children under five could be cut by two-thirds in the following 25 years,” the report says. ” But progress slowed almost everywhere in the 1990s.”

The annual report warns that only 33 countries are on track to reach the 2015 goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds from its 1990 level. Only two regions – Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia – seem likely to hit that target, the bank says.

Progress has been particularly slow in Sub-Saharan Africa, where armed conflict, famine and diseases such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic have driven up rates of infant and child mortality, the report says.

11 million children die in poor countries annually: report

Call me a naive liberal but wouldn’t the $200 billion + that has been wasted in Iraq wingnuts have been better spent saving lives? Each year under Bush the USA has reduced the amount of foreign aid paid out to help feed, medicate & educate those less fortunate in the developing world. And yet one brain-dead woman is worth more of your freakin’ attention than 11 million children.

And let’s not forget that ignorance, desperation & hunger are leading breeding grounds for future criminals/ terrorists (stepping back & putting things in the self-interested light for Red State America)… but no, let’s scream about the 10 Commandments in schools while ignoring your fellow human beings in need.

Hypocrites.

Moral Values & Culture of Life my ass. Stop watching Fox, realize their is a bigger world out there and DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS ATROCITY… then come talk to me about What Jesus Would Do.