“The most important thing that anyone could do would be to help collect the bodies that line the streets in front of our homes every morning. No one dares to touch them, but for us it is unbearable to have to expose our children to such images every day as we try to bring them to school.”
— an Iraqi woman, upon being asked what was their most pressing need.
The International Red Cross just came out with a new report on Iraq, saying the situation is “disastrous” and that it’s getting worse and worse.
So much for John McCain’s Disneyland fantasy of Baghdad.
And so much for that “surge”.
“Once I was called to an explosion site,” it quoted a young Baghdad humanitarian worker named Saad as saying. “There I saw a 4-year-old boy sitting beside his mother’s body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened.”
So who you gonna believe, the International Red Cross, one of the few agencies actually operating in Iraq? Or John McCain, professional liar?
The ICRC is one of the few international organizations continuing to operate in Iraq, but it has cut back since attacks on its staff and Baghdad headquarters in 2003. It employs 415 Iraqis in the country and has an additional 57 international staff based in Iraq and Jordan, but relies on the affiliated Iraqi Red Crescent for much of its information.
Meanwhile, we’ve lost how many troops since April began? I believe the number is in the 40’s, but god knows it’s hard to keep track. Every day there are new deaths, and then there are the hideous injuries that keep occurring to our “well funded” troops. The troops that need “more funding” so that they can be “supported” and stay in Iraq and be murdered by their own country.
Thousands of bodies lie unclaimed in mortuaries, with family members either unaware that they are there or too afraid to recover them, according to Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the neutral agency’s director of operations.
I’m sitting here in my comfortable chair, typing this, and I could easily just forget all about this. Put my head in the sand, go play with my beautiful kids and hang out with my lovely wife, play with the pet bunny in our back yard. You know, like most people. And hey, what’s on TV tonight?
But I can’t. “Daddy, did you do anything to try to stop the killing?”
What am I supposed to say? “I typed a lot.” And “The Pen is mightier than the Sword!” I’ll tell them. But is it?
It seems there’s nothing more powerful than being a universally despised idiot-son with an approval rating in the 20’s. He still does whatever the hell he wants. He continues to kill Americans and Iraqis alike. What kind of power is that? Is it supernatural? It makes a person wonder.
There’s 300 million Americans in this country, and probably over 200 million of them want an end to this. So why aren’t we putting an end to this? Are we that impotent?
Are we that impotent?