this week in U.S. occupied Iraq

It seems to me that's it's important to keep this in front of our eyes, since after all, we are spending something like US$200 million/minute to (presumably) accomplish something over there.

So last week:

• An additional 585 civilian deaths. That breaks down to 140 on Monday, 60 on Tuesday, 90 on Wednesday, 50 on Thursday 60 on Friday, 45 on Saturday, and 140 more on Sunday) (Try not to think about the fact that every one of these has a name, a father, a mother, friends, ..... etc.)
• The 585 doesn't include the 2 newborns who died in their incubators in Samarra due to a power outage and the fact that they couldn't be transferred to another hospital because security measures prevented ambulances from entering or leaving the city. (by the way, it's count discrepancies like these which account for the difference between Iraq body count's 69000 figure and John Hopkins University 690,000 figure)
• The Tuesday total includes 7 primary school children killed by a U.S. Helicopter while shelling their primary school in Al Nedawat village.

(just as an aside, how would you like to have one of these fuckers shooting at your school? Your children's school? I wonder why we don't deal with terorrist school shooters in this country by dispatching longbow apaches? When I was young, I used to thing these were kewl. Don't even pay attention to the weapons mounted on the side. The really scary one is the M230 30 mm chain gun under the fuselage. It can shoot 625 rounds per minute. But the really crazy thing is the honeywell (an evil corporation if ever there was one!) M142 IHADSS. That's for "Integrated Helmet and Display Sight System". What it boils down to is that the chain gun can be hooked up to the helmet, on the head of the pilot, in such a way that the chain gun points at what the pilot looks at. I've seen this in operation, and it's pretty freaking scary. I used to think it was kewl. I guess I grew up a little.)

• News that mortality of children under 5 has risen 150% since the original 1990 invasion, from 50/1000 to 125/1000. (Don't think too much about that, you might get depressed)

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