counting the innocent victims of war

A peer-reviewed report published last year in The Lancet and based on an extrapolation of data suggested that 100,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion and its aftermath. One of the report’s author, Dr Richard Garfield, professor of nursing at Columbia University, said: “Of course they keep records and of course they pretend they don’t. Why is it important to keep the numbers of those killed? Well, why was it important to record the names of those people killed in the World Trade Centre? It would have been inconceivable not to. These people have lives of value.

“We are still fighting [to record] the Armenian genocide. Until people have names and are counted they don’t exist in a policy sense.”

Andrew Buncombe, The Independent ( more. . .)

April 20th, 2005 || PermaLink || ||

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The Patriot Game

For the love of one's country
is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear
with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part
of the patriot game.
— Dominic Behan

It was eye for an eye
   in the land of the blind
When desert storm blew back
Across the shining seas
   and spacious skies
Brought down the purple towers
Cut short the amber waves
Forever fouled the fruited plains
When desert storm blew home
We stopped
One broken hearted people
We huddled in the howling silence
Trembled in that awful still
Until, too soon,
The star-spangled
   jingo dance began
The bully speech
   and the heavy hand
The schoolyard line
   drawn in the sand
And the call to arms, to arms,
   and patriot storms
In the land of the blind,
   it was eye for an eye

It was tooth for a tooth
   and the torture of truth
When the old gray men
   again called the tune
Ours is the one true creed,
   they said
Ours are the noblest of the dead
Only our suffering counts as real
Only their suffering will heal
   this unfair
   and so unwanted wound
And oh, we stopped
One nation, terror torn in two
Minds heavy with
   the growing madness
Wary of Orwell's
   whispered warnings
Of war without end,
   the ministry of spin
Destroy the village now
   to save it
Imprison love
   for freedom's sake
Until all talk of peace is treason
Peace is treason,
As we torture the truth
With tooth for a tooth

Now it's cry for a cry
   and tear for a tear
And sword for a sword
   and fear for a fear
We'll do it to them
   because they did to us
We'll do it again
   and again if we must
We must, if we can,
   vain foolish men
It goes round and comes round
   and goes round again
History falls
   through the cracks in our walls
Reason fails
   and love . . . love pales
Until we stop
One sorry hopeful sorry planet
Soul-sick of it all
So weary of the same old
   blame scold
And no, pampered prince,
   this is no new war
Not new the cratered cities
Not new the blackened dawn
Not new the wailing lovers
Not new the friendly-fired spawn
Not new the burning cross
Not new the blood-soaked
   cemetery lawn
The wasted and forsaken youth
The tooth for a tooth,
The torture of truth
The eye for an eye
In the land of the blind
Unless, until,
Oh will we stop.

Michael Sky
October, 2001