Iraqi Memorial Day

There is no such thing, but over at Daily Kos, they've highlighted the names of about 100 Iraqis killed by American bombs or soldiers since this war began. It's an incredibly troubling, gruesome read, but it's fairly essential to get some perspective on this horrific misadventure. I mean, I like to have fun with the president, posting ridiculous photos of him in stupid hats or making confused, monkey faces...but he's not funny. He's insane, sinister and he must be stopped. The blood of these Iraqis isn't just on his hands, it's filling up several entire rooms and elevators in the West Wing, Shining-style.

Again, before you click this link or read some of the excerpts below, I must warn you...We're doing really really really horrible things to Iraqis, and it's extremely difficult to read about. But, hey, you don't hear this stuff on Fox News.

At least 14, and probably more than 20, people were killed on 26 March 2003, when two missiles from a U.S. aircraft hit an apartment building and a row of shops on Abu Taleb Street in the poor Baghdad neighborhood of al-Shaab.

The dead included Ta'ar (last name unknown), 26, and Sermed Draoudi, 21

The [apartment] building's manager, Hishem Danoon, ran to the doorway as soon as he heard the massive explosion. "I found Ta'ar in pieces over there," he told me. His head was blown off. "That's his hand." A group of young men and a woman took me into the street and there, a scene from any horror film, was Ta'ar's hand, cut off at the wrist, his four fingers and thumb grasping a piece of iron roofing. His young colleague, Sermed, died the same instant. His brains lay piled a few feet away, a pale red and gray mess behind a burnt car.

Did I mention that Daily Kos has photos? I'd post them here, but I'd say it's a bit beyond the Crushed by Inerta gross-out quotient (and let's not forget, I posed a photo of Tara Reid's Frankenstein boob the other day, so it's a fairly high quotient).

Here's one more, just to give you an idea of what this feature is all about:

Assad Hussein was an infantryman in the Iraqi Army. He was a Shia Muslim, whose family lived in a corrugated iron shack in the sprawling Baghdad slum of Sadr City. He was shy and quiet, and enjoyed reading and playing soccer.

Assad was conscripted into the Iraqi Army when he turned 18. As the U.S. invasion approached, he could not afford to pay the bribes that would have kept him out of the frontline. He was killed by a U.S. cluster bomb while serving in Kirkuk.

It's very humaniizng to hear stories like this. These aren't crazed maniacal religious fanatics who are dying en masse. It doesn't sound like Assad Hussein hated America or Christianity or common decency with every fiber of his being. He sounds like an unfortunate, soft-spoken guy who wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why did he have to die? What did America gain by killing Assad Hussein?

This is the problem with the "no blood for oil" concept, for me. We didn't even get oil in exchange for Assad's blood. I mean, if we genuinely were killing people in large numbers just to get their oil, I'd oppose it, but at least it's a clear position. "Killing Iraqis and taking their oil is the solution to all of Ameirca's problems...I'm George Bush, and I approve this message."

But we get nothing in exchange for this. There's no rhyme or reason here whatsoever. We maybe kind of theorized in a half-assed way that they might have WMD, they didn't, and now we have to hang out and spend billions of dollars cleaning up our leadership's stupid mistake and murdering Iraqis by the thousands. IT'S A MADHOUSE!