Today, the news tells us that we have lost 1000 American lives in the war in Iraq. And let's not forget the 11,793-13,802 (exact count not known) Iraqi dead. Too many lives have been lost. My heart breaks, for the families left behind.

And no end in sight.

<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/frown.gif" width=15 height=15>

May God be with the troops & families at this time... <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/peace.gif" width=16 height=16>

When will they ever learn...
Their blood is on you know whose hands..
But like Arlo likes to quote from The Grapes of Wrath.. Ma Joad "We's still the people"
And even one person ,e.g. Mike Moore, can make a difference... it's up to us.
I will be devastated if W. gets back.. our election is in a few weeks and if little Johnnie gets back in too I think I'll have to change from an AmerAussie to a CanaNewZealander!!

From MoveOn:

Dear MoveOn member,

In the past four days, clashes with Iraqi insurgents have claimed the lives of 17 American soldiers. With these deaths, we mark a grim milestone: over 1,000 military men and women have now died in this misconceived war.

Their caskets have been hidden from view, and the President won't visit their graves. And this morning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld diminished their deaths by calling the toll “relatively small.” But it is now time for us to publicly recognize the sacrifice these soldiers have made, and to demand that our leaders serve those in harm's way better in the future.

Tomorrow night at 8pm, we're joining with the Win Without War coalition to hold hundreds of candlelight vigils. Gathered together silently in towns across the country, we'll reflect on this terrible moment and honor the fallen. And by focusing attention on the dead, we'll help pressure our national leaders to get us out of this mess.

Can you host a vigil? It's a small commitment of time -- you just need to identify a good location and pull together some candles and printed materials for attendees. To sign up to host a vigil, go to:
http://action.moveon.org/vigil/newmeeting.html

If you can't host, we welcome everyone to attend a candlelight vigil tomorrow night. You can search for one near you at:
http://action.moveon.org/vigil/

865 soldiers have died since President Bush declared, "Mission Accomplished." And yesterday, top Pentagon officials told the New York Times that "insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas." The attacks are increasing, the death toll is rising, and there's no exit strategy to get us out.

In the moments before the war in Iraq began, Win Without War and MoveOn members gathered in thousands of vigils around the country and the world to make a plea for peace. As of this morning, 1,003 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq -- along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of soldiers from other countries. It is time to come together again. We'll gather with candles, representing our mourning for those who have died and our hope for those who still live.

We all support our troops. We hope that they all return safely to the waiting arms of their families and loved ones. But hiding the caskets of the dead does not honor the men and women who are in harm's way. It is time to recognize them, and tomorrow night, we will.

Can you join us? To get involved, go to:
http://action.moveon.org/vigil/

--Carrie, Joan, Lee, Marika, Noah, Peter, and Wes
The MoveOn.org Team
September 8th, 2004

P.S. We've posted an excerpt, below, from one of the many articles which capture the stories of some of the men and women who have died. You can see the pictures, names, and stories of all of the men and women who died in Iraq at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/

Iraq war claims 1,000th U.S.casualty
Seattle Post-Intelligencer http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/189908_iraq08.html

[Excerpts:]

Every name in the roster deserves a story:

Caleb Powers, 21, a Marine Corps lance corporal from Mansfield who donated his time to the children's society that had cared for him as a boy.

Army Spc. Jeremiah Schmunk, 20, a fun-loving man who wore a wig and dress to school to invite a girl to a Sadie Hawkins dance in his hometown of Warden.

Army Spc. Jake Herring, a 20-year-old 180-pounder from Kirkland who was the undersized but tenacious center and co-captain of his high school football team.

John "Sully" Sullivan, a 28-year-old heavy metal "shredder" who traded guitar for weapons as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

The youngest soldiers from Washington to die in Iraq were only 19. They were: Marine Pfc. Cody Calavan of Lake Stevens; Army Pfc. Duane Longstreth from Tacoma; and Army Spc. Nathan Nakis from Sedro-Woolley.

...

A thousand dead is a terrible toll. But even the number one is a harsh statistic for families who pick up the telephone and get the news no one wants to hear.

"It's just not the same here anymore," said David Scott, a father still grieving a year after his son's death. "There's an empty spot -- and it's felt all through our house."

I can't get to a formal vigil, but will certainly be holding one of my own and sending blundervibes to ALL the families of ALL those who lost loved ones because of this war.

....What Ceashel said......

Ruth

I'm a staff writer for my college newspaper, and this month we're running a list of all the dead soldiers. All 1,000-odd names. Since I was the one compiling the list, I was in a position to read every single name.

It doesn't change anything about my views, it just reinforces them. I hope it'll have the same effect on campus, maybe we'll be able to get out the sorely needed youth vote. And we're a swing-state, too <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>. In all likelihood, we're going to get a pile of Letters to the Editor about this issue's very liberal bent.

Kakkaraun, you go!--honor the fallen and help make their sacrifices count for something, no matter what you are called. Maybe you can come up with something even more "radical" for your next issue that will earn you the coveted label "subversive." Now THAT's something to strive for and wear with pride. At least, in these times of eroding rights and a growing national ethical cesspool, it is.

Good luck to ya, Kakkaraun! I'm hoping that what I saw yesterday is an indication of a nat'l trend.

I was driving home from work (I prefer the bus, but needed the car yesterday). There's no way I can get home without driving thru the Oakland section of the city, but I ran into bumper-to-bumper traffic wherever I went--even my back-road short-cuts. When I got onto Forbes Ave., I realized that John Kerry was appearing at Carnegie Mellon University. Traffic was screwed up coz there was a line of college students 3 blocks long, spilling out onto the street, all to meet John Kerry. As I drove past that, there were about 8 college kids holding up Bush/Cheney signs.

Just imagine if all college students across the country feel the same way in the same proportions! We may just send Cowboy George back to the Ponderosa!

Here's another good an-ec-dote. There was a Kerry rally here in Rochester last...Tuesday, it was. I was volunteering at it, and so I was able to move around the area and see how many people were there...hundreds...it was packed. Enormous. And for all these supporters, there were TWO (count 'em, two) protesters. They were sitting on the corner opposite the rally with big signs with pictures of aborted fetuses. I was standing next to them when I was waiting for the light to change to cross the street to get to the rally. Someone else waiting next to me said to the protesters "So, is that worse than executing a retarded man?" The protesters didn't respond. Actually, they left pretty quickly because they realized they weren't getting anywhere with it.

The funny thing is, the last time Bush was here, there were a couple groups of protesters wandering downtown. Rochester, it seems, is going to vote Kerry. This is a very conservative town, too. A few weeks ago, the place was coated with Bush signs. Now, on a count made on a bus ride from downtown to my house, Kerry signs outnumbered Bush signs by something like 15 to 8. I'm a lot more optimistic about the election now than I was a few weeks ago.

...in the bad news department, i heard a gov.study this week estimates 100,000 Iraquis have now been killed....

....as for the brighter spot....i've been working the last couple of weeks for move-on political action.....since mass is a done deal for Kerry, we hope.....they've assigned me some small towns in Northern Maine.....it's tough to get down to doing it, but every night has these great moments of connecting with folks you might never meet ...the Kerry supporters are usually really fired up....and want to talk for awhile.....it's a hoot...like the ol' days,but hi tech........and i'm smiling about the state of the union more than i have in a long time......more people than not don't mind that they're getting 3 or4 calls a night from different groups!!....
they just want a change.....from the killing, the imperialism and the economics....

....who knows what will happen......after all, the red sox won.....
...and for a fallback, this election has elicited more connecting among folks than i have seen in many years.....we'll just have to keep it up....and keep it growin'...

I was just looking through some statistics from Iraq. Morbidity – Mortality data from 988 Iraqi households Pre and Post Invasion.

Pre-invasion 7438 Total Deaths over 15 months 1 violent death (a man between the ages of 15 and 55)

Post-Invasion 7868 Total Deaths over 18 months 73 violent deaths
28 Children <15
38 Men between 15 and 55
5 Women between 15 and 55
2 Elderly

Along with this I have heard statements like;
We have broken the insurgents backs (from Falluja)!
We have turned the corner
We have the insurgency on the run
We will need to escalate our strength to insure peace

Déjà vu all over again

We have pacified this land 100 times!

Here is some more of the cost
An Excerpt:

Washington Post - - Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led the invasion of the country 20 months ago.

After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than five steadily declined to 4 per cent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 per cent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in co-operation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the UN Development Program.

The new figure translates to about 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition that takes in chronic diarrhoea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

"These figures clearly indicate the downward trend," said Alexander Malyavin, a child health specialist with the UNICEF mission to Iraq.

Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far worse than rates in Uganda and Haiti.

The surveys suggest the silent human cost being paid across a country convulsed by instability and mismanagement. While attacks by insurgents have grown more violent and more frequent, deteriorating basic services cost lives that many Iraqis said they had expected to be improved under American stewardship.
**********
"Things have been worse for me since the war," said Kasim Said, a day labourer who was at Baghdad's main children's hospital to visit his ailing year-old son, Abdullah, recumbent on a pillow with a Winnie the Pooh washcloth keeping the flies off his head.

"During the previous regime, I used to work on the government projects. Now there are no projects." When he finds work, Mr Said can bring home $10 to $14 a day. If his wife can find a can of Isomil, the nutritional supplement that doctors recommend, she pays $7.

"But the lady in the next bed said she just paid $10," said Suad Ahmed, who sat on a bed trying to console her skeletal four-month-old granddaughter, Hiba, who suffers from chronic diarrhoea.
*******************