There is no suitable measurement for the horror we at truthout.org felt upon viewing these photographs. We have seen a great many wretched things come to pass in the last two years, but little of that – perhaps only 9/11 itself – can rival the woe brought by these images. These are our American children, our sons and daughters, lost in a conflict far from home. The editors and writers of this publication have stood, since the first rumbles of war were heard this past summer, staunchly against an attack on Iraq. Our reasons are myriad, and have been carefully and meticulously detailed on these pages. Manifest among our reasons was a dread that images such at these would become all too common.

There are few areas of service to America more honorable than that of military service. Our sons and daughters step to the line and take their oath because they believe their nation to be the best on earth. Implicit in that oath, however, is a leap of faith on the part of these troops. They trust that they will not be used, that their lives will not be spent, in actions and wars that do not merit the shedding of their blood. They trust their leaders when they put on the uniform. In this matter of war on Iraq, that trust has been betrayed, and these children of ours have paid the highest price for that betrayal.

We take no joy from showing these images. We mean absolutely no disrespect to the brave soldiers who have lost their lives, to their families and friends, and to those who continue to fight. We honor them in our souls, and thank them for their sacrifice and trust. At the end of the day, however, we are an information service. These pictures vividly demonstrate the cost of war in Iraq upon our beloved children. If you would know what war is, what this war has become, then you must look and understand.

May God be with these men and women, and with their families, and with us all. truthout

You can click on a link to go on to view the images (which are not only of the captured but of the killed) …or not.

“…I read The Baby Book. And in my sleep-deprived brain, I came to the conviction that Dr. Sears was right about everything–even though I would have preferred it if he weren’t–and that if I really loved my child as much as I was certain I did, I would quit my job and sell my husband’s camera equipment so I could invest in more nursing bras, since I’d be needing them for some years to come. Through Dr. Sears’s eyes, I could see that my frequent desire to escape from my screaming infant meant that I was insufficiently bonded with her. That was a horrible thought. But I also knew the cure prescribed by Dr. Sears: ask those around me to lift some of the burdens of cooking and laundry from my sagging shoulders, so I could spend more time breastfeeding and sleeping with the baby. Then undoubtedly I would begin to love her the way nature intended me to: sublimely, unfailingly, with all my other interests in life falling away like dandruff to leave only the single pure desire to give my daughter everything she needed, everything she wanted, everything that every baby should have.

Oh, I wasn’t completely taken in. I figured out within the first couple of chapters that Dr. Sears’s whole family-bed-sleeping-exclusive-breastfeeding-non-working-mother thing was a little extreme, and that his occasional nods to diversity (“do what works for your family”) were probably inserted at the insistence of his editor. I never took him to be any counterpart to beloved Dr. Benjamin Spock, who assured a generation of mothers that they were doing just fine, that babies were resilient.” Brain.Child

…(I)n the spring of 1998 I developed a new elective course, “The Code of the Warrior,” which in turn inspired my book, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present. The aim of both the course and the book is to examine the values that are explicit and implicit within the “warrior ethos” and to try to make sense of those values in a modern American context. My students and I study the warrior’s codes associated (in fiction or in fact) with the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, the Celts, medieval knights, Zulus, Native Americans, Chinese monks, and Japanese samurai. We talk about how the purpose of a code is to restrain warriors, for their own good as much as for the good of others. The essential element of a warrior’s code is that it must set definite limits on what warriors can and cannot do if they want to continue to be regarded as warriors, not murderers or cowards. For the warrior who has such a code, certain actions remain unthinkable, even in the most dire or extreme circumstances. Chronicle of Higher Education

to be anti-war. Internet Week

“Perhaps the least surprising thing about the second Gulf war is that it began with a volley of Tomahawk missiles. Since they were first used in the 1991 conflict, they have become the ultimate symbol of US military power. Oliver Burkeman reveals how a hi-tech weapon that promised blood-free combat changed the way America thinks about war.” Guardian/UK

Many opposed to war find the adulation of precision-guided weaponry to be like the worship of Mammon, mollifying — realistically or not — those concerned with civilian casualties and helping to make war more conceivable and thus more likely. The war planners are able to think the unthinkable, and for the American consumers it is treated as little more than a video game. But this is nothing new; those who opposed the Vietnam War frequently cited the impersonality of high-altitude bombing as sanitizing war then too and making it more palatable to the warmongers and the viewing audience. In Gulf War I and as the buildup to Gulf War II mounted, many wsere lulled by the thought that, in addition to higher-and-higher-tech, we might be perfecting lower-and-lower-bodycount war as well. The gospel was that, after Vietnam, the American public would not accept a war with virtually any casualties; and that it was feasible to prosecute a war without losing our own (except from those pesky helicopter crashes that seem to happen so often; we must be skimping horribly on our maintenance budget, or our training for technicians, despite soaring defense expenditures). That turns out to be laughable, arrogant, deluded thinking. But it remains to be seen, as fierce Iraqi resistance persists and US body counts defy all expectations, whether it will turn the tide of popular opinion.

“Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box…”

— Country Joe MacDonald

“Today’s most ardent American imperialists weren’t born in the USA.” Boston Globe

“I don’t think it will be anything like radio during the Vietnam War, when radio was the voice of the revolution and the voice of the other side. Now you’re not going to get any of that: you’re going to get the voice of the corporate world.” NY Times

“The United States believes Russian company technicians are in Baghdad helping the Iraqis operate electronic jamming systems that could impair the U.S.-led war against Iraq, a U.S. official said on Monday.” Washington Post

Again, the law of unintended consequences of our overweening rush to unilateral war; could this escalate to a direct US-Russian rupture and unimaginable widening of the conflict? The Russians have investments to protect in Iraq, and if they are jamming GPS signals, this is a big deal; our so-smart bombs are not-so-smart anymore. Of course, however, Russia denies doing this; perhaps a third party diverted Russian technlogy to the Iraqis?

“Little did I know that my inquiry would become a suspicious activity in itself.” — Courtland Milloy, Washington Post

“

“Are we to ignore our own consciences because he has determined to ignore our protests?” — Peter Gomes (Harvard University Chaplain), Boston Globe

What the Public Should Know [via mousemusings]

“According to a Drug Policy Alliance action alert, a pair of bills moving through Congress could effectively spell the end of live music and dancing in the United States.” Take measures in three easy steps at this site.

Maureen Dowd: “

“Teams of technical experts, now preparing enter Iraq, are on a search and destroy mission – to find and secure Saddam Hussein’s alleged chemical and biological weapons. They are likely to follow closely behind the US and UK ground troops who entered Iraq on Thursday.

Former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer is preparing for service with the teams. He told New Scientist from Kuwait that “finding the weapons themselves may well take some time – unless of course, some are used”.

The “mobile exploitation teams” are being organised by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the part of the US Department of Defense that handles weapons inspections under treaties, and helps destroy old Soviet weapons. New Scientist

Related: US Checking Several Possible Chemical Sites:

“U.S. forces pressed to find the first cache of Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons, seizing a suspected chemical factory in southern Iraq and checking other sites based on leads from captured Iraqis and documents.

Officials cautioned it was premature to conclude any forbidden weapons had been located.” The Star (Malaysia)

Thre’s more: US Interviewing POWs to Find Chemical Sites:

“The U.S. military is moving quickly to interrogate more than 2,000 Iraqi POWs — including two generals — for information about the location of chemical and biological weapons.

But so far, no tips have led U.S. forces to uncover any of Saddam Hussein’s deadliest weapons. ” USA Today

And:

Chemical weapon find report ‘premature’: US

Reports that US troops have found a suspected chemical factory in Iraq were “premature”, the Pentagon said today.

Officials were trying to determine whether the plant, near the city of An Najaf, which US troops reached today on a push to Baghdad, was involved in making chemical weapons, officials said.
(…)

Meanwhile, Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for UN weapons inspectors, said the weapons inspectors are not aware of any large-scale chemical sites which could be used to make chemical weapons in An Najaf. However, there are many such dual-use sites in other parts of the country because of Iraq’s petrochemical industry.” Sydney Morning Herald

“The mystery respiratory illness that has caused worldwide alarm and killed 16 people belongs to the paramyxovirus family, tests on patients in Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore strongly suggest.

But although the identification of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) will come as an enormous relief to public health officials, there are no effective drugs to treat it.” New Scientist

Yet another emerging viral disease than appears to have ‘jumped’ from its animal origins to human infection.

“A vital ingredient of curry prevents alcohol-related liver disease, a study of rats has found.

Curcumin, the substance that gives the spice turmeric its distinctive yellow colour, stopped the changes caused by excessive alcohol consumption that lead to liver damage.

The research adds to the repertoire of benefits already shown by curcumin, which include anti-oxidant properties and anti-cancer activity.” New Scientist

So — epidemiologically — do curry-eating human populations have less alcohol-related liver damage per liter consumed?

If there’s anyone you would want to muzzle during the Oscars to prevent politicizing the banal festivities, it would by Michael Moore. Too bad he won, Mr. Bush.