Richard Dalton sent this seasonal message:
It's a rotten time to be faced with the realities of the Iraq war, but people won't stop dying and billions of dollars won't stop being wasted in Iraq, just because we are celebrating holidays.
MSNBC has a compendium of Iraq war casualty information, based on coverage in Newsweek, that includes the largely unnoticed fact the 25,000 members of the US military, dead and wounded, are
casualties of this horrific war. It also contains the estimate (from iraqbodycount.org) that more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, although many observers believe that total is very conservative.The American Friends Service Committee is coordinating vigils that will be held nationwide to mourn the losses following the
inevitable 3,000th US military death. The campaign slogan is "Not one more death. Not one more dollar."Finally, United for Peace and Justice is asking everyone to write to Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid's chief of staff, urging him to reverse his support for expansion of the number of US troops. While it's hard for me to believe that the the newly-powerful Democratic Congress would so quickly ignore the voter mandate against the war and the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, it seems to be happening. You can e-mail your protest to
Susan McCue or you can call: 202-224-2158 or 202-224-7003.Peace on earth, good will to men (and women).
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Briefs
- My mother spotted this in the Oregonian; financial columnist Malcolm Berko explains that foreigners don't hate our freedom, they hate our arrogance. Oregonian articles disappear behind a "paid" wall after a few days, so I found two reprints; one at a liberal site, one at a conservative site. Important disclaimer: I do not subscribe to the politics of either of the blogs at which I just pointed. But I do believe Berko has a point.
- What's Bush learned from his mistakes? Nothing. Thank you Dan Grobstein.
- My God, could we please talk about something besides Obama's middle name?
