Make us your home page!
Authors, sign in!
Too many young men and women have died or have been maimed in this horrific war. We owe it to them to take a good hard look at the facts. (Senator Robert Byrd)As this draining, desultory, and dreadful occupation of Iraq drags on, we must not lose sight of its enormous human costs.
Many years after the Vietnam War, "The Wall" was built in Washington DC to remember the fallen of that war. Slowly, over the years, people have become acquainted with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the over 58,000 names of Americans inscribed there. For the last twenty years or so, visitors have continually left mementos at The Wall and taken rubbings of its names.
Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, hundreds of Internet sites offer new ways to remember, honor or simply learn about casualties. Numerous sites have been created to memorialize individual loved ones. Some are simple MySpace pages, while others are more elaborate or interactive. Usually created by family or friends, these individualized digital monuments may include eulogies, notes of condolence, photos, or multimedia recordings.
A few ambitious sites track trends or maintain huge lists of the war casualties...
I've placed a few of these larger sites in my favorites list and try to visit them every week or so. These larger sites maintain databases with records of all of the current war's casualties, both wounded and dead. The site I visit to become acquainted with American casualties is icasualties.org. To learn about Iraqi casualites, I go to iraqbodycount.org.
The latter site has information regarding 84,050 to 91,713 documented Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from violence in Iraq since 2003. 
As of today, the former site counts 4,083 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. Similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, they maintain a complete list of U.S. Deaths here.
I also sometimes visit the Washington Post's site because they maintain a listing of the U.S. fatalities along with their pictures. This page shows the trend charts.
We must not fail to acknowledge the daily costs of war.
Too many young men and women have died or have been maimed in this horrific war. We owe it to them to take a good hard look at the facts....We all say that we support the troops.
These brave men and women have been given a near impossible task, which they have performed with dedication, professionalism, courage, and honor. The Congress has provided everything the generals have asked for, and more. The President has taken that support for our men and women in uniform to imply support and even validation of his policy. He wants to keep the U.S. military tied down in Iraq indefinitely, trying to bargain for a little more time, time and time again, never grasping that his policy is fatally flawed. History shows the fallacy of thinking that democracy can be force-fed at the point of a gun.
The nation was led to believe that our troops would be greeted as liberators, and that oil money would pay for Iraq's reconstruction. Now, while the half-truths have changed, the strategy of misleading the nation remains the same....
Iraq may descend further into chaos if U.S. troops leave now, or it may descend into chaos whenever they leave. As long as the United States keeps the peace in Iraq, there is no incentive for Iraqis to maintain the peace on their own....
This war, this draining, desultory, dreadful occupation of Iraq must end.
(Senator Robert Byrd, see the full text here, September 26, 2007)
twitter
facebook
Technorati
digg
BuzzFlash
StumbleUpon
newsvine
del.icio.us
reddit
Google
Yahoo
Comments (1)
I've "favorited" those links. Thanks!
Posted by Lola Wheeler
|
May 27, 2008 10:37 PM
Posted on May 27, 2008 22:37