be just

07/17/07 "ICH" -- -- At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact, he didn't deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as "the mission" doesn't drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves. How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it? I'm afraid it's come to that: We are a people who psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. (Imagery of Smurfs and Teletubbies won't rise to the analogy, albeit as terrifying as those demons...

Reuters seeks U.S. probe into killing of Iraqi staff - Latest - News - Mirror.co.uk : "Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in Baghdad on Thursday in what witnesses said was a U.S. helicopter attack and which police in a preliminary report called 'random American bombardment'."

Situation of Iraqi children much worse than a year ago, UN says - International Herald Tribune : "GENEVA: The situation for Iraqi children is getting worse and, in some respects, it was better before the war began, a senior U.N. official said Monday. 'Children today are much worse off than they were a year ago, and they certainly are worse off than they were three years ago,' said Dan Toole, director of emergency programs for the United Nations Children's Fund. He said Iraqis no longer have safe access to a government-funded food basket, established under Saddam Hussein to deal with international sanctions."

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Gunmen kill 29 villagers in Iraq : "A police spokesman said a large group of gunmen surrounded Duwailiya village and killed men, women and children"

In Iraq, Partition Fears Begin to Rise - by Ali al-Fadhily "Americans want to alter the shape of our cities, dividing Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian groups living separately from each other," Khali Sadiq, a researcher in statistics at Baghdad University, told IPS. "They are not doing this directly, but they have obviously given room to militias and Iraqi forces to do the job," he said. "We are more than halfway towards a sectarian Iraq." A recent report has raised further suspicions that there is a U.S.-backed plan to partition the capital city, and possibly the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.