Civillian Casualities in Iraq

The highly respected medicak journal The Lancet that has been at the fore front of medical research for more that 150 yearshas in a recent issue highlighted the consequences of the American areal bimbing on Iraq using a sophisticated statistical technique called cluster analysis. The margin of error is less that 3% in most cases.The team looked carefully at the mortality figure reported in select households in the week immediately preceeding the Ameican bombing campaign in March 2003. This figure was compared to the mortality reported after the campaign to "liberate" Bagdad from the forces loyal to Saddam. The team from John Hopkins University found that by correlating the figure thus obtained over 33 neighbourhoods estimated that more than 100,000 civillians, of whom the large propotion happen to be non combatant women and children,had died as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN ACTION.The unacceptable civillian casualities has made the World wonder whether the US Under George Bush has no qualms about inflicting death on unarmed civillians in the name of Freedom and Democracy.. George Bush spoke of winning political capital which he intends on the benefit of Americans. I would like to state the he has got this capital by wanton and callous bloodshed on a minumental scale.The report made public needs to be placed on the table of the Security Council and the opinion of the World raised againstsuch actions. It is of coursr not my case that the American political establishment be hauled before a war crimes tribunal.This will not happen and in 1945 the War Crimes Tribunal was set up only because Germany lost the war. More recentlyMilodovan Milosovisch was arraigned in the Hague only because he was militarily and politically defeated.However this does not negate the fact that atrocities and gross violations of the rules of combat are taking place in that insane and unneccessay war in Iraq and the world must protest.

GIRL BLOG FROM BAGDAD

I am an ardent blogger and have quite a few blogs posted in different web sites. I do not know why, but I do find the world of blogging extremely challenging. One goes to parts of the world one has only heard of, Bagdad for one. I read a particular blog form bagdad posted by a woman who calls herself riverbend, possibly she lives near the bend in the river Tigrios that flows through Bagdad. I have also been a keen advocate of peace in iraq and have done a lot of writing in my blogs on the atrocities of the US troops. However, I do not live in Iraq and my knowledge about what is happening in entirely from embedded journalists, whose reports are unvasrlnished American propaganda.

This brings me to riverbend. Her blogs are full of humour, not the dark black humour, but the humour that makes enduring the horrible nighmare of life in Bagdad bearable. She wries well, and I would even say that she is a stylish writer. There is no frenzied Yankee Get Out kind of reaction. She is much too educated for that. She records the sufferings of ordinary Iraqis who are outside the Green Zone who are trying to get by without losing their dignity and the compassion. I name RIVER BEND as the personality of the year who has brought the life in Bagdad within reach of people around the world.

I have read almost all her posts and have been touched by the simple and deliberrately understated manner in which she repotrs from the city of Bagdad.