What's your kid worth?

It depends on whether the US forces who shot him or blew him up were involved in "security operations." If so, you get zip, momma. Otherwise it's no more than a few hundred bucks if you're lucky and you'd better be grateful for that. You're going to have "democracy" even if it kills you and the rest of your kids - that's the important thing.

Despite the ravings of Bush, I don't think the Iraqi people view the horror in the streets as a struggle for Democracy akin to the American Revolution, but as a struggle to stay alive, to preserve their families, protect their children from the chaos and destruction that define their lives. I wish George Bush could personally explain the necessity of all this to the parents of the countless dead children, the families destroyed because some soldier thought that book bag was a bomb, those grocery bags carried explosives, that car or boat looked suspicious or sometimes for no reason at all.

Our dysfunctional media have been shy about discussing Iraqi casualties caused by accident, malice, incompetence or design, but I read Greg Mitchell's article in in Editor and Publisher today about a flood of information coming out that not only illustrates the personal horror of this occupation in detail, but the sometimes heartless indifference to the atrocity that has resulted from George Bush's lies.

We are making an attempt to recompense some Iraqis for the loss of their family members, and payments are running into the tens of millions, but although the total seems large, the individual payments are insultingly small, as with the schoolboy shot for carrying books, whose parents got $500 -- and sometimes there is nothing at all as with the nine year old blown up by a bomb that we somehow dropped in the family orchard.

500 case studies obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act are available on their web site but are, says Mitchell, only the tip of the iceberg. Some stories, he says, can make you scream -- as for example:

"Claimant alleges that her two brothers were returning home with groceries from their business, when U.S. troops shot and killed them, thinking they were insurgents with bombs in the bags. I recommend approving this claim in the amount of $5,000."

Although troops often hand out information cards telling survivors how to apply for payments, too often they are denied, says the New York Times today. The Tikrit fisherman shot by trigger happy troops as he reached for the switch to turn off his boat's engine. According to the Times:

"He and his companion held up the fish in the air and shouted ‘Fish! Fish!’ to show they meant no harm,” said the Army report attached to the claim filed by the fisherman’s family. The Army refused to compensate for the killing, ruling that it was “combat activity,” but approved $3,500 for his boat, net and cellphone, which drifted away and were stolen."

You can read it and weep, but I'm too tired of it all to scream. We have raped, looted and pillaged this country and plunged it into a nightmare of anarchy and destruction and hatred of the US while the nitwit neocons, their stupid president and the oilpigs vacation on their ranches, look down their noses at us with disdain and talk about democracy.