Iraq TRAGEDY, and we are ALL to blame

If there were not such a pathetic media blackout of Iraq war coverage, more people would be upset about what's going on in OUR NAME. As it is, we can sit in complacent comfort in our own homes, ecstatically ignorant about the devastating suffering endured by millions of Iraqis at the hands of a totalitarian American government WE are too lazy to topple.

From AlterNet's War on Iraq:

*80% of Iraqis lack access to sanitation, 70% lack regular access to clean water and 60% lack access to the public food distribution system… As a result of these multiple public health failings, diarrhea and respiratory infections now account for two-thirds of the deaths of children under 5… According to a 2006 national survey conducted by UNICEF, 21% of Iraqi children are chronically malnourished.

*And then there's the poorly covered refugee crisis -- probably the worst on the planet at this moment -- gripping the country. Almost 4 million Iraqis have had to leave their homes, according to Refugees International.

*Iraq is producing one of the -- if not the -- most severe refugee crisis on the planet, a crisis without a name and without significant attention.

*Let's start with the numbers, inadequate as they are. The latest UN figures concerning the refugee crisis in Iraq indicate that between 1-1.2 million Iraqis have fled across the border into Syria; about 750,000 have crossed into Jordan (increasing its modest population of 5.5 million by 14%); at least another 150,000 have made it to Lebanon; over 150,000 have emigrated to Egypt; and -- these figures are the trickiest of all -- over 1.9 million are now estimated to have been internally displaced by civil war and sectarian cleansing within Iraq.

*These numbers are staggering in a population estimated in the pre-invasion years at only 26 million. At a bare minimum, in other words, at least one out of every seven Iraqis has had to flee his or her home due to the violence and chaos set off by the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq.