The View From On High

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/8375

The View From On High
by Jaime O'Neill | Jun 28 2007


Not long ago, Rupert Murdoch, the Moloch of global media, observed that the casualty figures in Iraq are "minute." Murdoch is the Australian gazillionaire who gave our nation Fox News, and a host of other outlets for the poison that has been seeping into the national consciousness almost from the moment he began buying up stuff here in the U.S. of A. Defending the war in Iraq at a conference in Tokyo during the first week of November, Murdoch said: "The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are (sic) quite minute."

Isn't it terrific that we have people who can see the big picture above the smoke of war? Aren't we lucky to have such men who can raise their heads above the blood, the gore, and the screams echoing the streets of Baghdad, men who are able to put everything in perspective for the rest of us? It must be a comfort to all those parents who will never hug their children again to know that the guy who signs Bill O'Reilly's paycheck has weighed the cost/benefit ratio in Iraq and has concluded that, in terms of lives sacrificed, we're getting off cheap.

For the record, that "minute" number of dead Americans in Iraq totaled 2,832 on the weekend Murdoch offered his assessment. Since he put those dead young men and women in perspective for us, that number has grown, of course, and it grows each day. That number now exceeds the number who died on September 11, 2001, and it will, by the time this piece sees print, be even higher. Every time one of the milestone numbers hit, it forces the news media to stop and take note of the dead.

snip//

It's just a number. Especially if it's none of your kin in any of those coffins, and especially if the war that took those lives is providing you with opportunities to make money, or advance your own personal career or agenda. Uncounted billions of dollars unaccounted for in Iraq, money stolen by the wheelbarrow load and carted away by corrupt contractors and subcontractors. How many billions? Who knows? Who cares?

It's just a number. Like the uncountable number of dreams gone up in smoke and fire. Like the uncountable billions of dollars spent on those dead men and women, on their educations, their school clothes and soccer lessons, their haircuts and their health care, their pediatricians and their prom dresses. Not cheap, all that went into bringing those 3500 dead up to the brink of adulthood.

Not cheap, any of it, but they're just numbers, unless it's your number that's up.

So, it's lucky we have people who can put these numbers in perspective for us, people who can see the view from on high and, in so doing, ease the pain of that loss for all the weenies in our midst.