Occupation's Toll: 5 Million Iraqi Children Orphaned - December 18, 2007

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/70886/?page=entire

5 Million Iraqi Orphans, Anti-corruption Board Reveals

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted December 18, 2007.

Voices of Iraq

Iraq's anti-corruption board revealed on Saturday that there were five million Iraqi orphans as reported by official government statistics, urging the government, parliament, and NGOs to be in constant contact with Iraq's parentless children.

"The government should set up an institutional or legislative program to help the Iraqi orphans. Iraqi is an oil-rich country and it is not acceptable that its orphans remain groaning in this tragedy," the anti-corruption board chief, Moussa Faraj, said during a conference in Baghdad dedicated to orphans in Iraq.

Harsh Reality for Iraq's Orphans

Voices of Iraq

Unlike orphans in many countries in the world, most Iraqi orphans lost their parents around the same time and under horrible circumstances. In addition to their desire for compassion and care, those children need to overcome their sad memories and make a new beginning in life.

Recounting her traumatic memories, Halima, a nine-year-old girl who is living in a public orphanage, said that she lost her parents in a blast that ripped through a local market in a Baghdad neighborhood.

"We were shopping in a popular market in Baghdad al-Jadida neighborhood when a car bomb detonated. I still recall how bodies turned into charcoal," Halima told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

[bdamomma]

1. I am too angry to make a response.

but this will come back to bite us. Sorry to be so blunt.

[whistle]

2. To be orphaned means that both parents have been killed, and in a country

...where the population before Bush's War was 26 million and now is 23 million of which 5.0 million children now are without parents is a staggering social cost. That burden on a society with such hostile sects can only mean the mass genocide so many war defenders talk about will begin with these orphaned children and will move to the badly wounded and disabled. This is beyond horrible, this situation is an atrocity and a war crime.

<snip>
Much farther down the road to hell: Americans ignore U.S. atrocities in Iraq
by John Kaminski [e-mail]

<snip>
But the capper was this:

. An Iraqi mother has written to President Bush and other top politicos around the world to ask them to explain why her son was deliberately murdered by U.S. troops. In her heart-wrenching letter, she explained that her 19-year-old son, who was soon to be married, was returning home with friends when their truck broke down. After being confronted by an American patrol, they were searched and handcuffed, and led three kilometers to a nearby dam, then ordered to jump into the raging waters.

One of the three boys survived to tell the tale, but her son, who could not swim, was never found, only his jacket. Then as a final signature, U.S. soldiers flattened the boys' vehicle by running over it with heavy equipment.

The distraught mother, wrote: "To document the incident, my son's name is Zaydun Ma'mun Fadhil Hassun Al-Samarrai, born in the 1st of June
1984...Yes, they killed him and they broke my heart, try to imagine that dear sirs and ask your wives how hard it is for a mother to see her fruit ripen only to be thrown by sinful hands and to be swept away without any mercy or humanity. Those soldiers have turned everything America has ever stood for into one big lie. I was a victim, and there are and will be many more."

(You need to read this whole story, and see the boy's photo, if you want to really cry
(http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2004_01_01_healingiraq_archive.html)

<and MORE>


http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/john_kaminski/americans_ignore_atrocities_in_iraq.htm

[patrice]

3. Beyond words . . . .

really . . . words do no Justice for what we've done, only actions can.

[katsy]

4. 5M orphans and they want us to believe only 100K or fewer Iraqis have died?

What a disgrace. What a crime. Those poor children. :cry:


I hope karma comes back to bite these mass murderers and their spawn forever.