Linda Heard writes (do only women think this way?)

Fallujah - Murder Made Respectable
By Linda S. Heard
Online Journal
11-17-4

Iraq is under martial law, complete with curfews and press
restrictions. A report in the prestigious Lancet says 100,000 Iraqi
civilians have been killed since the start of the invasion.
Unemployment is running at 70 percent, kidnappings and beheadings are
rife, while the breakdown in security has driven every international
aid agency out of the country.

But never mind, Fallujah - a town of 300,000 souls of which many have
already met their Maker - has finally been pacified. That'll teach
them to lay off foreign mercenaries in future. Oops! I mean
contractors, of course. Congratulations USA!

Now that all is right with the world, some 200,000 exiled civilians
can return home, provided they still have one that is. A report in
the Los Angeles Times describes the city as "a tableau of destroyed
buildings, burned-out cars, battered mosques and piles of rubble." No
building was sacrosanct including hospitals and clinics.

The fate of those who stayed behind because they have nowhere else to
go or did not want to abandon their belongings and valuables is
uncertain. Reports of families burying their dead in gardens, eking
out an existence on flour or dates, bleeding to death without medical
assistance or becoming ill after drinking contaminated water paint an
ugly picture.

We have yet to discover how many newly minted orphans there are,
courtesy of the Marines, such as five-year-old Aysha Saleem who lost
her parents and grandparents in one of the US military's "precision
strikes." Indeed, we may never know as the mouths of reporters
embedded with the troops open and close according to military dictates.

<here>.