A: When those children are Iraqis:

A boy weeps as others survey the damage caused by a US air strike on Fallujah. Picture:AFP

US forces launched new attacks yesterday in the towns of Fallujah and Tal Afar, which they say are havens for foreign militant fighters, killing at least 30 Iraqis, according to doctors.

Doctors in Fallujah said at least eight people were killed and 16 wounded. Doctor Rafi Hayad said half of those killed and injured were children.

In Tal Afar, a town west of Mosul, which the US says is a haven for foreign militants crossing from Syria, doctors said at least 17 people were killed and 51 wounded in heavy fighting.

Doctors at Tal Afar’s main hospital said fighting was continuing and casualties were expected to rise.
(Source: The Age)

Last week, Russia reeled at the loss of 336 people in a bloody terrorist siege, over half of them children. Understandably, it’s been the top story all week, with an emphasis on the number of children killed. The Western mass media has rightly been horrified and shocked at the loss of life.

But at the same time, US invasion forces still pummel Fallujah, killing countless civilians every single day, many of them children.

Do these children not count too? Are they less human because they’re Iraqis / Muslims?

We’ve been shown the horrific footage from the Russian atrocity. That will remain ingrained on anyone who’s seen it. I know I’ve had trouble sleeping since seeing it, which is partly why I’m typing this at 4am.

But we never see footage of all the Iraqis murdered by the US military. In fact, their murders don’t even merit counting by their “liberators”:

“We don’t do body counts”
General Tommy Franks, US Central Command
(Source: Iraq Body Count)

At the time of writing, between 11793 and 13802 Iraqis have been killed by the illegal invasion. Just how many of those were children, it’s impossible to say and the US military isn’t bothered, as long as they’re kept off our TVs. We never see the truckloads of children’s corpses. Remember this quote?:

This is what Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said last year:

“There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla. We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening.”

That footage was kept off our screens. But we got to see the Russian siege footage. Why? Well, we’re allowed to see the murders committed by our official enemies (Islamic terrorists in this case) but we’re not allowed to see the murders committed by ourselves and our allies.

Therefore, for the vast majority of people who haven’t got the time/inclination to look further, those crimes don’t exist. Thus, our media perpetuates the myth of the heroic liberation of Iraq, by deliberately ignoring the facts of the bloody invasion, our soldiers wading through the blood of the children they killed.

Do not for one instant dare to think I support the monsters who carried out the Russian murders. These people were evil, pure and simple.

All I’m saying is that anyone who treats human life so cheaply is evil. I want an equality of rights. If it’s wrong to kill Russian children, if that’s a supreme act of barbarism, then it’s also wrong to kill Iraqi children.

A life is a life, a human is a human. I don’t care if that human is American, Iraqi or Russian, their right to live is fundamental and anyone who denies that is a terrorist in my eyes.