Lest we forget . . .

Frank's always good. But when he's in a Blood Red Fury, he's great!

What we liberated in Iraq was every bit as bad as the horrors of Nazi Germany. Any reasoning we had for invading was made moot by the discovery of the first "Childrens Prison" on the 4th day of the Invasion. We may not have gone in for that reason, but once we discovered them, and the mass graves, nothing else mattered.

When I watched old war movies when I was a kid, my dad told me to remember every time I saw a bomber fall from the sky in that stock footage, I was watching 11 men who would not be coming home. He reminded me that the stock gun camera footage in movies wasn't Hollywood, that it was real, men did die and people did get killed. I was not to cheer, even when it was a Messerschmidt getting shot in the film, it was an airplane, piloted by a man. That man had family, good or bad right wrong, the plane was real, the man flying it was real, and a family that mourns his loss even today, is real.

The pictures that follow aren't Hollywood, they are real. All too real I am afraid. And shame on us all for forgetting the cost they paid before we finally put a stop to it.

I'm with Frank on the children's prison. After I read about that I no longer cared about any of the other dozen reasons for getting rid of Saddam Hussein.

Come tell me how the world is really made 'shades of grey' and how silly and simpleminded I am for thinking that there is real evil at work in the world and that we have a duty to stop it. Come and tell me that we Americans are the same as Saddam and his thugs. Come and tell me that the United States is the biggest threat to peace in the world. Tell me that our war in Iraq was a mistake and our President a lying fool for sending us there.

Talk to me until the rivers run dry and the atmosphere evaporates into space, then go tell these people about the evils of America. Tell them how all we want is their oil. They will tell you they would gladly give it to us if only we could bring back the lives of their children, their wives, their husbands, all butchered at the hands of the Tikiri clan. Be sure you tell them how you feel we should never have gone to Iraq because it wasnt a threat to America. Be sure you tell them how you wish the UN sanctions should have been allowed to work, even after they had been in place for 10 years, killing thousands.

The pictures in Frank's post are unsettling, but a reminder of what kind of monster was running Iraq. And if John Kerry was in charge, Saddam would still be there. And these pictures would continue to be daily occurences.