According to the byline at the end of the original article, "Magie Dominic is author of The Queen of Peace Room, a personal exploration of violence in the second half of the twentieth century." This may explain why I've never heard of her before today.

But I've heard it all before.

(Link courtesy of WorldNetDaily)

What Century Are We In? by Magie Dominic

If war could bring peace, the definitive battle would have been fought millennia ago, on a wide-open field,

If evil tyrants would stop popping up like some sort of geo-politico-historical Whack-a-Mole, maybe we could stop fighting wars. But the bad guys never seem to learn the right lessons from the past. Instead, every aggressive tyrant comes to believe that he can win by avoiding the mistakes his predecessors have made. God help us if one of them is ever correct.

with sticks and stones and possibly spit.

Sounds like the chosen tactic of neolithic barbarians, as well as ANSWER's "black bloc". Fortunately, the cops have better weapons. For that matter, so do I.

Instead, today’s armies fight on with hard drives and software, with white noise and satellites, with specks on monitors erupting in flames. And smart weapons create the same images of disfigured women holding expressionless children — head too small for the hospital pillow, body too short for the bed.

Saddam, on the other hand, avoids this problem altogether. No child has ever come to harm under his regime.

Oh, right... except for the ones tortured in front of their parents. Or the ones starved so that SH can add another billion-dollar presidential palace to his real estate portfolio. Or the ones denied decent medical care because Iraq's assets are poured into WMD programs.

War has never fit children.

It's never been a particularly good fit for adults, either.

I’ve been reading old newspapers lately,

So she can read, big deal. Can she comprehend? No. Read on....

clippings with torn edges, dates marked in ink at the top. In the 1991 Gulf War, more than 59,000 tons of bombs were dropped monthly on Iraq. In Vietnam, 34,000 tons were dropped monthly. Vietnam doesn’t need a date to define it.

But she clearly cannot write. Or, more specifically, she cannot write clearly. I could spend the rest of my life searching for a point here, if I cared to waste the rest of my life.

Vietnam was the sixties. Iraq was the nineties. Everything else fell in between.

Including, apparently, the author's capacity for rational thought. Everything else of what, exactly?

Modern weapons create the same heartrending images of heartbroken men digging through rubble, searching for home, for family. If Iraq really does have nuclear facilities, why is the U.S. planning to bomb them? The UN has a ban against attacks on nuclear sites. Cruise missiles, once en-route, cannot be recalled. (In 1991, the U.S. bombed Iraqi reactors, exposing the civilian population to radioactive iodine.)

Well, if the choice is to temporarily expose people to radioactive iodine, from which all they have to do is flee, or to expose an American city to high intensity gamma-rays, overpressures, and temperatures greater than the surface of the sun, which do you think I might choose? Go on, guess.

During the six-week assault on Iraq, 84,000 tons of bombs were dropped, the equivalent of five Hiroshimas. I need to repeat that: 84,000 tons of bombs rained down, the equivalent of five Hiroshimas — and children were the largest group of casualties. Many died of hunger and cold. At the Cukurca refugee camp, eighty-six died in three days.

Five Hiroshimas? Let's see... so then we killed upwards of half a million people during the war? Wait, no.... according to the History Guy, civilian casualties during the Gulf war add up to about 2,300.

In Iraq, U.S. forces introduced ammunition made with depleted uranium, a radioactive waste. At least 940,000 of those toxic, armour-piercing rounds were fired. Dr. Eric Hoskins, a medical doctor with fifteen years of experience working in war zones, surveyed Iraq two years after the war as part of a Harvard Study Team. He estimates that 50,000 children died in the first eight months of 1991, many from the effects of spent rounds littering the ground. UN aid workers saw Iraqi children playing with empty radioactive shells. In Basra, a child was seen using them as hand puppets.

This could be a textbook example of how to lie with statistics. In fact, depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium (hence the "depleted" - Duh.) Indeed, even natural uranium has few, if any, health risks even after long-term exposure. (See this Washington Post article [link requires registration].) Handling of expended DU munitions has as much chance of causing you to sprout wings as it does of causing cancer. Dr. Eric Hoskins, associated with Ramsey Clark's International Action Center, is in fact lying to push an Idiotarian agenda. Stuff him.

Today, the U.S. possesses almost three-quarters of a million metric tons of depleted uranium — even though a 1996 UN subcommittee defined arms containing it as weapons of mass destruction.

Wow... a UN subcommittee? I'll be sure to write my sub-congressman immediately.

The mass destruction of Iraq’s water purification facilities hastened the spread of cholera and typhoid, and hastened the deaths of thousands of children. Protocol I of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 54 prohibits the destruction of objects indispensable to the survival of a civilian population, including food and drinking water. Near Baghdad, 12-million gallons of raw sewage spewed into the Tigris River hourly. Without access to television, radio or newspapers, families continued to rely on the Tigris for their drinking water.

What Article 54 (click link and scroll down) really says is "The Occupying Power may not alter the status of public officials or judges in the occupied territories, or in any way apply sanctions to or take any measures of coercion or discrimination against them, should they abstain from fulfilling their functions for reasons of conscience."

Magie is either 1) using a different version, or 2) lying to us, or 3) is too dumb to properly cite. Whichever way it is, I'm not going to do her work for her.

As many as a quarter of a million Iraqi civilians died as a result of the Gulf War.

No, 2,300 died as a result of the Gulf War. The remainder died as a result of the depredations of the Hussein regime. Moron.

Dr. Hoskins

The apparent Idiotarian

recently returned to Canada after another assessment mission to Iraq. His team found that 500,000 Iraqi children are malnourished and the country has only three months of medicine left. Now, with war looming once again, the children are more vulnerable than ever:

OK, help is on the way, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Or did Magie dearest think we were planning on rolling in and murdering these children before Saddam can?

“While it is impossible to predict both the nature of any war and the number of expected deaths and injuries, casualties among children will be in the thousands, probably in the tens of thousands and possibly in the hundreds of thousands ... Iraq’s 13-million children are at grave risk of starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma.”

In other words, it's impossible to predict, and here's the doctor's prediction. Wish I'd thought of making rhetorical points that way. But this ignores the underlying problem - that the children of Iraq are in danger because of Hussein, not because of efforts to remove him.

In 1991, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney — then Secretary of Defence — directed one of the largest and deadliest military campaigns in history. The Washington victory parade alone cost more than $12-million. The attack began late on a clear moonless night, while children were sleeping. Laser bombs work best when it’s clear; they become confused in the clouds.

Well, I'm sure Mr. Cheney really wanted to wait until daylight, when the children were all in their schoolrooms, so as to eliminate them more efficiently.

If any soldier can hear me, if any soldier can read this, in the name of God, realize why you have been called there. You have been called there to kill the children.

Ah, yes... "babykillers." It was only a matter of time before that slander reared its ugly head. Y'know, just once I hope to be within arm's reach of a dirty stinking hippie when that word spews forth. I'd do my time for battery with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart - if a jury could be found to convict me.

What century are we living in? What have we become?

Well, it's pretty clear that Magie is living in 1960's Berkeley, and clearer what she has become - a liar and a drooling idiot. Unless, of course, she started out that way. American, British, and other allied soldiers know exactly why they're there, and it isn't to hunt down and kill the children of Iraq.

Magie has not learned the lesson of Afghanistan. Indeed, she seems to go out of her way to ignore it. A year hence, will the children of Iraq be happier than they are now? Better educated? Will they be receiving more food, better medical attention? You bet your ass they will be - no thanks to deliberate fools like Magie Dominic.

Posted by Russ at 02:29 PM, March 18, 2003 in Nat'l Security