Legless in Gaza

Well, this should have been "Headless in Bagdad", but then, there are just as many kids in Gaza, percentage wise as anywhere else. Anyway, this post is in response to a link Juan Cole had at his place.

Headline: In Iraq, Children living without limbs left without support

Sounds like a lead in to a sick one liner, "They haven't got a leg to stand on..."

Fact is, there are more fat heads with asses to match than you would care to know who would think that was a funny thing to say.

In fact, there are a lot of those who would and do say such things who are high paid pundits and so-called best-selling authors. Rush would say it for sure and Coulter and Savage probably also.

Just the other day, while talking about nuclear war and that life would survive somehow, Rush quipped, "We may not, cockroaches will. That means some liberals will." Of course there are a slew of wannabe hate-mongers would say it for sure if they thought it would get them on television just like their hero.

Malkin would probably not say it. On the other hand, she would have a link on her web site to those who did.

The fact is, collateral damage has become an endemic disease. War has never been pretty, but now it has become utterly obscene.

During the Second World War there was a hand grenade called a "pineapple" because of its serrated casing -- the idea was that the casing would become, I think it was, sixteen pieces of shrapnel when the grenade exploded.

When I was in basic training in '62, I remember being told that the modern grenade had a coiled wire wound inside the casing. There were little nicks on the wire to ensure that it would break into thousands of tiny bits of shrapnel, which would be almost impossible to remove from a victim.

But hell, it's nothing new -- I read once about an anthropologist who was interviewing an old native Australian. The subject was the different kinds of flint arrowheads he had. Each one had a different purpose for hunting this or that kind of game. One arrowhead in particular interested the anthropologist. Because it was so thin, it was hard for him to understand how it could be used without breaking inside the target.

The old fellow smiled wryly and told the anthropologist that it was a war arrow, that is, for human game.

I realized right then that there was no hope for the human race -- well, not much hope, anyway.

Cluster bomblets, napalm by another name, thermobaric bombs, white phosphorus -- aw, is just too depressing to even think of listing all the devilishly clever ways we find to kill maim and crucify our fellow beings.

Meanwhile, ten year old Fatah humps around inside the house on his one leg. His mother won't let him go out and play -- she's afraid he might get hurt. Anyway, if he did go out, the other kids would tease him because he can't play soccer.