2,500 dead: How many more?

Cindy Sheehan someone likes my pic.
On Feb. 1, I was arrested at the State of the Union address for wearing a Veterans for Peace shirt that read: "2,245 Dead. How many more?" A little more than four months later, we are now tragically marking the deaths of 255 more of our brave and wonderful young American soldiers. So today, with 2,500 dead, I ask again: How many more? And with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians -- maybe even a lot more than 100,000 -- killed, I ask: How many more? All of their families, American and Iraqi, will never be the same again due to the trickery and deceit of the commander in chief of the U.S. military and his advisers and cabinet members. And for what? So Halliburton can get reconstruction contracts and Exxon Mobil can lay its pipelines and charge $3.50 for a gallon of gas?...

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Iraq mother condemns army 'blood money'
Lorna Martin, The Observer

The mother of a soldier killed in the Iraq war has condemned the army's decision to offer a lucrative bounty to troops who persuade their friends to join the forces. Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed in Basra a month after completing his training, called it 'blood money'. The army is offering members of infantry and artillery regiments £1,300 per recruit in an attempt to reverse a recruitment shortfall that has left the forces 2000 soldiers below strength...

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