Women, kids, old, sick most at risk in Iraq (Reuters)

Women and Children First: The Lessons of Iraq

Sunday, 26 November 2006

Single women, children and the old and sick in Iraq are most at risk of being left hungry and homeless among people uprooted by the sectarian violence, an international aid group warned on Tuesday. In a report, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that children were especially vulnerable to malnutrition and spread of disease.

"... traditional coping mechanisms are not only being stretched to the limit but are starting to break down," said Rafiq Tschannen, IOM's chief of mission for Iraq. Even in the "comparatively stable" Qadissiya province, some 200 kms south of Baghdad, some 11 percent of the displaced are widows left alone to fend for themselves and their children, according to the report by the Geneva-based agency. According to the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), some 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month because of the violence adding to the more than 1.5 million already homeless within Iraq.

Ho-hum. Old news. We've killed hundreds of thousands of these weaklings already, been killing them for years, with sanctions, bombs, snipers, chaos, deprivation, whatever. Who cares? You know what's really important? If Jim Baker can "seal his legacy in the realm of statesmen" by spraying enough perfume on the shitheap that Junior Bush has made of Iraq so that the high and mighty of the American Establishment can slither out of the mire without smelling too bad.

That's what it's all about, baby, that's the kind of thing that counts. How a lifelong, bloodstained bagman can become a "second Disraeli." How Hillary and Obama can nuance their positions to squeeze maximum political mileage out of the American-made mass slaughter in Iraq. How many he-man poses John McCain can strike on his knees as he grovels to the slavering extremists he thinks will make him president. >>> cont

Chris Floyd