Report from Michael last night about civilian casualties.

[AlCzervik]

<snip>

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These are the bodies of Baghdad's unclaimed dead, collected from the morgues, the streets and even the city sewers. They are the men, the women and the children no one ever came for. Without names, without family to mourn them, these are the lost souls of the war. Only these men are here to mark their passing, strangers, volunteers compelled by conscience to help.

When I enter the morgue, says Sheikh Jamal al-Sadani (ph) from Sadr City, I don't see these human beings as Christian, Shia or Sunni, but I see them in death, embracing each other, naked, hugging, piled one on the other. I look to them as human beings, with it my duty to bury them so their sanctity will not be violated again.

On this morning the men load into cars and the bus the nearly 150-mile journey to Najaf. When they arrive, the volunteers prepare the plastic sheets and cotton shrouds to wrap the dead and do what they can to repel the touch and odor of death.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I only think about one thing, that one day I will face the same fate as these people have faced, and will there be someone to take care of me and bury me, too?

WARE: The bodies are ceremonially wrapped with earth and wrapped; each one numbered, photographed and listed on a computer database. And in graves dug by hand, the bodies are laid side by side, two to a grave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We've been doing this for 20 years under Saddam. But the numbers have increased, as have the difficulties, because now it's as if the streets are flowing with blood. Under Saddam they buried up to 40 people a month. Today the numbers are in the low hundreds.

"Now you see Iraqis' houses meant to be a family's safest place. And they've become like graves for the families because any minute, any second, they're ready to die by explosion, air strikes or car bombs. And no man and no government, American nor Iraqi, can fix it," he laments, "because now that will take a miracle."

more at link
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0709/13/acd.02.html

[Mabus]

1. I saw that this morning and broke down crying

The unclaimed bodies. It was the realities of what we are doing over there the media doesn't like show much less talk about. It is one thing to hear that 20, 30, 40 bodies showed up on the streets overnight and then seeing those same bodies being cared for and given proper burials.

It was a real kick in the gut.

[AlCzervik]

2. and what makes it worse, this is is only one area of the country.

[Mabus]

3. I know

What really set me off was the little feel good story that followed it shortly afterward. It was about the Iraqi kid who is getting medical treatment. All I could think of is, he wouldn't need medical treatment if we hadn't gone in and fucked up the country. In the matter of fifteen minutes I saw a story about the unclaimed dead being buried and then saw what we've done to the living.

:grr: