The Dying Children of Iraq

I promised not to blog on Iraq but I just can't stand this:

"Sick or injured children who could otherwise be treated by simple means are left to die in hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources," the doctors say. "Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated," they add.

They say babies are being ventilated with a plastic tube in their noses and dying for want of an oxygen mask, while other babies are dying because of the lack of a phial of vitamin K or sterile needles, all costing about 95p. Hospitals have little hope of stopping fatal infections spreading from baby to baby because of the lack of surgical gloves, which cost about 3.5p a pair. (emphasis added)

Yes, that's 3.5 pence, or 7 cents!

In the meantime, we are spending $2,000,000,000 a week killing Iraqis. The total cost of the Iraq "War" if over a Trillion dollars. Yes, that's $1,000,000,000,000. This would buy over 10,000,000,000,000 pairs of gloves. Ten trillion pair of gloves.

And I sit here doing nothing.

(Oh, and "Up to 260,000 children may have died since the 2003 invasion of Iraq." If America was Iraq, that would be over 3,000,000 children. That's three million. I can't even think about these numbers without getting ill.)