“When you close your eyes, you see unheard pain.”
And untold horror. Loss that tears into me, and leaves me empty. The unbearable pain that does not kill. There are creatures which live on our eyelids, and demons which live beneath; every night, they crawl out.
We go on, with a full view of each other’s misery. On the banks of the fleuve tranquille, stand the wretched.¹

Years ago, I had read about all the deformed foetuses in southern Iraq, caused by the depleted uranium (DU) used in American ammunition and weaponry, during the first American war in Iraq. Uranium dust has spread all over the area, and, just like the Agent Orange (aka Monsanto Dioxin) babies in Vietnam, it will continue to plague generations to come.

This video’s early parts shows some of the ‘surviving’ children. The rest of the video is needlessly scientific in its explanations of uranium’s half-life etc; the human tragedy is expressive enough.

Every time you see A-10 Warthog attack aircrafts on the Discovery Channel, the above is what they leave behind.

…I can’t get the images out of my head. The look of the child, on the bed, with the tumour. The doctor’s facial expression when he talks of the inevitable death. How do they deal with this? The mother who inevitably falls in love with a child destined to die. “Destined”? More like killed, by our votes.

It reminds me of children in cancer wards. Working there takes a strength few of us rise up to.

In Iraq as in Vietnam, the suffering will continue as long as there is soil on earth.

¹ Cut from Mescaline Catechism.