Left I on the News

In June, less than a year ago, the House of Representatives set up a "Memorial Wall" inside the House with the names of the dead U.S. service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The memorial is already out of space!!! Indeed, there are nearly 400 more names of those Americans who have died for whom there is no room. Rep. William Delahunt says this:

"This states so poignantly and ironically that we never thought about needing extra space. The concept of the wall is laudable, but no one wanted to think about how many more soldiers would die."

Well, no one in Congress, Rep. Delahunt. There are plenty of us out here who have thought about it plenty and who, like Sen. Mike Gravel, think that the only thing worse than soldiers dying in vain is more soldiers dying in vain.

Actually, there is something worse. And that's the Iraqis and Afghans who have died either because they were in the wrong place (their own country) at the wrong time (the time when imperialism was raging around the world), or because they tried to resist the occupation of their countries. But the U.S. Congress building isn't big enough for a wall that could hold all their names.

The picture, incidentally, depicts only about a quarter of the wall. 3736 (the number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan) doesn't seem like a large number, as numbers go, but when you look at a plaque listing all of them (or all but a few hundred), it's one hell of a lot.