How nice it must be to view the world through CNN's glasses.

How ugly it must be to see the real world. Don't break your arms patting yourselves on the back.

ALI Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was fast asleep when war shattered his life.

A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned - and blowing off both his arms.

With tears running down his face he asked: "Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit suicide.

"I wanted to be an army officer when I grow up but not any more. Now I want to be a doctor - but how can I? I don't have hands."
...

The Red Cross has been touring hospitals with first aid and surgery kits. Spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin said: "They were overwhelmed by sheer numbers - during fierce bombardment they received up to 100 casualties an hour."

Doctors who treated victims of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and the 1991 Gulf War were taken aback by the injuries. Dr Duleimi, 48, said: "This is the worst I've seen in the number of casualties and fatal wounds.

"This is a disaster because they're attacking civilians."

Dr Sadek al-Mukhtar said: "In the previous battles the weapons seemed merely disabling. Now they're much more lethal.

"Before the war I did not regard America as my enemy. Now I do. War should be against the military. America is killing civilians."

[link|http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12821263&method=full&siteid=50143|Baghdad hospital overrun with civilian casualties]

What in the world does CNN have to do with Bush's State of the Union address or how he is following his "blueprint" to the letter?

The civilian casualties are terrible. Period. They are in every war. I'm no prophet and neither are you. We'll both just have to wait and see if these people died in vain.

Do you in any way, shape or form believe that sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one? (In my best Spock voice).

Mike, you profess to be a communist, yet you know very little about totalitarianism or fascism and how communism (an utopian economic treatise) lends itself beautifully to man's inherent need for territorialism and power - to the core of fascism. You have summed up beautifully the dissonance between you and I. I look at the world and comment, you seem to look at an ideal world and complain when the real one doesn't meet your expectations. Been there and done that.

You continually (for years) mistake American fear and knee jerk politics for fascism, yet you will not allow yourself any optimism when a true fascist regime falls. Lighten up. We can kill the Patriot Act (we will) after it's usefullness is finished. We will because we are a democracy and can change unjust laws at the ballot box unlike the citizen's in true fascist states. YMMV.

Welcome to IWETHEY!