Dark Bilious Vapors

Listing of Iraq Conflict Casualties: Details

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Faces of the Fallen

Garry Trudeau's take on the day (from Sunday's full color panel).

Mark Evanier's musing on the meaning of Memorial Day:

It also bothers me that so much of Memorial Day, as well as talk of the human cost of war, is about dead bodies. I don't mean to minimize those sickening numbers in any way but they're not the whole story. Not only are lives ended in war but lives are shattered. Men and women come back minus limbs or with physical scars that will never heal. Some suffer emotional damage, as do their families. Years ago, I worked with a guy who'd spent a year in Vietnam and was still enduring nightmares and popping tranquilizers due to (he said) that experience. But he didn't show up on any stats that tracked the dead or disabled from 'Nam. On Memorial Day, guys like him never got a mention. He also never got any worthwhile medical or financial support from his government.

A lot of people in this country -- a growing number, if we believe the polls -- are calling for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq, quickly if not immediately. John Kerry has not called for this. In fact, I'm not sure I can explain how his position on the war is that different from Bush's, although Kerry has long been for U.N. oversight and more international cooperation...a view to which Bush seems to be moving. Still, a lot of people are attacking Kerry as if he had called for quick withdrawal or as if his Iraq plan was utterly unlike the current course of action. (Al Gore's fiery speech the other day is also getting criticized as if he'd demanded an immediate pullout...which is not at all what he said.) I don't know what's going to happen except that next Memorial Day, I'm afraid, Garry Trudeau is going to have to use an even smaller typeface...and maybe serialize the names over a whole week.

Len on 05.31.04 @ 12:05 PM CST