By Susanna Juon-Gilk

Often at night I lie awake, unable to sleep. Happenings; things which move or puzzle me, troublesome and unresolved thoughts surround and spin a web around me. This in itself is nothing unusual. It happens to most people.

The day before I had been at the local library and had checked again the website, www.iraqbodycount.org, as I had done in previous weeks and months. …7000-9000 civilian deaths, images and articles which the mainstream media refuse to print or show. “Daily 100 injured people arrive at local hospitals in Iraq … bodies of women and children, often with lost limbs.” I search in vain for information about numbers of dead or wounded Iraqi soldiers. Nobody seems to know or keep track of them. But I know their wives, mothers, children, sisters and brothers mourn them as deeply as we mourn our soldiers.

I think about the stories in the book I am reading, Hell, Resistance and Healing by Daniel Hallock, stories of war veterans whose bodies survived the trauma of war but whose minds and souls cannot find peace after what they have endured, seen and done.

Salam Talib, an associate of Voices in the Wilderness in Baghdad, presented us with a new idea for a non-governmental organization to start in Iraq called “Rent-a-Whitey.” His humorous and yet accurate reflections on the lack of self-determination for Iraqis under the US occupation betray an extremely troublesome aspect of life for ordinary Iraqis.