Every year at Pilgrimage time, I do not restrict my piety to its essential purpose — which all of Arès Pilgrims (see #0017us) share: going back to the Word’s roots on the place where the Creator in person replanted them —. I add to it a mortification (Sign 33/26-34) for our deceased brothers and sisters, whom I can feel in attendance invisible on this place where they used to pray together with us.

In 2006, I add on to it my alms to more dead people, a mortification for the Iraqi who ever since 2003 have died of war violence in loneliness without relatives or friends’ weeping for them (33/34).
In the Baghdad morgue alone 49,137 people who had died a violent death (shot execution style, beaten to death, tortured, beheaded, etc.) were recorded from April 5 to June 1st, 2006. Let’s note in passing that the number ought to be increased by the number, undisclosed, of the Iraqi military and police casualties. The province of Al-Anbar between Baghdad and Syria has been enduring disturbances (administration in a state of chaos, continual violence, telephone shortage) so that no statistics on war victims have been drawn up three years. Some Iraqi officials assess the Iraqi who have died of war violence at more than 100,000 since March 2003; other officials say the number may reach 200,000 or even more. In a 22-million population it is equivalent to 1%! In the same period 2,520 US troops were killed, which is significant, as it is, as regards an overequipped invader.
In short, while Saddam Hussein is currently taken to court over the execution of 148 Iraqi and likely to be condemned to death, we could, if we were not opponents of the death penalty and if we tended to have black humor, wonder what sort of punishment would be appropriate for the US administration, which ever since they attacked Iraq have been causing 1,000 times as many deaths as Saddam Hussein is being tried for.