Ms. Schiavo and the children of Iraq

Pious hand wringing from congressional hypocrites about the death of Terri Schiavo, a woman who had no higher cortical function and no future as a sentient being. But none about what the UN Human Rights Commission's Jean Ziegler called the "silent daily massacre of hunger" of those with their whole futures before them. Ziegler called it "a form of murder" (AP in USA Today via dailyKos ). Forget feeding tubes. These children get no food.

The toll of hunger-related diseases daily in children under the age of 5 was estimated by the UN to be 17,000. Seventeen thousand children who died premature deaths today. And yesterday. And will tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. And so on, at 17,000 a day, half a million a month. Seventeen thousand children, half a million a month. The children of North Korea, the Palestinian areas, Sudan's Darfur region, Zimbabwe, India, Myanmar, the Philippines, Romania.

And the children of Iraq:

Almost twice as many Iraqi children are suffering from malnutrition since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, a U.N. monitor said Monday.

Four percent of Iraqis under age 5 went hungry in the months after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, and the rate nearly doubled to 7.7% last year, said Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.

The situation is "a result of the war led by coalition forces," he said.

Overall, more than a quarter of Iraqi children don't get enough to eat, Ziegler told the 53-nation commission, the top U.N. human rights watchdog.

The U.S. delegation did not respond to the report, and diplomats at the U.S. mission to the United Nations' European headquarters in Geneva also said they would not comment.

While Tom Delay prays and issues thinly veiled threats against Federal judges because a feeding tube was removed from a person with irreparable brain damage and no future (ThinkProgress via dailyKos), he remains complicit in "a form of murder" by starvation 17,000 times a day, half a million times a month. The murder of those with their whole lives in front of them.

And the children of Iraq.