For a brief moment, the news of Scott McClellan’s Memoirs filled me with a kind of hope I hadn’t felt for a long time – that at long last, McClellan would raise within our nation a common loathing for what we have perpetrated on the people of Iraq, our citizens, and the world.

The war that began with the barbaric shout of “shock and awe,” has shocked our nation and the world with a kind of awe that has paralyzed millions of us into a voiceless rage, for of what use are our words against the malevolent forces of indifference to the suffering of the innocent?

As I searched through some of the articles on Iraq that have appeared on this site, the one titled “Iraq: How did we get here from there?” seems to fit the mood of many of us this day, and, so, I offer it once more, with the hope that our collective hearts and prayers, through some great miracle of our Merciful God, will stand with Scott, in appreciation for what he has done with decency and courage.

Meanwhile, we live in the fear that the commerce of our lives will continue, almost untouched, but for the families immediately involved with their dead and their maimed.

If McClellan’s revelations don’t bring us to our knees, and raise us up with a holy anger sufficient to melt the indifference to the evil we have unleashed upon our brothers and sisters at home and abroad, we will become a lost people, incapable of a modicum of human love and compassion.

The article that I found reflecting our situation today reminds us of the suffering of infants, who were born with deformed heads, linked to roughly 1,700 tons of depleted uranium-tipped weaponry that we have used on Iraq in both wars.

Better late than never, in the May 30th issue of the New York Times, Katie Couric tells us she had felt pressure from government officials and corporate executives to cast the war in a positive light, saying, it was “One of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism.”

In the same issue, p.A-14, an AP report tells us that at least 115 soldiers committed suicide in ‘07, up from 102 in ‘06. One-third died at the battlefront, 32 in Iraq and 4 in Afghanistan.

How fitting and salutary it would be if President Bush would issue a directive for a three-week period of mourning for the evil, the suffering, we have unleashed upon our land, our world.

May our collective Mea Culpas be heard throughout the land, and set us on the road to peace. Amen.

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