[BREAK] Yes, I too feel bad about Barbaro's fate. But I also wonder at the different world we would live in had the NY Times, Wash Post and/or other major media outlets made it standard policy to print such eloquent eulogies on their most prominent pages for EVERY human death taken in the blood filled desert called Iraq. Do not EACH of the over 3000 dead American troops rate at least as much coverage as the death of a horse most had only heard of from his winning of a single race? Have we become so inured to the toll of war that
our perspective is this far out of whack? We vainly laud our human compassion in our treatment of such a marvelous beast, while, on a daily basis, most of us unconsciously ignore our own complicity in sending the younger generation in to see the elephant without the equipment needed to even grant a small edge of safety. (Of course, we now know of collateral brutality, like the torture of prisoners and illegal detention of thousands of innocents, are the offal of our Bushie butchery.) Is absolution granted when we march, once a year or less, in protest? (In one of life's cruelest ironies, there will be some who will suffer a moist eye over Barbaro who support Bush's desired escalation of this war that was lost before it began. I believe that, for them, all hope is lost!) Would that ALL of the innocent victims, be they American troops, soldiers of other countries in the coalition of the billing or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, that Bush's Baghdad Blunder be given a small percentage of the corporate media ink that this horse will be granted, around the globe, today. If we lived in such a world, war would not cease to rear its ugly head. However, the brutality war brings, once exposed in such an honest, prominent and, yes, fitting manner would help insure that the people of each nation would need to be convinced war was necessary and unavoidable before they'd subject their children, or those of others, to the carnage inherent in the human abattoir called war. Especially in a war founded on lies and kept going through intimidation of critics, like our attack, invasion and long-term occupation of an Iraq now beset with a civil war, we have constructed a horrifically efficient yet senseless human slaughterhouse that leaves dead, crippled and psychologically razed kids such that it makes Barbaros's fate seem a Godly kindness. JB ===== [/BREAK]

One Horse Dies - New York Times Editorial One Horse Dies Published: January 30, 2007 Why should we feel so much grief at the loss of one horse? After all, this is a world in which horses are sacrificed again and again for the sport of humans. Barbaro was euthanized yesterday, eight months after he shattered his right hind leg at the start of the Preakness Stakes. After an injury like that, most racehorses would have been put down minutes later. But every race is a complex equation — a balance of economics, athleticism, equine grace and conscience. Conscience often comes in last, but not in this case. Barbaro’s owners gave that horse exactly what he had given them, which is everything. It was the very least they could do, and yet it seemed truly exceptional in a sport that is as often barbarous as it is beautiful .

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