Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs reported today that the death toll resulting from the US-Israeli bombing campaign is now 1,045. In a statement, the Foundation said that following the military strikes, a number of military personnel and civilians lost their lives, reported WANA from Tehran. According to the statement, the bodies of 1,045 victims have so far been laid to rest. The organization also emphasized that the process of identifying the victims and finalizing the statistics is still ongoing, and that additional information will be announced if the figures change.
Presumably, the Foundation figure includes the victims, now reported to number 180, of the bombing of a girls school in southern Iran on the first day of the war.
But even worse than the deaths as such, there are growing reports that some US troops are being told the bloodletting is all a part of God’s plan, writes Stephen Prager, staff writer for Common Dreams, in an article posted yesterday. Prager reports that Mikey Weinstein, the president and founder of Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told independent journalist Jonathan Larsen that the group has been “inundated” with complaints from NCOs since Saturday, which all have “one damn thing in freaking common.”
“Our MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’ as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation,” Weinstein said. “Many of their commanders,” he added, “are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology.”
