(Illustration found here).

When I started this blog in late April 2007, the total-main topic of the every-day US news cycle was the nightmare of Iraq — the war was an unmitigated disaster. On April Fools Day that year, John McCain did a “walk freely” stroll through a Baghdad open-air market, while watching his ass were “…100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead,”  displaying in full view the clownish insanity of the entire endeavor.
Earlier in 2007, of course, George Jr. had pulled a quick-draw with his “surge” of about 20,000 new US troops into Iraq — and by April, people needed to see progress. Not only was the invasion ill-planned, and its affects horribly-underestimated by the assholes-in-charge, the entire adventure had descended into a hellish, ethnic/religious/culture slaughterhouse.
In late April, Laura Bush blubbered on the Today Show: “No one suffers more than their president and I do.”
On that same day, reports surfaced:

“Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.”

In the month of April 2007, 104 US troops died — since the March 2003 invasion, between 113,823 and 124,640 Iraqi civilians have died via violence, according to Iraq Body Count.
And those first posts at ‘Compatible Creatures’ were mostly about the war and its nefarious offshoots, especially focusing on the pure, arrogant-incompetent assholes who engineered the entire sordid mess — nasty names whispered into a dark, stinky wind: Paul ‘Wolfman‘ Wolfowitz, my favorite — a slimy shithead if there’s ever been one, and by April 2007 was president of the World Bank,  also then unethically-embroiled in financial scandal with his “neoconcubine,” which was real big deal after Iraq; Douglas Feith, once described as the “fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth,” and showed it; Richard Perle, nicknamed the Prince of Darkness;  and the more notable/infamous of the assholes, George Tenet, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, along with George Jr (nicknamed ‘Decider George‘ in those days), and of course, Dick Cheney .
And memories of The Dick on “Meet the Press” in March 2003: “Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

Fast forward to this weekend and take that ‘things have gotten so bad inside Iraq’ just a few steps further.
This from the violence just yesterday (via antiwar.com):

A string of coordinated attacks, some occurring within minutes of each other, left 51 dead and 159 wounded in Baghdad alone: A bomb in Jisr Diyala left seven dead and 20 wounded.
Seven people were killed and 15 more were wounded in Hussainiya.
Six people were killed and 15 more were wounded in a pair of blasts in Shabb.
A car bomb killed three and wounded 16 in Saidiya.
A bomb in Doura killed five people and wounded 15 more.
Five people were killed and 14 more were wounded in Kadhimiya.
A bomb in Abu Dsheer killed four people and wounded 15 more.
One person was killed and 12 more were wounded in a car bombing in Baghdad Jadida.
In Zaafaraniya, one person was killed and nine others were wounded in a bombing.
As many as six people were killed and 28 more were wounded in two Amil blasts.
A blast killed four people, including two children, at a park.
Also, two gunmen were killed during a security operation; one of them was a foreign national.
…
A very destructive car bomb in Tuz Khormato left 11 dead and 60 wounded.
Three bombs killed four people and wounded 67 more in Nasariya.
In Karbala, five people were killed and 11 more were wounded during a car bombing.
…
A bomb at a Madaen video game shop exploded, killing an eight-year-old and wounding three other children.
A military official’s bodyguard was shot dead.

So forth and so on — you get the terrible picture.

During those early blogs, I latched (via Google Images) onto the photograph shown above — a young, frightened girl with her family and others fleeing Basra in March 2003 — and have used it a bunch of times to illustrate the Iraqi horror. She carries a face of fear, and worse, an impression of not comprehending that terrible fear.
I’ve searched the InterWebs for any information on the little girl and what has happened to her in the past decade — she should now be 12 or 13, maybe. But no success.
Or is she still alive?
Most-likely she just vanished into a nightmare.

While The Dick and George Jr., along with the Wolfman and all of those other sonofabitches who perpetrated this nightmare who have walked away, scot-free, happy and un-frightened.