From a dead-serious humorist

 Monty Python's Terry Jones :

" I just read a piece in the Guardian this week, in which the writer asked why people were getting so distressed and putting up so much money to help the victims of the tsunami disaster - which I applaud, by the way - when the same number of people have been killed in Iraq and nobody's making a fuss about them. No one's running fundraisers or aid programs to help the victims of the West in Iraq, but there have been at least 100,000 killed by U.S. and British bombs and artillery fire, according to the Lancet [a British medical journal], which is the only scientific estimate we've got. That's a huge number of people being killed. You can't say those people are better off than they would have been under Saddam Hussein."

From an interview by Laura Miller - Salon.com - Fri. Jan. 21, 2005