A reminder from Ted Rall on Memorial Day... to remember all..

" According to the Associated Press, Iraqi morgue records lead to a low-balled rough estimate of 33,000 additional civilians killed between May 2003 and April 2004. (This doesn't include those killed in explosions or those who were buried without ever going to a hospital.) These 63,000-plus people--yes, people--paid precisely the same price as our soldiers for deposing Saddam Hussein. But unlike our soldiers, they didn't volunteer.

No one, even Michael Moore, talks about the dead Taliban and Iraqi government soldiers, many of them conscripts. Yet the these tens of thousands, every bit as much as U.S. celebrity war heroes like Pat Tillman (killed, it turns out, by "friendly fire") died performing their duty, defending their countries against enemy forces. The fact that their side lost cannot diminish the horror of their destruction, wipe away the grief of their wives and children, or dishonor their sacrifice. God knows we try. We pretend that our 880 dead soldiers, followed at a distant second by civilians reduced to "collateral damage," are the only losses that matter out of nearly 100,000.

American lives are precious, but we-and our soldiers--are no more valuable than any anyone else. Until we accept our founding principle that we are all created equal and start acting accordingly, we'll keep wondering why the world holds us in contempt.

(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right,"