Saddam Hussein brought war upon his nation, period.

This movie touched me deeply. I am a mother to three young boys and could not for one minute imagine them (or anyone's children for that matter) alone, frightened and basically left for dead as these children were.
Many times during this film, I kept wondering where the adults were? I realize many if not all of these children were orphans, but why were there no adults to watch over them? Did anyone else notice the absence of females? Except for Agrin, there didn't seem to be any. I realize these were dire circumstances, but were there no adults to watch over these children?

While I firmly believe the US has the blood of the innocent on its own hands, people are quick to blame us soley for the war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a ruthless, sociopathic, murderer of his own people as well. While he slept in palaces made of 24 carat gold, his own people were starving to death. In July 1999, Forbes Magazine estimated Saddam Hussein's personal wealth at $6 billion, acquired primarily from oil and smuggling. For 20+ years, the greatest threat to Iraqis has been Saddam Hussein's regime...he has killed, tortured, raped and terrorized the Iraqi people and his neighbors for over 20 years. HE brought all the suffering and war upon his nation.

Amd who are the victims? Too bad we can't ask the mostly women and children who were chemically attacked in the 1988-89 Anfal campaign which targeted the Kurdish people in northern Iraq to the most widespread attack of chemical weapons ever used against a civilian population. Saddam's Iraqi military attacked a number of towns and villages in northern Iraq with a vengeance! In the town of Halabja alone, an estimated 5,000 civilians were killed and more than 10,000 were injured. I wonder which palace Saddam then settled into afterwards for a nice dinner and relaxation?

Where has our humanity gone? When did it become acceptable to watch people starve to death or die from lack of medical care? When did we acquire the right to burn someone's home to the ground and then commit the unthinkable and rape their children and leave them for dead? Is it because we have blood lust for more money, more power, more, more, more??! "You don't look like I do! You don't pray the way I do! You don't talk the way I do!" These children are victims of the worst kind of indifference. The kind that is so hell-bent on power and greed. The children in this film speak volumes on this. They, the future generations for their own countries, suffer the worst.

At the end of the film, we see Satellite standing by the side of the road, leaning on a crutch, holding the slippers of the now dead girl that held any possibility of hope of someone, anyone, to love and love him, watching as the American forces invade his country. He turns away and you can literally see the "man" in him shrink away. The "man" that had risen out of him on such young shoulders to lead and protect all the others. To give hope and purpose to their young lives. But now the child returns, brow-beaten and empty. The reality of his life now apparant. He is expendable. Just as the child and the girl were. Who will really notice or care that they are now gone? Will it make the world stop turning? The mines were metaphors for what they are. Once useful, now traded for something worth more, only to be used again and discarded. These children were used by all those around them for work, for sex, for the need to survive only to be forgotten and thrown away. The soldiers run past them as if the don't even exist. That is their reality now. That's is why Satellite walks away.