1 + 70

BBC news tonight reports that about - and an approximation is all one ever knows - seventy Shias have died in Iraq today as the result of Sunni attack.

Perhaps these murderous car bombs would have exploded in any case, though it is rational to assume that they were made ready for the day that Saddam Hussein would die.

One dies and now so do seventy more. Call that peace on earth? No.

There is one name will be remembered and quoted in all the history books, but there are seventy unnamed others - men and husbands, women and wives, children too God forbid - who perished today who otherwise would have greeted the dawn of tomorrow. Each single one precious before God and man.

Did not Christ say that not a sparrow falls without God the Father's care and concern? These are seventy human lives wiped away. Never mind where Saddam Hussein is to be buried, I would have a memorial to each of these nameless seventy placed on the White House lawn.

I want someone to be arrested for reading out their names in Whitehall. Give me their names and I will do it.