Just another day in the life and death of Iraq XVI

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Washington Post has the bad news (from Reuters):

Iraqi police found 60 bodies dumped across Baghdad in the 24 hours leading up to Tuesday morning, the apparent victims of sectarian death squads blamed for the escalating violence that threatens to pitch the country into civil war.

Most of the victims had been shot in the head execution-style, an Interior Ministry official said. They were all men, some of whom had been blindfolded or bound, the official said, and signs of torture included bruising and broken limbs.

It all seems so redundant now. As horrible as that sounds. But this is what's really going on in Iraq, this is what Iraqis are facing day after day, and the story of 60 dead gets Page A12 in the Post. Perhaps it's no one's fault that attention is lapsing, perhaps the Post is right to bury it. After all, mass murder in Iraq isn't really news anymore, is it? It's commonplace. It's the norm. It's just the way it is. And we've become desensitized to the violence and the killing. Or else we just don't want to know about it anymore.

But how sad is that? How utterly tragic Iraq has become.

The war may be Bush's misadventure, and he and it may deserve our ongoing criticism, but the victims -- the nameless, faceless victims who don't any longer warrant our attention -- ought to be remembered as the horrors rage on. Their deaths may not be front-page news, but that doesn't make them any less significant.

**********

Also from The Washington Post:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred...

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group...

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

Read the whole article. I'm sure the findings will be disputed by those who have an interest in disputing them, but if they're true or even anywhere close to the truth what they reveal is that Bush has been misleading the American people as to the full scope and horror of his war in Iraq.

601,000 dead from the violence. 500 a day. Those are human beings -- men, women, children -- not abstractions. And they have been killed violently. And more will be killed violently. Today, tomorrow, the next day. But, hey, freedom is on the march, right?