One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.

Submitted by Chris Elliott on March 22, 2007 - 9:00pm.

"One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."

Joseph Stalin's infamous words.

This certainly seems to reflect corporate media's attitude to the ongoing slaughter in Iraq.

It is the 4th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L) - the invasion was later renamed for PR reasons - and despite the US military's reluctance to 'do body counts' a number of other organizations are aware of the level of carnage. Rather than being described as an 'insurgency' it should more accurately be described as a 'holocaust'.

New estimates at the number of Iraqis killed in the conflict over the last 4 years place the death toll at a little over 1 million lives. With 3.7 million refugees and incalculable numbers of wounded, traumatized, tortured, imprisoned, raped, or contaminated with depleted Uranium. This must be some strange new version of the word 'liberation' that I was not previously aware of.

Add to this another half million infant deaths during the 10 years of ~~medieval siege~~ sanctions that Madeleine Albright assured us 'were worth it'.

If a hundred Americans or Britons were killed in a explosion it would be a media sensation for weeks. Russia announced a day of mourning after over a hundred people were killed in a mine explosion last week. In Iraq they dont have this luxury since every single day is a national day of mourning.

Yet to the corporate media these daily massacres are just statistics that may occasionally get a mention but are otherwise less newsworthy than the daily crossword puzzle. Instead they bombard us with celebrity drug scandals, runaway teenagers, confessions of stick-thin supermodels, or more sickening by far, they lambast other nations for their 'poor human rights records' and 'press censorship'. They condemn democratic countries like Iran for being undemocratic while ignoring the fact the US is spending billions on ~~bribes~~ Aid to some of the nastiest undemocratic regimes in the world (Pakistan, Egypt, Colombia to name but 3 of a long list) not to mention close military ties with Israel and Saudi Arabia whose human rights records must surely rank close to the worst of all.

The English language fails us sometimes, there should be a far bigger word than 'hypocricy'.

British backtrack on Iraq death toll

Submitted by Chris Elliott on March 27, 2007 - 5:49pm.

British backtrack on Iraq death toll

By Jill Lawless Published: 27 March 2007
British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.

The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.

The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.

The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number of deaths lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636.

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." Albert Einstein

Thanks for the update Chris.

Submitted by Bill Harding on March 27, 2007 - 6:22pm.

Thanks for the update Chris. Regardless of what numbers officialdom endorses, the Iraqi and American surviving familes of those killed in this illegal war know the truth.

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