1.2 million dead Iraqis could care less about MoveOn’s N.Y. Times ad
There should be lots of screeching amongst ideologues today about the MoveOn ad in the N.Y. Times about Gen Petraeus.
Of course, like most political nonsense about the Iraq Occupation, the thousands of dead American troops, and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis - as well as the millions driven from their homes - just won’t care.
“Ignorance of Iraqi death toll no longer an option”
Not wanting to think about civilian deaths in Iraq has become almost universal. The average American believed approximately 9,900 Iraqis had died as a result of the war according to a February 2007 AP poll. Unfortunately, recent evidence suggests that things in Iraq may be one-hundred times worse than Americans realize.
News report tallies suggest some 75,000 Iraqis have died since the US-led invasion. A study of 13 war affected countries presented at a recent Harvard conference found over 80% of violent deaths in conflicts go unreported by the press and governments. City officials in the Iraqi city of Najaf were recently quoted on Middle East Online stating that 40,000 unidentified bodies have been buried in that city since the start of the conflict. When speaking to the Rotarians in a speech covered on C-SPAN on September 5th, H.E. Samir Sumaida’ie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the US , stated that there were 500,000 new widows in Iraq . The Baker-Hamilton Commission similarly found that the Pentagon under-counted violent incidents by a factor of 10. Finally, a week ago the respected British polling firm ORB released the results of a poll estimating that 22% of households had lost a member to violence during the occupation of Iraq, equating to 1.2 million deaths. This finding roughly verifies a less precisely worded BBC poll last February that reported 17% of Iraqis had a household member who was a victim of violence.
There are now two polls and three scientific surveys all suggesting the official figures and media-based estimates in Iraq have missed 70-95% of all deaths. The evidence suggests that the extent of under-reporting by the media is only increasing with time.
–WKW