The vast amount of suffering and death endured by civilians as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has, for the most part, been carefully kept out of the consciousness of the average American. I can’t think of anything the Bush administration would like to talk about less. You can’t put a positive spin on dead children.
More…
There’s been hardly any media interest in the unrelieved agony of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq. It’s an ugly subject, and the idea has taken hold that Americans need to be protected from stories or images of the war that might be disturbing. As a nation we can wage war, but we don’t want the public to be too upset by it.
The Iraq body count:
Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq
Min = 21,218, Max = 24,082
Consider also those made homeless like the little girl above. She lives in the dangerous city of Baghdad and it is likely that she was kept inside her home for protection. Now that her home is destroyed where will she go for safety? There is almost no citizen of Iraq who has not been affected by the slaughter brought on by the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Will we seek out the truth of what is going on in that beleagured country or will we be seduced by the smoke screen that most of the North American media is putting up to blind us from that truth?
Bob Herbert wonders
As for the press, it has better things to cover than the suffering of civilians in war. The aversion to this topic is at the opposite extreme from the ecstatic journalistic embrace of the death of one pope and the election of another, and the media’s manic obsession with the comings and goings of Martha, Jacko, et al.
