Iraqis Don't Count

Judith Coburn has written a thoughtful, detailed report on one of the most glaring journalistic failures in Iraq. "Publishing or pronouncing the names of the American dead everyday without ever mentioning the names of the Iraqi dead offers a powerful message that only American dying matters," she writes. "But there's no way to count, protest American journalists. What they mean is that the Pentagon doesn't count for them. ... The lack of 'official' figures, however, shouldn't absolve the media—or Americans—from their blindness to Iraqi suffering, since available figures, incomplete as they are, are staggering for a guerrilla war." A recent study documented 25,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the war began (almost certainly a low estimate). Baghdad's main mortuary "looks more like a bus station: dozens of minibuses line up as crowds of men stream in with empty wooden coffins, then out again bearing loaded ones on their shoulders, chanting prayers as they go." According to war correspondent Oliver Poole, "The people of Baghdad do not need statistics to tell them that they are living through terror unimaginable in the West. Every two days for the past two years more civilians have died in Iraq than in the July 7 London bombings."