Hiding the Numbers. Yesterday afternoon, the top news story on Netscape.com was a study published by the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet that 100,000 more Iraqis had died since the U.S. invasion began than would ordinarily be expected from prior death rates, especially as victims of bombing campaigns. Before noon today, that story was not only not the TOP story; it had also disappeared from the entire list of stories offered by Netscape.com.
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It wasn't on AOL, Netscape's parent. Not on CNN.com. Not on Yahoo. The story had DISAPPEARED. Why is that?
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Oh, I did find a one-sentence paragraph about it in a story about bad news complicating Bush's campaign, but one sentence of many, given no importance. And it was 14th on the SECOND screen of international stories at NYTimes.com.
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It was not the subject of an editorial nor op-ed column in the Times condemning the carnage. It was not the subject of an editorial nor column in the New York Post pooh-poohing the methodology and pretending that the numbers are wildly exaggerated or, in the alternative, proudly declaiming that those damned Iraqis 'had it coming'. Why is there no discussion of these appalling numbers?
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No governmental numbers have been forthcoming, nor are they likely to, as I have long understood. Certainly Saddam's government didn't want his people to know how many of them had died because of his adventurism. Certainly the U.S. hand-picked successor government doesn't want people to know how many Iraqis have been killed by the people who put them in office. Certainly the U.S. Government and the rightwing politicians and media who support the endless murder of Iraqis don't want Americans to understand that this has been a horrendous crime against humanity of a size they did not understand and cannot justify especially now that we know there were never Weapons of Mass Destruction ready to be launched at our homeland.
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But why are liberals silent? I'm genuinely puzzled.
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We have been absolutely without numbers as to how many Iraqis have died because of a 13-year campaign of violence and economic strangulation ("sanctions") conducted by the U.S. Government. Only the vaguest of numbers, unconfirmed and unconfirmable, have issued, such as the UN speculation that a quarter million (!) Iraqis, mostly children and some elderly, may have died as the result of sanctions. Madeleine Albright, the evil witch who served as Bill Clinton's incompetent Secretary of State, was asked if she thought the campaign to 'contain' Iraq was worth that kind of death toll, and she said yes, she did think so! And now we have public-health investigators concluding that the second Gulf War may have killed 100,000 more Iraqis, but the media, politicians of both parties, and public DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT.
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Have we no conscience?
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:33 PM