6000 Civilian Deaths in Iraq in May and June

Credits: All from AP - from left: Martin Mejia (Lima 2000), David de la Paz (Mexico City 1999), Jose Luis Magana (Mexico City 1998), Nasser Nasser (Ramallah 2002), Srdjan Ilic (Kosovo 1998) & Nasser Nasser (Ramallah 2000).

May 7, 2010

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Translations of key INSI information are available below in PDF format.
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6000 Civilian Deaths in Iraq in May and June

The U. N released a communication this week saying that in the months of May and June this year, there were at least 6000 Iraqi civilians finished. I was startled when I first read this report, not due to the number of deaths, but because I started to doubt the media outlets in which I trust. I view these precise outlets, the BBC, CBC, GlobeMail, because I have instilled a specific amount of trust in them. I started to doubt their trustworthiness as there was no way I could miss that many civilian casualties.

To give myself evidence in one or more direction, I started a google search starting with May of the present year. Without looking too deep, I found : May third - ten deaths in a suicide bomb, May 8th - twelve folk in automobile bomb, May tenth - fourteen finished in an "unknown" explosion, May 14th - twenty deaths in varied events. I stopped at this as the numbers kept getting higher and I was getting more upset. Now I know these figures don't mount up to 6000, although the report recounted there were just about two times as many deaths in June, but considering I only checked out one site, I became certain that if I looked hard enough, I could account for all 6000 deaths. The conclusion I drew from this is that I was not right to blame my favourite news bureaus ; they're reporting everything. So why did this number shock me so? "I follow the news each day and would never miss a tale about a considerable number of deaths in Iraq." Then it struck me, I have become used to these stories.

I am embarrassed now to confess it, but I have just been glancing over these stories and not putting any thought into them because they're so common. Each day there's a story about 10, twenty, fifty deaths, but they've been incessant. I equate it to a smoker ; you spend $10 daily on a pack a smokes, which is not very much, but when you realize you spend over $3500 a year, you start to think about what you might have bought for that amount. After I got over the undeniable fact how de-sensitised I have become, I started to notice that I am not the sole one. The entire world has become just like me. On Sep eleven, almost 6000 trusting folk died in one morning and everybody goes nuts, but spread that over the course of 2 months and it is going virtually unnoticed. So unobserved actually that the U. S. re-elects the person accountable for those deaths. I actually think it's the time to re-visit what has happened in that country.

Whether the U. S. ' motivations were really to help this country re-build or not, they have made it a far worse place. The trusting folks living there merit much better than to lose 6000 of their own folk in only 2 months time. I, for one, won't disregard these daily reports any longer, but will try and consider them fresh and as evidence of the concern that these folks live with each day.