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April 01, 2006
What Would a Civil War Look Like?
According to latest counts, the number of Iraqi casualties was at least seventy five a day for the last week.
U.S. forces suffered 30 fatalities in the past month, less than one a day, according to data compiled by the Brookings Institution. It was the lowest total since February 2004, when 21 service members were killed. Combat-related deaths during March numbered 25, declining for the fifth consecutive month. The March numbers could still rise because the military sometimes does not report deaths until several days after they occur.But recent weeks have also been among the most lethal of the war for Iraqi civilians, police officers and soldiers, who were killed and wounded at a rate of about 75 a day, a rate three times as high as at the start of 2004. The U.S. military's count of Iraqi civilian casualties is likely far lower than the actual total, because many attacks go unreported.
Let me try to put that 75 a day in perspectives. If Iraq was the size of the U.S. that would mean a thousand people had violently died a day, everday, for the past month.
Would we then complain that the reporters weren't reporting all the good news?
Posted by zeynep at April 1, 2006 02:49 PM
Comments
That's more than 20x our current murder rate . . .after having lost around 100,000 people in the first year of the occupation . . .with significantly fewer coping social services. . .
Posted by: Saheli at April 2, 2006 01:21 AM