Skip to main content

  1 Million Dead in Iraq? 6 Reasons the Media Hide the True Human Toll of War -- And Why We Let Them    :      Information Clearing House: ICH

  1 Million Dead in Iraq? 6 Reasons the Media Hide the True Human Toll of War -- And Why We Let Them    :      Information Clearing House: ICH
By John Tirman

July 20, 2011 "Alternet" - - As the U.S. war in Iraq winds down, we are entering a familiar phase, the season of forgetting—forgetting the harsh realities of the war. Mostly we forget the victims of the war, the Iraqi civilians whose lives and society have been devastated by eight years of armed conflict. The act of forgetting is a social and political act, abetted by the American news media. Throughout the war, but especially now, the minimal news we get from Iraq consistently devalues the death toll of Iraqi civilians.

Why? A number of reasons are at work in this persistent evasion of reality. But forgetting has consequences, especially as it braces the obstinate right-wing narrative of “victory” in the Iraq war. If we forget, we learn nothing.

I’ve puzzled over this habit of reaching for the lowest possible estimates of the number of Iraqis who died unnecessarily since March 2003. The habit is now deeply entrenched. Over a period of about two weeks in May, I encountered in major news media three separate references to the number of people who had died in the Iraq war. Anderson Cooper, on his CNN show, Steven Lee Myers in the New York Times Magazine and Brian MacQuarrie in the Boston Globe all pegged the number in the tens of thousands, sometimes adding “at least.” But the number that sticks is this “tens of thousands.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Video: Israeli soldiers fire tear gas at 6-year-old children on their way to school

Video: Israeli soldiers fire tear gas at 6-year-old children on their way to school The new school year started four days ago in the occupied West Bank, and Israeli soldiers have fired tear gas and hurled stun grenades at Palestinian elementary school students on at least two occasions already. In the Nablus -area village of Burin , which is surrounded by illegal Jewish-only Israeli settlements , Israeli forces stormed an elementary school Wednesday, firing tear gas and stun grenades at students after a settler’s vehicle traveling nearby the school was allegedly hit with a rock thrown by a Palestinian youth. Many children were treated at the scene for tear-gas inhalation, reported Ma’an News Agency . One day earlier, Israeli forces in Hebron fired up to 15 tear gas canisters and five stun grenades at small children as they made their way to school Tuesday morning. Video of the attack — recorded and posted to YouTube by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)...

Gilad Atzmon : Now’s The Time To Strip Israel of its WMDs

Gilad Atzmon : Now’s The Time To Strip Israel of its WMDs Now’s The Time To Strip Israel of its WMDs By Gilad Atzmon September 26, 2013 " Information Clearing House - The Israelis are not very impressed with Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israel’s delegation to boycott his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and later denounced Rouhani’s address there as “a cynical speech that was full of hypocrisy.” But Israel seems to be alone this time.  Both the United States and other Western nations appeared to warmly welcome the new Iranian president at the UN.   But did Rouhani present any radical change? Did he deliver new promises? Not at all. Like his predecessor, he made it clear that Iran is not going to give up on its right to proceed and develop nuclear energy. Like Ahmadinejad, Rouhani contended that  "...

Devastated family remembers cheerful boy cut down by Israeli fire on Gaza beach

Devastated family remembers cheerful boy cut down by Israeli fire on Gaza beach The day before he was killed, “Ismail came home carrying fresh fish and began joking with his brothers and sisters. He seemed unusually cheerful and happy,” his mother Sahar Baker told The Electronic Intifada at her home in Gaza’s Beach Camp just twenty-four hours after her son’s brutal slaying. “I asked him, my son, why did you go to the beach while the situation is dangerous? He answered, we were playing as we wanted to play, why should we be afraid?” Sahar said. Ismail Muhammad Baker, nine years old, was killed along with his cousins Ahed Atif Baker and Zakaria Ahed Baker, both ten years old, and eleven-year-old Muhammad Ramiz Baker when Israeli fire targeted them on a beach near Gaza City’s seaport on 16 July.