Study finding "Darfur-on-the-Euphrates" sinks out of sight in the press

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor&Publisher: Part II: Iraqi Death Rate May Top Our Civil War -- But Will the Press Confirm It?
The press, after its initial coverage, has turned away from the shocking Johns Hopkins study which estimated 400,000 to 800,000 deaths in the Iraq war since 2003. One of the authors of the study has issued a challenge: Check out their findings in the field -- and then confirm or debunk it.

By Greg Mitchell

(October 16, 2006) -- With mass killings occurring every day in Iraq, and Americans falling at one of the highest daily rates of the entire war, it’s no wonder that support for the conflict in the U.S. continues to slip. What the American press, public and political figures have yet to grasp or acknowledge, however, is the true human catastrophe in Iraq, a 21st century holocaust, if I may put it that way. This inconvenient truth -- suggested, if not proven, by the Johns Hopkins study released last week -- seems to be too horrible for many to face, considering the mild or negative reaction to the report in the days following the broad attention it did receive at first.

Would it surprise you to learn that if the Johns Hopkins estimates of 400,000 to 800,000 deaths are correct -- and most experts in the survey field seem to suggest they probably are -- that the supposedly not-yet-civil-war in Iraq has already cost more lives, per capita, than our own Civil War (one in 40 of all Iraqis alive in 2003)? And that these losses are comparable to what some European nations suffered in World War II? You'd never know it from mainstream press coverage in the U.S.

"Everybody knows the boat is sinking, everybody knows the captain lied," Leonard Cohen once sang. The question the new study raises: How many will go down with the ship, and will the press finally hold the captain fully accountable?

When I completed a column on the Johns Hopkins study last week, it was too early to gauge the reaction, beyond President Bush standing by his estimate of 30,000 civilian casualties. Since then, a few pundits have weighed in, pro and con, but America’s role in possibly triggering a Darfur-on-the-Euphrates is now sinking out of sight.

Do the study’s numbers seem that far out? Most experts on such work, in fact, seem to support the methods used by the surveyors, and their work was peer-reviewed up the wazoo. Les Roberts, one of the co-authors of the study, has even challenged newspapers to send reporters to far-flung Iraqi provinces to check on local mortuaries and confirm or contest the findings. Someone ought to answer the challenge....

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003255073

[bridgit]

1. it's easy to see how that could happen...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2247910 x(

[DeepModem Mom]

2. You're right. Sometimes it may be, as the article says...

that people don't want to address these kinds of horrors, for, probably, differing reasons.

[malaise]

3. Bushco has committed genocide

Time for punishment - arrest these fugging war criminals.

[bridgit]

4. interesting isn't it, the things we chose to occupy our minds with...

was in a grid-lock stop & go for miles on the freeway, could see a plume of smoke up ahead, but the closer we got the faster the traffic flowed which isn't usually the case; unlike grid-lock for miles where you pass a broken window pane on the shoulder of a hwy, a car ablaze instead...made me think people all of a sudden didn't much care for the maybe-sight of a burning charred body hanging out so that 'looky-loo' was the last thing on their minds they skeedaddled...a way of reinforcing your point

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Interesting observation! nt

[wtmusic]

6. Hey, it's just a number

People don't know and they don't want to know the scale of suffering their tax dollars are sponsoring overseas.

The anguish, the dead children, the dead parents. Death, not freedom.

Infuriating.