[Editor’s Note: I did not know about the post that follows by Jon Editor in Chief when I wrote this. I think we’re all waking up this morning and coming to the same conclusions.]
Things are going to hell in a handbasket in Iraq.
More than 4,000 Iraqis — many of them civilians — have been killed in war-related violence this year, including at least 936 in May alone, according to an Associated Press count. That makes May the second deadliest month for Iraqis over the past year…
The figures show that civilians, not Iraqi security forces, are increasingly the casualties of violence. Eighty-two percent of the war-related Iraqi deaths recorded in May were civilians, compared with 61 percent in May 2005, when 746 Iraqis were killed.
Before we go blaming the victim, we should know suicide bombings are down.
During May 2005, about 36 suicide bombings killed at least 331 Iraqis and wounded 962.
This May, by contrast, 11 suicide attacks killed at least 98 Iraqis and wounded 283 — about one-third of the casualties of 12 months earlier.
Meanwhile, amid reports of the Marine massacre at Haditha, Pres. Butthead sounds the same wooden note he always does. And it means no more now than when he said it after Abu Ghraib or the investigation of his staff because someone exposed a CIA agent.
“If in fact laws were broken, there will be punishment.”
Whatever. I can guess the rest. “It’s just an aberration, this is not how Americans are, if we say we didn’t do it then it didn’t happen.” When does this nightmare end?
On NPR last night an Army officer was interviewed. He said that for every coalition soldier killed, 10 Iraqi soldiers die. And for every coalition soldier wounded, 20 Iraqis are casualties. Do the math and we’re looking at 24,000 dead Iraqi soldiers and 400,000 wounded. And that’s not counting the civilian dead and wounded. Let the carnage stop now.