The Cost of War

President Bush casually dropped the number 30,000 in a speech earlier this month as the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war. It's a likely bet the real number is much higher than the Pentagon cares to estimate. Still, the 30,000 number (like the 2,100+ number of U.S. troops killed) doesn't begin to tell the full story of those injured and of families and lives torn apart.

It is on that somber note that the New York Times' John Burns and Adam Nadel published an article, and series of photos, yesterday addressing the civilian destruction in Iraq. Because, despite the high election turnouts (which can't really be used as a symbol of 'victory' in the war, rather just the determination of Iraqis to end this mess), life in that country is still hellish. Polls show that fewer than half say the country is better off now than it was before the war. The people don't seem to blame anyone in particular, they just know what they have lost.

The article:
The Face and Voice of Civilian Sacrifice in Iraq

IN Iraq, nobody knows, and few in authority seem concerned to count, just how many civilians have been killed and injured. Soon it will be three years since the American-led invasion. The estimates of those killed run into the tens of thousands, the numbers of wounded two or three times the number who lost their lives. Even President Bush, estimating recently that 30,000 civilians may have been killed, acknowledged that was no more than an abstraction from unofficial calculations, not a Pentagon count.

To take his own measure of the war for The New York Times, Adam Nadel broke from the compulsions that dictate the days of many photographers in Baghdad... He visited them in their hospital wards, in their neighborhoods, and in their homes, and captured, in images and in words, what the war has meant for them.

Photo-Essay: Face of Sacrifice in Iraq

A note to remember- these people are the average in Iraq, not the exception.

Also- A Times editorial on the aftermath of the election:
Winners and Losers in Iraq