Wednesday, January 10, 2007

A little math...

From Counterpunch:

Passing the grim marker of 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq briefly focused Americans' attention on the war. But we live in a big country with lots of malls.

But what if our fellow citizens were killed and wounded at the same rate as people in Iraq? Here's the math.

Last fall the British medical journal "Lancet" published a study done by researchers from Johns Hopkins University estimating that the midrange number of Iraqis dead "as a consequence of the war" was about 2.5 percent of that country's population, or roughly 655,000 people. Over 90% of those died from violence.

Comparable casualty rates in our country would mean that every person in Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Baltimore, San Francisco, Dallas and Philadelphia would be dead. Every. Single. Person.

And we are just now getting serious about cutting off money for this war?

Besides that unimaginable death toll, every person in Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Oregon, South Carolina, and Colorado would be wounded. Every. Single. Person.

Would that be the point we stopped politely asking our Congress members to please end the war, and began taking over their offices in every state in the union?

Go read. They're planning to.

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