Iraq Body Count

Now that the war in Iraq has commanded everyone’s attention, many of us aren’t content to get our information from the usual Foxaganda outlets in the American corporate media. In addition to reading some of the more reliable domestic papers, we sort through the Web sites maintained by newspapers outside the United States, such as www.guardian.co.uk, or independent sites. This particular Web site is attempting to chronicle the number of civilians killed in Iraq as the result of the war. Though Pentagon briefings may dismissively refer to them as “collateral damage,” these are human beings who are being reduced to non-personhood through a fog of euphemism. The committed people behind the site give moral and humanitarian reasons for collating this information, and they use a network of reporting media, whose veracity is ensured by meeting certain standards. The site is updated daily.