Project Censored Story #1

Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
The point of this story is to inform people about how many Iraqi deaths there actually have been since the war began. The story focuses on the US' involvement and occupation in Iraq as the reason why so many have died. This story might be censored because our government might not want the public to know about how many Iraqis have actually died from the war. That number doesn't seem nearly as important to the public.
This article provides a lot of statistics that are important for people to understand. The biggest statistic that is provided in the first sentence is that over one million Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB). This seems like a straight forward fact but I think it can be a little misleading as well. It doesn't say how the Iraqis died, but it sort of implies that the deaths were caused directly from US soldiers. I'm sure a large number of those deaths were caused by terrorists.
Another statistic is of how many Iraqis have died in the year of 2006 by US forces. In 2006, an average of 10,000 Iraqis were killed by US forces per month, or 300 a day. This statistic may have been censored because it is still a big number on a small scale. It's difficult for us to imagine one million Iraqis (1,000,000) compared to 300 a day.
In February 2007, an Associated Press poll was conducted asking a sample of US residents how many Iraqis had died as a result of the war. The average respondent thought the number was under 10,000, about 2 percent of the actual amount. I don't think it's our faults we don't know the real numbers. But it does somewhat motivate me to find more information about this.
This last bit isn't a statistic. It's a quote by thirty-two-year-old Maha Numan, a refugee from Iraq. "I decided to stop dreaming of going back home and find myself a new home anywhere in the world if I could. I have been a refugee for three years now living on the dream of return, but I decided to stop dreaming. I have lost faith in all leaders of the world after the surges of Basr, Sadr City and now Mosul. This seems to be endless and one has to work harder on finding a safe haven for one's family." I find this quote pretty depressing, which I guess is the point of putting it in this book. It's hard for people who haven't been to Iraq during the war to put themselves in the shoes of the soldiers, residents, and ex-residents. Quotes like this one gives a perspective of how people their are feeling. I think it's important to put ourselves in their shoes.





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