When Numbers Become Names

Matt Lavine shows us just what the numbers really mean when it comes to the soldiers killed in Iraq.

As I'm sure everyone knows, Nightline will be memorializing the dead this evening, in a similar way they did with the victims of the 9/11 terrorist actions a year later. Sinclair Broadcasting apparently forgot about that when they accused Ted Koppel of "politicizing" the war--as if the war wasn't political to begin with.

The list Matt cites includes the names of people who won't be mentioned on ABC this evening because their deaths were ruled to be "outside" straight combat. However, these are the folks who have paid with their lives for Mr. Bush's splendid little war. And consider: many of those who've been wounded are surviving only because battlefield medicine has improved dramatically over the last ten years or so. In previous wars, many more lives would have been lost.

Of course, missing from this list are the ten thousand or more Iraqi civilians who've been killed. One can only imagine how long that list would be. And, for that matter, let's not forget the Iraqi soldiers who lost their lives. Being born in the wrong place at the wrong time shouldn't be automatic grounds for a death sentence.

Sometimes it gets so bad I wonder if I'm beginning to suffer from outrage fatigue.