Tipping Point

Civilians bearing brunt of Iraq's continuing violence Death toll in past 18 months tops 12,000; gunmen, bombers keep blood flowing.

The Associated Press
Updated: 12:46 p.m. ET June 3,
2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen on Friday killed a city council official in Kirkuk, a contractor renovating a mosque in Samarra and a man standing outside a Baghdad hospital, while several car bombs that targeted U.S. convoys in the capital wounded six civilians, authorities said.

The new bloodshed came a day after 48 people were killed in a particularly violent day in Iraq — including more than 30 in four suicide bombings — raising to at least 825 the number of people slain since the new Shiite-led government was announced April 28.

In the past 18 months, 12,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, including more than 10,000 Shiites, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said, citing figures from a research center. But he said he analyzed the figures on the basis of areas where the victims lived, not data explicitly stating the branch of Islam to which they belong.

I noticed that story today. It really didn’t get much play, or at least not the amount that I thought it would. It made me start thinking, “Is there a tipping point on Iraqi civilian casualties.”

Not a tipping point determining Iraqi people’s reaction to the fuckheads killing them. The tipping point I’m talking about is the one in which the right starts highlighting civilian casualties and the left stops rooting for them (please spare me protestations otherwise, there is no other reason to cite nonsensical numbers like 100,000). Does there come a point that the left understands the pretty obvious point that AMERICA isn’t who is killing the Iraqi civilians? Have we already reached this point? Does there come a point that the right starts trying to publicize civilian deaths to show what our enemies are TRYING to do?