Memo to Pundits

I think what a lot of you commentators are missing is that we now have proof that "shock and awe" was committed against an essentially defenseless country. No WMDs to protect the Iraqi homeland (something USAers reserve for themselves in more than ample abundance).

And there wasn't much bluffing: the Iraqis were somewhat in disarray, leading up to the attack, but essentially correct in their accounting to the United Nations.

Yet on USA TV there's precious little balance given to Iraqi casualties. You'd think the losing side would be less arrogant and chauvanistic, given where it's heading in the history books. Don't you at least want to say you're sorry? Apparently not. OK, then.

Followup, November 3, 2004:

The voiceless victims of Bush's misadventure
U.S. media ignores human toll of 'shock and awe'

Joe Conason
The New York Observer
11.03.04

While the nation's quality newspapers dutifully reported the Hopkins study, its release five days before the Presidential campaign may have robbed it of impact. Certainly there were no impassioned cable-television debates over what that troubling data means. Nobody seemed eager to ask whether 100,000 dead civilians might be too many -- particularly since we know there were no weapons of mass destruction threatening us, and no significant connection between the Al Qaeda terrorists and the Iraqi regime. Americans who consider the war an act of vengeance on behalf of those murdered on Sept. 11, 2001, ought to consider the proportion that these numbers suggest.

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