1,339,771 Faces
The first image below shows a child who was killed during the American invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, on the left, and on the right the same image has been reduced and fitted into an array of 25 faces.
In the next image, the previous array has been reduced again, and fitted into a larger array of 1000 faces. The Iraqi child is still distinguishable in the upper left corner.
This array of 1000 is likewise reduced...
...and then fitted into an array distantly representing 25,000 faces.
This array of 25,000 is reduced once again...
...and finally fitted into a row of five similar arrays, each very distantly representing 25,000 faces, 125,000 in each of 11 rows, minimally representing approximately the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
A few Holocaust-deniers usually show up whenever I post a diary about Iraqi casualties, and it isn't worth arguing with any of them.
October 15, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some people need to have such a powerful object lesson in the comprehension of numbers and the lives those numbers represent. Horrible, and thanks for attempting to put a face on those lost lives.
October 15, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
This should be in Bush's library next to his trophy, Saddam Hussein's gun, and next to his and Cheney's name in every history book.
October 15, 2009 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
The post is about people being wronfully killed.
It is an attempt to illustrate the huge magnitude of of the wrong that is ongoing.
The number1.5 M is sensational even if Only as a statistic but there are sensations and then there are sensations.
Among the sensations I would be ashamed of having in regard to 1.5 M wrongfully dead as a result of our actions would be apathy, disinterest, lack of empathy for the dead and their families, any urge to diminish the horrendous story about the tragic mistake of starting the war on Iraq, and the inability to see that if we don't, at the very least, acknowledge our own mistakes as a country that we will surely make the same mistakes over and over until we no longer have the capacity to do so.
October 16, 2009 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, this was meant as a reply to el presidente.
October 16, 2009 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. War sucks.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what this post is supposed to be about, except for sensationalizing statistics.
October 15, 2009 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. You're right. I guess there's nothing very sensational about 1.3 M dead in and of their own right in our brave new world. Especially when they're nobody we know personally and so deep of skin tone.
October 15, 2009 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am sure you do not know what this post is about or you would never find yourself able to trivialize the deaths of so many human beings, many of whom had nothing to do with Iraqi foreign policy.
Note: When I say Iraqi foreign policy, I am not making a case Saddam was involved in 9/11, or not. I am not making a case whether Saddam had WMD, or not. I am not saying Saddam was a bad guy or not. I am saying that among these 1,300,000 people who dies are tens of thousands of people who had no relationship to anything Saddam ever did. Their misfortune was merely having been born in territory he controlled, where they, like most of us, merely sought a way to make a living and find some happiness in this world.
October 15, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee wizzo don't "sensationalize" thousands of deaths.. wouldn't want that.
Unless it's 9/11 and then it's fine to campaign on it.
What's the opposite of "sensationalizing" this? Forgetting it?
October 16, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I certainly agree with your sentiment here, igotmyreasons, but we are not talking merely thousands but 1.3 million, or even more accurately and somehow I find myself slipping into numbness and an embarassing laziness, 1,339,771. How insidious the anesthesia, that I would write 1.3 million and somehow neglect the 39,771 people who also died and whose lives would go unrecognized by my slothful desire to save a few keystrokes and, thereby eliinate them from my awareness so causally.
October 16, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't suggest that we do the opposite of sensationalizing a statistic. I suggested that you not sensationalize it. More accurately, I criticized you for sensationalizing a statistic.
I don't suggest forgetting it either.
My comment did not trivialize the death of a number of human beings; it pointed out the overweening and unattractive rhetoric of the original post. I was making an aesthetic point, not a substantial one; by pointing out that the original post made an aesthetic point, not a substantial one.
November 3, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Could be your best yet Ruta. Well done!
October 15, 2009 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've seen the pictures of the dead. I have asked Repugs like CleverBullDog for the name or picture of one person George W. Bush saved in his GWOT.
No luck on that one.
Gerhard Domagk from a diary he wrote in a Gestapo prison in 1939.
His crime: receiving the Nobel Prize in Medicine under Adolph Hitler.
He led a team that developed the first 'magic bullet' wonder drug, sulfa antibiotics. (reference, the book: The Demon Under The Microscope)
October 15, 2009 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I would heartily reccomend the gestapo to anyone." - Freud, displaying his wit, in a statement to the gestapo shortly before he fled Germany.
October 15, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to be completely contrary and certainly not in en effort justify George Junior's action in Iraq, but how exactly would one set out to answer that question? You can't prove a negative.
October 16, 2009 6:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolute proof is not necessary.
Aside from any people sent into, or put into, harms way by George W. Bush and who somehow avoided death, I do not recall one case of an imminent terror attack that was foiled by the action of the Bush administration.
There were no WMD in Iraq, no helicopters armed with gas ready to make another run at the Kurds that were captured, no drones of death disabled, and no ticking time bomb attack on the US that was uncovered or stopped from either Iraq or Afghanistan.
October 16, 2009 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
That wasn't the statement, though. You asked how many people did the GWOT save. I don't know that such a question could ever be answered, so it seems a distraction from the main problem of wars no longer accountable to the Congress as they were always meant to be.
October 16, 2009 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beautiful, poignant, and heartbreaking. Well stated!
October 15, 2009 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the visual, Rootie. I guess if you had used TPM avatars, people would have gotten really upset with you.
October 16, 2009 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink