Daily Corpse Tallies

The shooting of 32 Virginia college students grips the American media in a massive outpouring of grief. Meanwhile in Iraq, more than that are killed every day. Yesterday, 183 people were blown up in Baghdad alone, while the one day total for the country was 223. 17 bodies were discovered in a schoolyard. At the same time, US forces dropped precision bombs on a small town near Fallujah. That's all just yesterday. Today more will die, and I gaurantee it'll be more than 31. I read a newspaper report from Baghdad one day last week that mentioned only 13 corpses had been found that day, the lowest number in recent memory. But the next day, the number climbed predictably. The daily average in Iraq of deaths by violence are generally about 40-60, not to mention a weekly average of about 10-15 American soldiers, which we barely notice anymore either.

But it'll take our minds off Iraq to obsess about the classic American lone gunman.