The report that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed since the start of the U.S. invasion should be the breaking news blared from the front pages of every newspaper in the country, as the news about the Osama bin Laden video was. Instead, the paper of record--the New York Times--buried the story on page A8 of its Saturday print edition--the day the fewest number of people read the paper. Neither the Washington Post nor the Los Angeles Times had the story on the front pages of their online editions, although the Christian Science Monitor has a link to a Post piece on the study, which was published in the British medical journal Lancet. The Christian Science Monitor, to its enormous credit, leads with the news about the study, in its daily Terrorism and Security Update.

I think it's a shame that the entire country is buzzing about Osama bin Laden talking about 9/11 on a videotape, but very few Americans are aware that their government is responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 civilians who did nothing to harm America at all. I think it's a shame that so many people are worrying that the OBL video may change the outcome of the election; but the fact that 100,000 Iraqis are dead as a direct result of George W. Bush's self-centeredness, greed, arrogance, and fanatical religious fundamentalism will probably have no effect at all on who becomes the next President. Even if Kerry is elected, I doubt it will be because of this report.