THOUSANDS OF IRAQI CIVILIANS have been killed by American soldiers at checkpoints, although that has not gotten the extensive coverage in the mainstream press that the shooting attack on the car carrying Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and her agent, Nicola Calipari, got -- as Riverbend pointed out yesterday at Baghdad Burning.

So I'm very glad to report that a piece on exactly that subject has been posted by Jeanne at Body and Soul.

If any good can come out of the tragic death of an Italian intelligence this week, it's this: Attention is finally being paid to something that should have gotten a lot more notice long ago -- the many deaths of civilians at checkpoints in Iraq. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Christian Science Monitor all have articles on the subject today [ Note: links are in the post.]

The CSM piece, which descibes [sic] how confusing the checkpoints can be for an American journalist, let alone a non-English speaking Iraqi, is the most interesting. If it's obvioius [sic] that innocent people are dying because they don't understand what they're supposed to do, what excuse is there for continuing business as usual, unless you simply don't care about those deaths?