655,000 dead. Who cares?

655,00 Iraqi's have died since the start of 'Iraqi Freedom', according to a study by The Lancet. President Bush has said that this is 'not credible'. Well he would say that, wouldn't he. However, this figure is also disputed by iraqbodycount.org who reckon the figure is more like 49,760. I'm using the high estimates here. The low estimates are 426,000 vs 44,803. Athænium has nice posts about it here and here.

I don't care. 655,000 people dead, and I don't care. You probably don't either. Oh, I care in an abstract, it's a bad thing that people die, sort of a way. But not in the deep emotional sense that I would feel if a friend or family member died. Not even in the stressed and saddened way I would react if a person was killed outside my house. It's just news.

This is summed up in a truly brilliant article which explains this, one of the hard problems of human relationships, and is also very funny.