In mid-July when Mumbai was attacked with three explosions, The New York Times carried photos of some of the bloodied casualties up front — at least in its online version — and I wondered: If the newspaper for "all the news that's fit to print" had carried photos of victims of American bombing and gunning from the moment the United States assaulted Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, would Americans have put up with the destruction of these countries so long?
Had the New York Times shown day after day some of the bodies blown apart, mangled and torn to bits, would Americans have tolerated the disasters that their country's staggering firepower was bringing to remote lands month after month, year after year?
As early as 2006, the number of people "killed in the violence of the war that began with the U.S. invasion in March 2003" was estimated to be at least 600,000. It came from a team of public health experts from Johns Hopkins University, Al Mustansiriya University (Baghdad), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.