Slate’s Eric Umansky went through today’s papers this morning, as he does every day, and made an interesting observation:
About 30 Iraqis were killed and 150 wounded in two car bombings and a battle with U.S. forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City. One GI was killed in that fighting and two were killed elsewhere. [No paper reported on the violence on the front page], presumably since it’s the new normal.
The “new normal” indeed. This applies equally well to U.S. casualties in Iraq, which are not only rising, but rising at a faster pace, though you may not have heard since the fatalities are not widely reported.
Consider this update from today’s Washington Post:
The U.S. military announced that three American soldiers were killed on Wednesday: one in a bomb attack in the capital; another by a roadside bomb south of Tikrit; and the third from wounds suffered in an attack on a patrol in the northern city of Mosul.
Take a wild guess which page this was on. A1? Not even close. Try A19.
Well, certainly the report about U.S. casualties was the lede of this story, right? Wrong again. This portion about the fallen troops came in the 14th paragraph.
Was the New York Times any better? Afraid not.
The second car bomb exploded Wednesday afternoon in the affluent neighborhood of Mansour, the same area where the three men being held by One God and Jihad lived and where Mr. Armstrong’s body was dumped on Monday. Five American soldiers on patrol were wounded, and one of them died later at a medical center, the military said.
A soldier in the northern city of Mosul died of wounds after an ambush by insurgents. A soldier in Tikrit was killed by a roadside bomb. At least 1,040 American soldiers have died since the start of the war.
Important information, poor placement. Readers found this update in the 22nd paragraph of a story on page A16.
This, I’m afraid, is the new normal.