Nshima & Curry

Shocking News: American TV anchor asks about Iraqi dead

I was watching CNN last night and Rick Sanchez (pictured) was interviewing correspondent Michael Ware about the milestone that had just been reached: 4,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq. Then Sanchez absolutely stunned me. He asked about the Iraqi dead. I fell off the couch.

SANCHEZ: Let me ask you, Michael. Michael, I just want to interrupt you for a moment, because since we're talking of numbers, I want to ask you about something that rarely is talked about on network television in the United States. And that is, the 4,000 Americans is serious enough. But is it your understanding that the number of dead Iraqis would, what, double, triple? Or what would it do? What is that number? Do you know it?

WARE: Well, Rick, no one can give you a figure of the number of Iraqi souls that have been lost in the five years so far of this conflict. But it's exponentially greater than two or three or even ten times this terrible number of American casualties. We're talking about -- on conservative estimates between 80 thousand to 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives.

And that's not to mention more than 4 million Iraqis are displaced from their homes. 2 million are lost here in Iraq wanting to return home. 2 million more plus are beyond this country's border and there seems little hope that any of them to return.

And the entire social fabric of this country has been torn asunder with a legacy of this war that it's now divided along sectarian lines, Sunni versus Shiite, when it never was before. Not even under Saddam. So the impact and the toll that this conflict has taken on these countries is almost immeasurable. [Transcript]

Some may fault Sanchez for saying "double, triple" and appearing grossly ignorant, but I'd like to give him a pat on the back. After all, we all know who the really ignorant people are: the ones who don't ask any questions and keep believing it's "double, triple."

Dying to see more dying

Many have benefited from the war in Iraq, including the defense contractors, the rebuilding companies and the prostheses makers, but you rarely hear about one group of people: the cemetery workers.

NAJAF, Iraq — At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn't good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq .

"I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead," said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. "People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don't talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more." [Link]

Just as you and I might check a stock market index in the Wall Street Journal, Sameer keeps his eye on the death market index (DMI) in Cemetery News. The DMI fluctuates greatly in Iraq: one day it's up by 300 bodies, the next day it's down by 50. And the death analysts are worse than weather forecasters. Expect an explosion on Tuesday, they say, but Tuesday comes and there's no explosion, not even in the fireworks factory.