Monday, December 18, 2006

Who Cares About Homicide

Listening to the latest reports about the state of the Civil War in Iraq (well, that's what it looks like to me) I was intrigued by the reports of the number of deaths. That on any one day there could be fifty deaths was reported as an extraordinarily high death count.

But then I got to thinking - what is the homicide rate in the US. In 2004 there were 17,357 homicides in the US, according to the National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control. Of these 11,624 were inflicted by firearm.

How many Iraqis are dieing each year? Maybe George Bush doesn't really care when there are 47 homicides a day in the land of the free? I know the Iraq population is only about a tenth that of the US - but all the same it sounds to me like in the US definition of freedom there is one thing missing - freedom from having your life taken by another.

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