A WSJ article reports that a John Hopkins study says that 600,000 Iraqis have died violently since the war started. That’s 2,5% of the population that would have been alive if there were no conflict. Granted, they would have been living under the control of a homicidal dictator who Human Rights Watch estimates killed up to 290,000 people in twenty years.

Everyday when I read about the latest slaughter in Iraq, I think what our reaction would be if dozens of people in Boston were being blown up and shot every day. My imagination fails. This morning, though, I choked up at a photograph in the Boston Globe of a teenager clutching his father’s casket. Policy isn’t dictated by such photographs. But it ought to begin there. [Tags: iraq]

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