Nick,
According to your link, that average includes the civilian casualities that occurred during the first few weeks of the war and that's not a representative average of the losses due to the insurgency (or whatever we wish to call it).
Your link says "Overall, some 37% of civilian deaths were down to foreign forces and 9% to insurgents targeting occupying troops or Iraqi government agencies. " So, given that, it is more like something in the area of 3-4 per day on average due to the insurgency. Compare that to our statistics in the US, in 2003 we had 16,503 murders or 45.2 per day. Iraq has about 10% of our population so if we adjust it for population, if the US had Iraq's population we'd be averaging about 4-5 murders per day, or still much higher than the violence in Iraq currently.
I'm not trying to minimize the carnage going on over there, the attacks are horrific on an individual level, but you have to remember the cardinal rule in reporting....."BLOOD SELLS". I sincerely doubt the headline "British forces rebuilt 17 schools in Iraq in the last 18 months" or "Coalition forces have completed rebuilding 14 hospitals so far this year" is going to get much air..........but that doesn't mean those things aren't happening, the just don't sell papers and advertising on the nightly news.
John Stricker
