Western media blind to real war victims

WHILE I share the feelings of Muntadar al-Zeidi, who threw his shoes at President Bush during the latter’s visit to Iraq on Sunday, I was not impressed by your report next day (December 14).

We were told that nearly 150,000 US troops remain in Iraq and that more than 4,209 members of the US military have been killed. Indeed that is newsworthy and sobering information.

However, we are given no figures estimating the Iraqi dead, only that 55 were killed in the recent attack in Kirkuk.

Surely you could have corrected that glaring omission? In almost every article about Iraq we are reminded of the latest death toll of US soldiers — often in the context of a family bereaved.

The bereaved Iraqi families are rarely mentioned — the Iraqis who have died in greater numbers and who did not choose to go to a war zone, but had it forced upon them by an American president who is responsible for an enormous number of innocent Iraqi casualties while facing nothing more threatening than two shoes thrown at him.

It is odd that in the eyes of most western reporters, every effort is made to name the latest casualty if he or she is a US soldier while an Arab man is identified only because he threw his shoes, in a report that scarcely mentioned the countless innocent victims that so infuriated him.

Tim Hourigan

Cedar Court

Kennedy Park

Limerick