I grieve to point out that, according to the
Iraq Coalition Casualties Page, today's deaths have brought the May total to 74, making this the third-deadliest month for US troops in Iraq. Only November of last year (82 casualties) and of course last month's 140 were worse.
As several people have commented in the diaries, this carnage has been almost invisible in the media. In my local paper (the Philadelphia Inquirer), casualties are either buried in a paragraph near the end of a story on Iraq, or not mentioned at all. If I had been asked to guess on this month's casualties based on the press reports, I would have said they were in the teens, two dozen tops.
Last month's spike in body bags brought extensive coverage, and the Bush administration was damaged by that coverage. All the more distressing therefore that when the carnage continues at these high rates, the media now goes blind and mute.