Monday, July 30, 2007

The 700,000 Club

So, what was Carolyn Bninski and her allies doing at the offices of Mark Udall that got them in so much trouble?

Why, they were reading aloud the names of all 700,000 Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Let's see if we can put that number into perspective.

1. On average, that is about 600 Iraqis a day, every day, for four years. Just the other day, NBC made a big deal when 50 Iraqis got killed by two car bombs. That wasn't 50 per bomb. 600 a day seems a bit much.

2. If one assumes that the names are printed in two columns on a sheet of paper, that is about 250 names per sheet if both sides are used. At that rate, it would take 2800 sheets of paper just to print the names. Carolyn must have some serious muscles if she carries 2800 sheets of paper around.

3. If one assumes that the names can be read at the rate of one per second, night and day, non stop, a difficult task given the language barrier, it would take 8 days. If Bninski only scheduled three weeks of protests, it is hard to see how she could have expected to read 700,000 names.

Can't see the Center has more.

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