From: bks@alfa.berkeley.edu (Bradley K. Sherman)
Newsgroups: alt.desert-storm
Subject: Mike Royko Column
Date: 28 Sep 1992 18:13:37 GMT
Organization: Mesopotamian Memories
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfa.berkeley.edu

Mike Royko writes in the _Chicago Tribute_:

        There was this squib of a news story that came  over  the
    wires  the  other  day. It wasn't much longer than a baseball
    box score or an interview with a rock  star  about  his  next
    tour. It said:
        ``Boston (AP) -- The death rate among Iraqi children rose
    dramatically  in  the  months after the gulf war, largely be-
    cause of an outbreak of diarrhea caused by disabled water and
    sewage systems, researchers reported today.
        ``In the first seven months of 1991,  about  46,900  more
    children  died  than would have been expected, according to a
    study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
        ``It said the death rate for children under 5 was  triple
    that before the war.
        ``The study was conducted by Dr. Alberto Ascherio of  the
    Harvard  School  of  Public Health and other researchers from
    the United States, England, New Guinea  and  Jordan.  It  was
    paid for by the United Nations Children's Fund.
        ``The researchers said they worked independently  of  the
    Iraqi government.''
        That's it. About 15 lines of type.
        But then, it's old news. The war has been over for a year
    and  a half.  The parades have ended, the yellow ribbons have
    been taken down, and the last  proud,  chest-thumping  speech
    has been made.
        Still, if you like numbers, 46,900 is an interesting fig-
    ure. And you can play with it in different ways.
        For example, there are  baseball  and  football  stadiums
    that have a seating capacity of about 46,900.
        So we might try picturing  one  of  these  stadiums  with
    every seat occupied by a child 5 years old or younger.
        Try it. Close your eyes and imagine Comiskey Park in Chi-
    cago  or  Shea Stadium in New York with a little kid in every
    seat.
        That's a lot of noisy kids.
        Now, imagine that somebody pulls a  switch  and  sends  a
    jolt  of  electricity  into  the seats and every one of those
    46,900 noisy kids dies.
        That would be a lot of dead kids. So  you'd  better  open
    your eyes, since it isn't a pleasant thing to imagine.
        Or we can look at it another way. The  biggest  hotel  in
    the world is in Las Vegas. It has 4,000 rooms.
        So if you put 11 kids in each room,  you'd  have  stuffed
    the  place with 44,000 kids. Put the extra 2,900 in the grand
    ballroom.
        Let's imagine that someone pushes down on a plunger, set-
    ting  off  a hugh explosion that blows the hotel away, really
    flattens it.
        Now that would rate more than a  squib  of  a  story.  It
    would  be  front-  page headlines all over the world: ``Hotel
    explodes killing 46,900 children.''
        Which just shows that bad water leading to  diarrhea  and
    other  intestinal  disorders doesn't have the dramatic impact
    of an explosion, although the results are the same.
        Or we can play with the number another way.
        The average daily attendance at Disney World is 72,233.
        Of course, all 72,233 people aren't  there  at  the  same
    time. Some come in the morning and are gone by mid-afternoon.
    Some come in the afternoon and leave when the big  parade  is
    over.
        So let's take a guess and say that at about 2 o'clock  on
    an  average  afternoon,  there are about 46,900 people there,
    many of them children.
        And a terrible thing happens. A giant meteor comes  roar-
    ing out of space and lands smack dab on Disney World, leaving
    nothing but a giant crater. (Scientists  say  something  like
    that  could  happen,  but  it's a zillion-to-1 shot, so don't
    change your vacation plans.)
        Now that would be a super-big story. It  would  stun  the
    world  and  would  go  down in history as one of the greatest
    disasters.
        Which shows that if you want to make history, get hit  by
    a meteor instead of stomach cramps.
        Which also shows that there is more to modern  wars  than
    that which the Pentagon allows us to see on CNN.
        What we see on TV is kind of fun, all those  videos  from
    high above of targets far below suddenly blossoming like tiny
    flowers when a bomb lands. The graphics are not yet  as  good
    as  Super  Mario  4, but maybe by the next war, they'll catch
    up.
        And we see the parades, the  strutting  politicians,  and
    the cheering sports bars that have become cheering war bars.
        But what we don't see is described in the full report  by
    the doctors who made this study:
        ``The destruction of the supply of electric power at  the
    beginning  of  the war, with the subsequent disruption of the
    electricity-dependent water and sewage systems, was  probably
    responsible  for  the  reported epidemics of gastrointestinal
    and other infections.
        ``These epidemics were worsened by the  reduced  accessi-
    bility  of  health  services  and  decreased ability to treat
    severely ill children.''
        In other words, we don't see those invisible  but  deadly
    killers  in the water or the children screaming because their
    stomachs hurt and their fevers are raging. And we  don't  see
    them weaken, fade, then die.
        But who would want to see a downer like that, anyway?
        In a classic understatement, the doctors concluded: ``War
    is  never  good  for  health.  But the full effect of war and
    economic sanctions on morbidity and mortality is difficult to
    assess,  and  the  number  of  civilian casualties caused in-
    directly is likely to be underestimated.
        ``... During the gulf war, it was suggested that by using
    high-  precision  weapons  with strategic targets, the Allied
    forces were producing only limited damage to the civilian po-
    pulation.
        ``The results of our study contradict this claim and con-
    firm  that  the  casualties  of  war  extend far beyond those
    caused directly by warfare.''
        Forty-six thousand nine hundred kids. Give or take a  few
    tots.
        So what color ribbon do we wear for that triumph?