Losing hearts and minds in the Middle East

Civilian casualties are a grim fact of all wars. But while the carnage rained down by Israeli airstrikes on Qana last week further riveted the world's attention on Lebanon, the war unleashed by the Bush administration in the region more than three years ago brought a far more devastating toll in July.

According to [link|http://icasualties.org/oif/| Iraq Coalition Casualty Count], which estimates the mounting toll of the war based on news reports, nearly 1,300 Iraqis were killed last month. (The number includes Iraqi security forces and policemen, but many of them, like Iraqi civilians, are killed in suicide and bomb attacks.) That is, the number of Iraqi deaths in July approaches the number of civilians killed at Qana, on every day of the month.

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[link|http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/08/02/fallout/index.html?source=newsletter| Other fallout from the Israel-Hezbollah war]

The destruction on the ground in Lebanon and northern Israel continues to command the headlines, but the conflict is starting to leave its mark in other ways and extend its reach far and wide.

As Der Spiegel reports, Lebanon is now facing an [link|http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,druck-429622,00.html| environmental disaster]: "The Lebanese government is calling it the biggest ecological catastrophe in the country's history. Between July 13 and 15, Israeli jets bombed the Jiyyeh power station, located 30 kilometers south of Beirut, and caused up to 35,000 tons of fuel oil to gush into the sea. The oil slick has now spread along 80 kilometers of Lebanon's 225 kilometer coastline and has already reached Syria. A clean up operation is badly needed, but continuing hostilities between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have made this virtually impossible. Now, the catastrophe is threatening to damage the environment across many parts of the Mediterranean."

Citing reports from another security Web site, Andrew Cochran of the Counterterrorism blog notes that the conflict has set off a [link|http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/08/cyberterrorism_breaking_out_ov.php#trackbacks| wave of cyberterrorism]: "Zone-H reported yesterday and last week, when US government sites and a Microsoft site was attacked. Yesterday's report really sounded the alarm: 'Hundreds of web sites have been attacked in last days as a protest against bombing attacks by Israel against Lebanon. The largest part of web intrusions were defacements -- web intrusion at any level by which a web page is replaced by the attacker's message -- against Israeli and U.S. web sites.' Zone-H noted that the attacks are coming not just from Muslim areas, but from politically motivated non-Muslims expressing their protest by hacking and defacing websites."

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That is, the number of Iraqi deaths in July approaches the number of civilians killed at Qana, on every day of the month.