Tageszeitung correspondent Bernd Pickert makes a good point in his column Das grosse Schweigen (The great silence).  During the Patreaus hearings this week on Capitol Hill no one brought up the issue of how multiple deployments in the US military were leading to a extreme psychological stress, which, in turn, is played out in how Iraqi civilians are treated (or rather mistreated):

"Dabei würde es sich lohnen, einmal einen Blick auf die Erfahrungen
jener insgesamt mehr als 500.000 Soldaten zu werfen, die im Irak
stationiert waren – nach fünf Jahren sind sie inzwischen ja recht
ausführlich dokumentiert. Was sie über ein systematisch
menschenverachtendes Verhalten der Soldaten gegen die Zivilbevölkerung
in diesem Krieg ohne Fronten berichten, kann eigentlich nur zu einer
Schlussfolgerung führen: die Iraker so bald wie möglich von dieser
Besatzung zu befreien." (It would be worthwhile to have  a look at the experiences of the 500,000 or so
soldiers who have been stationed in Iraq so far. These have not been sufficiently documented even
after five years of war. What they say
about the systematically brutal behavior of these soldiers towards the civilian
population in this endless war without fronts can only lead to one conclusion:
the Iraqis need to be freed of this occupation as soon as possible.)

Read my translation of Pickert’s entire piece over at Watching America.

Last month the US military dropped all charges against one of the marines involved in the Haditha Massacre, when 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians – mostly women and children – were killed. The story was barely noticed in the press as President Bush celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War.  And earlier in March dozens of veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan testified at the Winter Soldier event in Silver Springs, Maryland.  The event was ignored by the mainstream media outlets in the US, as noted by the Web site FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting):

On the fifth anniversary of the
Iraq War, it is particularly important that the media reverse this
silence, and include the voices of the vets who are speaking out about
their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan in national news coverage.

Videos of the testimonies can be found here.  The German press did cover the event, and it was also picked up by bloggers.

Let’s face it: we don’t consider Iraqi lives as valuable as Americans.  We keep detailed records of every US casualty in Iraq, but no one knows or cares how many Iraqis have been killed or injured as a result of the US-led invasion and occupation.  General Tommy Franks: "We Don’t Do Body Counts".