In the mind of some Americans, the occupation of Iraq is revenge for the attack on September 11, 2001. This is of course absurd, since Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The images below attempt to compare the casualties in those two horrible episodes of early 21st century history, in the hope of evoking some sympathy among Americans for the unfathomable suffering of the Iraqi people in the wake of the U.S. invasion.

In these figures, each pixel represents 3000 people. The white pixels represent people who were killed in each conflict.

United States, September 11, 2001: approximately 3000 deaths in a population of approximately 300,000,000.

Iraq, 2003 to 2006: very probably at least 600,000 deaths in a population of approximately 30,000,000.

Remember the pain caused by 3 planes crashing into buildings on 9/11. Imagine it had been 60 planes, distributed among all the states of the U.S. Taking into account the relative size of the total population, that would have amounted to 1% of the deaths Iraq has suffered in this war.