Death in Iraq is automated now. Buried in a Washington Post story on the post-Golden Dome carnage – which, the Post reported, left 1,300 dead in four days – is this little vignette:
Claiming the dead has become automated. Morgue workers directed families to a barred window in the narrow courtyard outside the main entrance. A computer screen angled to face the window flashed the contorted, staring faces of the dead: men shot in the mouth, men shot in the head, men covered with blood, men with bindings twisted around their necks.Men and a few women in black abayas pressed up to the window's black bars as the reek of the bodies inside spilled out.
"What neighborhood?'' a morgue worker asked one waiting man.
"Adhamiyah,'' the man said, naming a predominantly Sunni neighborhood.
Tapping at the keyboard, the morgue worker fast-forwarded through the scores of tortured faces.
"Criminals. How can you kill another human for nothing?" someone clutching the bars asked.
"Good news, we found the body," another man called out. "We found him."
