The Body Count Sweater

1516 American soldiers had been killed in Iraq by the day I made this sweater, March 14, 2005. I wanted to make a sweater that would be history as soon as it was made. In the time between designing and knitting this sweater, the body count went up. It rises daily. The front of the sweater says "1516 American soldiers killed, 11220 wounded, as of March 14, 2005" in plain text. The strip along the bottom says, in a more traditional knit alphabet font, "It's been nearly two years" and the top stripe uses the words "SHOCK" and "AWE" repeated to create a pattern. The casualty number and number wounded was found on the Iraq Coalition Casualties website.

The back of the sweater has estimates for the number of Iraqi citizens killed during this debacle. This number does not include numbers of military or "insurgents" killed. Just civilians. The broadly ranging estimate was found on a website called IraqBodyCount.net. The people who run this site keep track of all press reports of Iraqi civilians wounded. The data is charted out on long spreadsheets which are accessible on the site.

The back of the sweater reads "16381-18662 Iraqi Civilians Killed as of March 14, 2005. oops. FREEDOM IS MESSY." The "SHOCK" and "AWE" motif is repeated, as is the "It's been nearly two years."

The left sleeve has George W Bush's famous quote "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."

The right sleeve has my initials and the date.