Numbers

Tonight's episode of the Daily Show had a very interesting moment - John Stewart had invited an Iraqi author and they were discussing the war in iraq. At one stage JS mentioned the Virginia shootings and then mentioned how difficult it is for people to deal with this crime and how many innocent people had died and how their families were trying to cope - he followed this by mentioning that Iraq goes through higher number everyday - how do the Iraqis deal with it.

It is true, you look at the news today and there is an article in NY Times about how 171 people died today - TODAY!! and this is just one normal day in Iraq. All of US is obsessing over this shooting and then you have this violence caused by the US on the other side of the world.
Preemptive strike right? And then they wonder why there are these shooting rampages occurring so frequently in US. Not that I want to take away from the tragedy of it, but putting it in perspective, what is 33 deaths against 171? and that is one time only thing as well.
Probably I am sounding callous but haven't we turned callous when dealing with Iraq? The numbers pile up and we don't even notice them anymore.