Tuesday, July 19, 2005
 
Presented as Straight News
Survey: 25,000 civilians killed in Iraq war:
    Nearly 25,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the Iraq war, according to a group that tracks the civilian death toll from the conflict.

    The Iraq Body Count -- a London-based group comprising academics and human rights and anti-war activists -- said on Tuesday that 24,865 civilians had died between March 20, 2003 and March 19, 2005.     [Emphasis mine]
Swell. How did this survey come about? Did the anti-war activists ask people if they had been killed in the Iraq war? Close.
    "Our data has been extracted from a comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 press and media reports published since March 2003. Our accounting is not complete: only an in-depth, on-the-ground census could come close to achieving that," the group said.

    "But if journalism is the first draft of history, then this dossier may claim to be an early historical analysis of the military intervention's known human costs."
At least CNN did add a bit of a rejoinder, some paragraphs down, from people closer to the conflict than press and media reports:
    The Iraqi government disputed some of the finding of the report.

    "We welcome the attention given by this report to Iraqi victims of violence but we consider that it is mistaken in claiming that the plague of terrorism has killed fewer Iraqis than the multinational forces," said the prime minister's office, citing recent terror strikes, including the Musayyib bombing that killed nearly 100 people on Saturday.

    "The international forces try to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists target civilians and try to kill as many of them as they can."
So it's really unclear to me why this piece puts the claims of academics activists above Iraqi government officials and U.S. government officials. No, wait, come to think of it, it's clear....


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:52 PM
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