Buried in the Sand

600,000 dead in Iraq? Where do numbers like that come from?

More importantly, where do numbers like 30,000 come from? That's how many Iraqis have died according to Bush, as of last year. (Apparently that's Bush's limit when it comes to math becuase now he just says "a lot" of Iraqis have died.)

Let's compare the two numbers. 600,000 vs 30,000. Well one is like 25 deaths per day and the other is like 500 deaths per day. If you only count the bodies that come into the morgue, you end up with a figure around 30,000. Or if you only look at the media reports and count the deaths based on that, you'd only end up with around the same 30,000. This is the proper way to count fatalities! This nonsense about conducting surveys... that's just not credible. Not credible! (Hold your hands up to your ears and repeat after me: "la la la la la la!")

Think about it this way. In order for the lowball figures to be correct, two things would have to happen: 1. Every person that dies over in Iraq has to end up in the morgue. 2. Every single death has to have been reported by the media.

In order for the 600,000 figure to be correct, only one of these needs to be true: 1. Only 5-10% of the dead in Iraq end up in a morgue. 2. Only 5-10% of the deaths in Iraq are reported by the media.

Which really sounds more plausible?

Indeed the 30,000 numbers are the ones that are not credible or even plausable. 5000 people have died in Baghdad in the past 2 months alone. And that's just one city.

They even admit their own numbers are the numbers that aren't plausible.

From the AP:

A private group called Iraqi Body Count says it has recorded about 44,000 to 49,000 civilian Iraqi deaths. But it notes that those totals are based on media reports, which it says probably overlook “many if not most civilian casualties”.

Based on media reports lol.

The same people who said "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction" are now saying "not credible". I envy these people for the rosy dreamworlds that they live in. I guess according to them only about 50,000 people must have died in Rwanda...


Someone needs to write a sequel to this book: Buried by the Times

One would be a fool to believe that the NYT or the media in general has changed all that much in the last 60 years. 600,000 is "not plausible". Sounds eerily familiar doesn't it?

Take a good look. This is history in the making. You want to understand how the holocaust occured? This is how. Because the body count then was also "not plausible." The methodology used back then to obtain the not-so-rosy statistics was also "not credible". It makes me wonder where they got their numbers back in the late 30's and early 40s. Did they call up the fuhrer himself and ask him how many jews have been killed? "A few thousand." "Ok we'll run with that number."

I guess since the insurgency is in its "last throes", it won't be long before peace settles in. Then we can get in there with a real survey crew and find out exactly how many lives have been lost. And guess which methodology will be used? That's right, one very similar to the one used by Johns Hopkins University to give us the figure of 600,000.

I think Bush destroyed himself by once again burying his head in the sand on national tv. What a cowardly act. The sad thing is he's done it so many times that it probably won't have any effect on the elections.