Straight from the man childs mouth.
Bush also said the security situation was improving in Iraq although he acknowledged 30,000 civilians had died since U.S. troops invaded, 999 days ago on March 20, 2003.
Washington has often refused to discuss the Iraqi civilian death toll, saying it was impossible to measure.
The president’s figure of 30,000, which his aides stressed was not official, was in the range given by Iraq Body Count, a U.S.-British non-government group, which currently says between 27,383 and 30,892 civilians — not just Iraqi citizens — have been killed since the invasion.
Its figures are based on media reports, which often fail to capture all deaths in the country. Other estimates, including one published in the medical journal Lancet in late 2004, put the civilian death toll as high as 100,000, even then.
Thankfully the WH has now given credibility to the range of independent assessments of the death toll. Clearly the private sector does do body counts better.
Where was it that I read today that Bush was trying a new strategy – partial candour? Will wonders never cease? Will his approval rating go up?
“partial candour” – excellent – and apparently his numbers have gone up.
And we even get a body count. Is this the Bush doctrine? Body counts are the new black.
Wow. Noone stupid enough to take this as a debunking of the Lancet study. Blogosphere, I bow to thee.
*glances around nervously*
But the dead know it was worth it. You can tell by their smiling faces.
Just started rereading on the tram to work every morning B.Traven’s “The Rebellion of the Hanged.” It’s even better than I remembered. This was the guy who wrote “Treasure Of Sierra Madre” and who Norman Spinrad ripped off for “The Men In The Jungle”.
And I sometimes look up from “Hanged” and down the swaying metal tube full of utterly prosaic and placid Melbourne burghers and wonder if it’s all really the zero-sum game we’re told it has to be.
Meanwhile people who don’t kill others keep dying before their time.
This figure, while appalling, seems to be more than a little short of the six-figure number thrown about with gay abandon by opponents of the US as long ago as eighteen months.
The vast percentage of the killings appear to be carried out by insurgents representing the minority Sunnis who cannot stomach the loss of the life and death power they had over Kurds and Shiites when their pal Saddam was in power. Why this loss of power of the Sunnis (other than the power of terror still being exercised by them) is seen as somehow terribly undemocratic remains a mystery.
whyisitso, the Lancet study calculated excess deaths since invasion, not reported war deaths.
I highly recommend listening to the This American Life show on the Lancet http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/05/300.html. It raises the question of what these numbers mean without denouncing Bush or even saying that war was necessarily the wrong strategy. It has excellent interviews with Roberts and a DoD targetting specialist (who initially denounced the study and also has some fascinating insights into the technicals aspects of the bombing campaign) and asks thoughtful philosophical questions with a cool head.