Tuesday, November 18, 2003 :::
 
Further thoughts on the Iraq Body Count.

As readers who visited A Mind That Suits last night know, further poking around the Iraq Body Count website has revealed a purported total count of civilians killed in all phases of the Iraq War. The website's main page touts its count of violent deaths since we took over Baghdad, but poke back a little, and there is indeed a running total. Based simply on its account of recent violent deaths, it takes little to assume that deaths properly laid at the feet of Saddam will be put in our column, just for effect. That would include, say, the consequences of using civilian institutions as shields for military installations. Which would also de, by the way, the basement of the hospital where Pvt. Jessica Lynch was held. (The spin on that was that there was no reason for the US to use force in taking her back. That's not true.) But only in the world where sites like Iraq Body Count are dreamed up is Saddam not the guilty one when American soldiers have difficulty distinguishing between ambulances that are speeding toward them because the civilian driver is panicked and ambulances that are speeding toward them because they are carrying fully armed Ba'ath Party loyalists.

And of course, assuming that the Iraq Body Count is accurate, its"maximum" count still represents about 6 days of murder under Saddam, which murder does not seem to bother the owners of the site.

As it does not seem to bother them that most (as in nearly all) of the continuing violence is in the Sunni Triangle, where about--let's take a stab here--10% of the population seems to be intent on fighting us. That's 10% of the Sunnis, which means 2-3% of the total population. And that 2% wants to go back to the status quo ante, where, in the name of all the Sunnis, they oppressed the Kurds and the Shi'ites who are far and away the largest group in the country.

You see, life was such a paradise in Iraq before the breakdown of law and order brought on by the elimination of the Ba'ath government. You can tell because of the mass demonstrations demanding that the US leave.

Oh, wait, there aren't any.

Hmm.




::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 10:05 AM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.