NYT: How Many Iraqis Are Dying? By One Count, 208 in a Week

[Paragon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/19/international/middleeast/19casualties.html?ex=1255924800&en=36aa0709f90acf0a&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo

AGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 18 - It began with the killing of two Iraqi civilians in a suicide bomb attack against an American military convoy in the northern city of Mosul last Monday. It ended Sunday evening, when a car bomb killed seven Iraqi police officers and civilians at a Baghdad cafe where police officers had apparently broken their fast during this month of Ramadan.

A weeklong effort to tally Iraqi casualties shows soldiers, insurgents, politicians, journalists, a judge, a medic and restaurant workers among the victims. They included Dina Mohammed Hassan, a television reporter killed by three men who called her a collaborator, and Ali Hussein's son and nephew, nighttime guards who died when Americans bombed a restaurant in Falluja.

From Oct. 11 to Oct. 17, an estimated 208 Iraqis were killed in war-related incidents, significantly higher than the average week; 23 members of the United States military died over the same period.

The deaths of Iraqis, particularly those of civilians, has become an increasingly delicate topic. Early this month, the Health Ministry, which had routinely provided casualty figures to journalists, stopped releasing them. Under a new policy that the government said would streamline the release of the figures - which were clearly an embarrassment to the government as well as to the Americans - only the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers is now allowed to do so.

"It's a political issue," a senior Health Ministry official said last week...

:mad:

[OneBlueSky]

1. I wish that just once, some reporter with balls would ask the shrub . . .

"Mr. President, do you believe that Iraqi lives are less important, less valuable than American lives?" . . .

and, after he swears that he doesn't . . .

"Then why does the US not track Iraqi deaths in the same careful way they would if American civilians were being killed?" . . .

[byronm]

2. "Its a political issue"

I can't believe the death of 200+ iraqi's a week is even considered a "political issue"..

Its a human tragedy..