Why is the New York Times silent on massive Iraq death toll?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/kell-o16.shtml

A question for Bill Keller

16 October 2006

The corporate-controlled American media is deliberately suppressing the results of a survey that demonstrates that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused more than 600,000 deaths in the past three years—a figure that in and of itself refutes all the claims by the Bush administration that it carried out the invasion of Iraq in order to foster democracy in the Middle East. What kind of “freedom” and “human rights” can be the consequence of such a slaughter?

The major American media organizations—including the New York Times—published only brief reports on the study October 11. Taking their cue from President Bush, who declared the survey’s methodology faulty without offering any proof, the Times and other leading media outlets have dropped the subject. There have been no editorials in the Times, the Washington Post, or other major newspapers, nor any demands for a more serious response from the Bush administration.

There is no legitimate, scientific basis for rejecting the findings of this survey carried out under the auspices of Johns Hopkins, one of the leading US universities. Under the direction of epidemiologists at the college’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Iraqi interviewers visited thousands of Iraqi families throughout the war-torn country. The sample size was huge: 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in a country of 26 million people. By comparison, the CBS-New York Times poll, whose findings receive regular front-page coverage in the Times, uses a sample of 800 to 2,000 people in a country of 300 million.

If President Bush were to declare at his next press conference that the opinion polls showing 60 percent or more of the population opposed to the war in Iraq are bogus, and based on a “flawed methodology,” the Times would presumably denounce such an accusation and demand the White House provide proof of the alleged poll-rigging.

Why is a similar standard not applied to the Johns Hopkins inquiry into the excess deaths in Iraq? Is it, perhaps, because these figures would implicate all those responsible for the US military intervention—including its media apologists—in killing on a scale that deserves to be called genocide?

[Octafish]

1. Same reason Steno Judy worked there?

That's where the money is.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Because it's reason, logic and science. Those are scarce commodities

in the upper level of the cabal. MKJ

[Botany]

3. Same reason that Ohio 04 is a story not told

Liberal media .... ha!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. is the NYT sitting on the dozens of US deaths at the ammo depot?

Does the ownershit of the NYT care more for protecting their own from threats coming from the White Hores, er Horse, House, whatever,

[NNN0LHI]

5. Its because they are complicit n/t

[malaise]

6. They are all complicit in

this slaughter but Iraqi lives have never mattered to these criminals and their cronies. How well I remember their descriptions of the beauty of the illegal bombing of that country and the so called 'collateral damage'. Sadly the Iraqis fighting to chase them out of their country see the occupiers the same way.

[LynnTheDem]

7. Genocide is a good thing when America does it.

Guess the US "media" decided not to print the good news of America's genocide in Iraq, being "liberal". After all, the "liberal" US "media" hate printing good news.