Anti-war activists guess at war dead, media quote as fact

From the Ass. Press:

A British research group said Tuesday that about 25,000 civilians died in violence in Iraq in the two years after the start of the U.S.-led invasion.

Iraq Body Count compiled its figures of killings that occurred between March 20, 2003 and March 19, 2005 from reports by the major news agencies, including The Associated Press and British and American newspapers.

All, I repeat, all, of the stats in the article come from the web site IraqBodyCount.net. IraqBodyCount.net, though compiled their data from news stories -- NEW STORIES!! -- and who do the news agencies get their data from? Sham groups lie IraqBodyCount.net. Of course the Ass. Press quotes them as a reliable sources, as do the multitude of other news sources, that quote the Ass. Press without bothering to check if the story is even accurate.

So who is IraqBodyCount.net? From search of the names of those involved (names that took some time to find) Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, Kay Williams, Toby Dodge, Scott Lipscomb, James Kemp and Katy Cronin amnong many others with equally dubious pasts, they appear to be a group of people who've long been fanatically opposed to the war against terror, and seem to feel that it is better for Saddam Hussein to torture and murder millions than for a fraction of that to die winning their freedom. Their website is being maintain by Torben Franck, one of the “peace” activists who urged people to travel to Iraq before Saddam Hussein was ousted, and act as human shields.

Under “Reported civilian deaths resulting from the US-led military intervention in Iraq” they list deaths that occured from suicide bombings, roadside bombs, car bombs, “bomb in vegetable cart”, suicide car bomb among many other obvious caused by insurgents who would be killing people whether the US was there or not. They never mention how many died under Saddam Hussein.

That they can guess how many have died is highly doubtful, given that they remain safely outside of Iraq. That they could be trusted to report an accurate figure given their obvious motivation is even more doubtful.

Posted by Danny Carlton at July 20, 2005 07:02 AM