Saturday, June 04, 2005
12,000
After "The Lancet" guestimate of 100,000 dead following the liberation of Iraq - which has now become a fixed part of the left's anti-war creed - and the more recent UN estimate, based on a much larger sample, of 24,000 deaths, come the numbers from the Iraqi authorities:
And how's this for a misleading headline?
Imagine that!
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The Iraqi government says insurgent violence has killed 12,000 civilians in the past 18 months. Iraq's Interior Ministry reported the first official toll on Thursday. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said the figures show more than 20 people per day died in bombings and other attacks.I do not know whether the Ministry's figures are also an extrapolation, or whether they represent an actual physical count (although I would have thought it's the latter), but they serve as a useful reminder to the world of what's really happening in Iraq. The left, of course, would want you to forget that there is a terror campaign going on in Iraq against its people, because it spoils the satisfaction of being able to lay down every dead Iraqi at the feet of American troops.
And how's this for a misleading headline?
Sunni Group Calls for End to Iraq AttacksA Sunni group call for the end of suicide bombing and terror campaigns? It wouldn't be the first time, but any reiteration would be welcome. But not so:
An influential Sunni association called for an end to a weeklong counterinsurgency offensive in Baghdad, saying it overwhemingly [sic] targets members of their religious minority and has led to the detention of hundreds of people.Memo to "an influential Sunni association": that could be because both the neo-Baathist insurgency and Al Zarqawi's terror groups are composed almost exclusively of members of your religious minority. If you really want the end to counterinsurgency operations and to all the violence, why don't you call on the insurgents and the terrorists to lay down their guns and their bombs, so that all three major groups can finally sit down together and have a serious talk about meaningful ways of including Sunnis in the democratic life of the new Iraq.
Imagine that!
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