Counting The Casualties: How Many Iraqis Have Died?

When it comes to American deaths in Gulf War II, U.S. officials are quite precise. In the first three weeks of fighting, 110 U.S. troops were killed. The Iraqi body count, by contrast, is a mystery. When American forces first pushed into Baghdad, for example, they boasted of killing as many as 3,000 enemy fighters. The release of that number may have been an effort to rattle the Iraqis. But the estimate was little more than what the military calls a WAG, a wild-assed guess. The Iraqi side can't do much better. No longer does an authority exist to track casualties....