Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006
Civilian Casualties in Iraq
Not credible. That's how President Bush described a peer-reviewed study this fall that calculated some 600,000 Iraqis had died from war-related violence since March 2003. The Johns Hopkins study, based on a survey of 1,849 Iraqi households, was dismissed by the White House for its small sample size. But in December, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) lambasted the Pentagon for "significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." For example, official accounts tallied 93 attacks one day in July, yet, according to the ISG, "a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence." Maybe those Johns Hopkins academics weren't so far off after all.