Friday, November 10, 2006

Acceptable Numbers

On the hourly news updates today, Jamie Tarabay commented on the Iraqi Health Minister's statement of 150,000 civilians killed in Iraq since the US invasion. She stated that it was "a number three times previously accepted estimates."

That's news to me! Accepted by who? Iraq Body Count (IBC) has a 50,000 figure, but it is based only on media reports. Bush claimed 30,000 back when IBC was at about 30,000. So the "accepted" figure is what the US government/military approves of, not 655,00, which is what a scientific/peer-reviewed study concluded.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

For NPR, reality is never what can be demonstrated scientifically. It is always only what the powerful claim it to be.