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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! December 13, 2005 Instant Urban Legend?By GreyhawkQ Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.Today's headlines? "Bush says 30,000 Iraqi civilians dead in war" Meanwhile, Reuters reports that voting has begun in Iraq Voting started on a day that U.S. President George W. Bush gave a rare estimate of the number of civilians killed since U.S. troops invaded in 2003, acknowledging that 30,000 civilians had died in the violence.We're sure corrections are forthcoming. Update: Political Teen has the video. Update 2: The Chronicle has altered their original headline - and the text in the story claiming 30,000 civilian dead. This sort of stuff is why I always screen capture this sort of stuff.  At least for a while you'll be able to Google the original headline. The Reuters story is unchanged - but that's likely to be on several web sites now, so no quick "fix". Australian news sites are all over the 30,000 dead civilians story too. More: And CNN is getting the headlines from Australia wrong. Guess we're even - and we all lose. Posted by Greyhawk / December 13, 2005 4:45 PM | Permalink 3 TrackBacksThis is beautiful. Caught with their pants down again. You simply cannot trust the media to report the truth. The media is on the side of the enemy.... Read More If you watched President Bush's speech today, with the subsequent question and answer session, you might wonder if journalists were watching the same broadcast when you read the coverage. Read More CATEGORY: War on Terror The latest poll from CNN-Gallup confirms what many on the right have been saying for months; that the best salesman for the government’s Iraq War policies is the President himself: As President Bush prepares to make his fi... Read More 26 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
...ongoing violence against Iraqis.
You know... the terrorist bombs and stuff like that?
At least the newsies and their experts this morning were agreeing that the 30,000 was probably in the ballpark.
Just goes to show you that the problem isn't that the media are "biased"; it's that they're liars.
Just to add to what Sgt. Jeff said:
Why are the Iraqi citizens killed by terrorist bombs part of the total killed in the "war?" It sounds more logical to say that they were: (i) murder victims; (ii) killed in the course of converting the political system from a dictatorship to democracy.
I.e., if the Weather Underground killed police officers during the Vietnam War (and they did), the officers were not counted as war dead: they were murder victims.
______________
What % of 30K are "insurgents" (per the question), and what % of non-insurgents were killed by insurgents vs. coalition forces. That breakdown should be the money quote.
Anyone have those numbers?
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
iraqbodycount.net is hardly a fair source to look for this kind of information. Its founder, researchers, and statements are all overwhelmingly left wing, anti-war, and anti-Bush. The numbers they come up with are invalid statistical estimates bsaed on the number of deaths reported in the media, which tends to over-state civilian casualites, and, more importantly, the site doesn't make a distinction between actual civilians and terrorists in civilian clothing.
Let's look at iraqbodycount.net's figures.
By their own admission, as of July 19, 2005:
81.7% of the dead = adult males
90% of the wounded = adult males
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4696875.stm
Have we invented "smart" munitions that only kill adult males, or are most of these dead "civilians" enemy and allied combatants?
See it just goes to prove how dumb we truely are.
All Americans in Iraq are soldiers.
All Iraqis before and after the invasion are "civilians" and therefore victems.
I swear some of yo'ens just don't understand.
Do you think when they're being killed they are happy when it is due to an American bomb and livid with anger when it is from an insurgent's bomb?
Could it be that Bush was referring to 30,000 deaths of combatants (both Iraqi military during the initial incursion and insurgents/terrorists after the end of "major combat operations"? And the MSM decides it's a great time to go after the civilian death angle?
Reuters is holding out strong on the civilian angle... SFGate has corrected their headline (without acknowledging the original error... However, in the story they never refer to insurgents or combatants... just civilians, policy, and security forces.
Regards,
St Wendeler
Another Rovian Conspiracy - 30,000 "Civilians"
Not being able to categorize casualties as innocent civilian, soldier, unlawful combantant as well as not categorizing the cause (insurgent/terrorist IED or mortar attack vs. collateral damage due to friendly fire) really proves nothing except that violence tends to get people killed.
Does anyone know how many innocent Iraqi's would have been killed under the old regime?
I don't have any hard numbers but based on reading various Human Rights Reports as well as The Kay and Duelfer intelligence reports they allude that the Hussein regime was killing folks by the thousands per month (anyone have good numbers on this?), so even despite the losses we've had, if someone wants to make a big deal by counting bodies, we should compare/contrast with how many would have been killed by Uday, Qusay, and the rest of the sunshine gang over there.
It would appear that the headline got changed. It now says:
"Bush says 30,000 Iraqis dead in war"
Are we seeing a little back pedaling? Of course, we also need to see what the Dead Tree headline is.
Um, that's not what the headline says. It says 30,000 Iraqis in that San Fran paper. You say it says 30,000 Iraqi civilians. Did they change it or are you, um, you know...
Adam, if you go to this Google News link before the headline changes, you can see that the original headline was as Greyhawk quotes it.
Here's a screen capture (the pixelated part at the top is my Gmail address, which I don't give out online).
Great. Good find. Just wanted to be clear. Don't want to be David Brock.
I heard that part of the Q&A session - Bush did *not* mis-speak, the question he was asked was to provide an estimate of the total number of Iraqi casualties - military, insurgent and civilian - by both US and insurgent forces - and he replied that the estimate was about 30k. It was only one question out of many and the NPR correspondent was impressed that he answered it at all, let alone so forth-rightly and directly.
So, the Phillie paper whipped out that 216 point Pearl Harbor font and announced "Bush says 30,000 Iraqis Killed" - apparently nothing else in his speech was of any importance.
Great catch! Thanks for exploding that little piece of media bias...it is just too bad there is always plenty more where that came from.
(I can't do trackback...)
http://bujutsublogger.blogspot.com/2005/12/correcting-misperception-about-30000.html
Wow.
It just never ends.
Great post!
Well, you know, they could be focusing instead on how the President thought it was time to make jokes after talking about how many dead Iraqis there are "more or less." Like they were beans in a jar rather than human beings, and no more important.
Be careful what you wish for.
Wow! You sure uncovered a conspiracy there.
GWB: "How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less"
Headline: "Bush says 30,000 Iraqi civilians dead in war"
They sure twisted his words! Probably on orders from Sen. Clinton and Michael Moore!
This is a must read here
the casualties are broken down. It's a good resource.
Pat Fornler:
The question the President answered was:
Q Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.
Members of the Iraqi military and police are not civilians. They are, however, Iraqi citizens. So, that makes the 30k "civilians" dead headline very dishonest and yes, they did twist his words.
Hint: it helps to not try this when the evidence is right there at the top of the post you are commenting on.
Patrick Chester:
Members of the Iraqi military and police are not civilians.
So you say. Some dictionaries strongly disagree with you.
Regardless, the President's answer was:
How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis.
Hint: it helps to not try this when the evidence is right there at the top of the post you are commenting on.
I just presented the dictionary definitons of "citizen", so it's safe to say that there was no misleading in putting "civilian" in headlines. The president did not specify which, if any, of the 30,000 were troops - in fact, he didn't specify much of anything (Directly answering a reporter's question? That would be a first.) Reading any more into it is putting words in the president's mouth, which I understand, since somebody has to.
Patrick Chester:
Dammit, you did it to me, too. Your "civilian"/"citizen" switch stymied my comment.
To clarify, dictionaries disagree with your assessment that citizens are not civilians. This makes your statement that "Members of the Iraqi military and police are not civilians" fairly meaningless, and a reverse-engineered defense of what the president actually stated. After all, the president did not mention "members of the Iraqi military and police" in his answer; only "citizens", which can very well mean "civilians". To declare otherwise is sheer assumption and deflection on your part, and likewise on the part of this site. Or perhaps you'd like to study the English language, the president's actual words, and any known figures of Iraqi deaths and explain what was so dishonest.
Ther argument over the definition of civilian misses the point. The Liar in Chief picked a ridiculously low estimate that was made a year ago, and was outdated then. Bush extended his record of not being able to tell the truth about a single thing. Oh, and the question was planted by the White House for the purpose of making Bush look like he isn't a potted plant, even though that's pretty much what he is -- emphasis on potted.
Police, military, and other specialized government employees are generally not considered civilians, though they are citizens.
This is simple if/then logic; civilians and citizens are not interchangeable terms. Civilians are citizens, but the converse is not necessarily true.