...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.