General Tommy Franks famously said "We don't do body counts". Deputies quickly tried to put out a statement that was more palatable to the international media. "It just is not worth trying to characterise by numbers...And, frankly, if we are going to be honourable about our warfare, we are not out there trying to count up bodies. This is not the appropriate way for us to go." - Vince Brooks deputy director of operations US central command 2004 A strange statement. How, one wonders, is counting civilian casualties dishonourable? Brooks gambles that buy stating something which is palpably false as a an obvious truth it will be largely accepted. His gamble paid off, no one present and few mainstream media outlets bothered to question his logic. Blair and the New Labour team have been much more media savvy, but have still rejected out of hand any suggestion of an estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths. "Figures from the Iraqi ministry of health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is." Blair to parliament, 8/12/2004 But this statement also raises questions. The Iraqi ministry of health is more accurate compared to...? Well, presumably the Iraq Body Count. But let's look at the details. The Iraqi ministry of health is counting the bodies which are brought to its hospitals and morgues, and those who die in its hospitals. On top of this the figures are released through the government which can not be taken as an unbiased source. The government are supported by the USA which has a vested interest in a low civilian death count. Only the naive would suggest between them they are beyond massaging the figures. The figure given by the Iraqi ministry of Health at the time of Blair's 2004 speech was 3853. Up to the same period approximately 1000 US servicemen had been killed. The idea that Iraqi civilians were dying, compared to US servicemen, at a rate of 3.8:1 is preposterous, it is also hard to refute without hard evidence to the contrary. For now we rely on the "circumstantial" evidence. The best equipped military in the world, in vast strength, were suffering such high casualties in a ground invasion in which fewer than 4000 Iraqis had died. Probably not. Furthermore, the Iraqi ministry of Health figure is also suspect. It does not take into account or try to estimate through any accepted statistical process the number of dead that would not be recorded by hospitals. Many people that died in bombings may have not had identifiable remains. In remote areas deaths, in such troubled times, may well not have been reported to the authorities and casualties would have had little hope of getting to an official hospital. In some areas, notably Fall, the new Iraqi establishment was not in control and even the Red Crescent were not able to stay. Beyond Blair and Bush Fast forward to 2007 and it is obvious that we need to go beyond the complete denials of the Bush regime and the warped statistics of Blair's spin doctors. The question is: Do you go with the Iraq Body Count or the now infamous Lancet Report?   del.icio.us tags: iraq, body, count, death, toll, franks, blair, bush, health, ministry, falluja, lancet, war, invasion, 2003