COUNTING THE DEAD

by MONITOR
DOES it matter whether the number of Iraqi lives lost since Britain and the United States invaded the country is 50'000 or 650'000? These widely varying figures come from responsible organisations which been trying to make estimates ever since US General Tommy Franks infamously said in 2003, “We don't do body counts.” Of course the actual number is important for those affected and in order to understand the scale of the human disaster for which the American and British governments are responsible, but even if the total were only 5'000 it would still be 5'000 too many. In the House of Commons on Wednesday, after the Prime Minister and David Cameron had prefaced their remarks by offering sympathy to the families of British troops who had lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, Menzies Campbell for the Liberal Democrats also made a point of adding words about Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have been killed. Of the two figures of dead given publicity this week, the lower comes from the British Iraq War Count which monitors news reports to estimate deaths; however, many deaths go unreported and the figure is probably too low. The figure of 650'000 is based on random on-the-ground sampling of about 2'000 households in Iraq organised by John Hopkins University in Baltimore US and is backed up by checking of death certificates; President Bush has said that this methodology is “pretty well discredited”. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?