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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-01-29

A Little Perspective

Some on the loopy left will, no doubt, try to make big news out of this bit of info from the BBC:

On Thursday, January 27 2005, the Iraqi Ministry of Health released to the BBC's Panorama programme statistics which stated that for the six-month period from 1 July 2004 to 1 January 2005:

3,274 people in Iraq were killed and 12,657 injured in conflict related violence

2,041 of these deaths were the result of "military operations", in which 8,542 people were injured

1,233 deaths were the result of "terrorist operations"

These figures were based on records from Iraqi public hospitals.

The BBC reported these figures as meaning that the deaths and injuries resulting from "military operations" were the result of actions by the Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces.

Two things:

:first, you can be sure that those who want to use this for political gains will fail to add this note, now included on the BBC site:

Today, the Iraqi Ministry of Health has issued a statement clarifying matters that were the subject of several conversations with the BBC before the report was published, and denying that this conclusion can be drawn from the figures relating to military operations. It states that those recorded as killed in military action included Iraqis killed by terrorists, not only those killed by Coalition forces or Iraqi security forces; and that those recorded as killed in military action included terrorists themselves, and Iraqi security forces.

The BBC regrets mistakes in its published and broadcast reports yesterday. [emphasis mine]

:secondly, doing a little quick math, if we've found--so far--mass graves for over 300,000 Iraqis, and if Saddam was in power for about 30 years, then in any given six-month period during his reign on average 5,000 Iraqis would have been killed by deliberate actions of the government, a government whose first task is supposed to be protecting them.

Of course, the proper use of math has never been a strong suit of the left. And keeping issues in perspective has never been their second suit--or third or fourth.
Posted by: Michael / 1/29/2005 04:29:00 PM

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