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December 08, 2004
Iraq body count inquiry demand
It’s a measure of our progress away from tribalism that we recognize the suffering that war brings to nations other than our own. For that reason it is important that we know both the number of our own casualties in Iraq and those of the Iraq people.
Unfortunately the government are refusing to make public its own estimates (if any) of Iraqi deaths, and are referring enquiries to the published figures of the Iraqi Ministry of Health as the source for the information. (The Ministry give the very low figure of only 3,853 deaths for the period of April to October, a figure that does not relate to the conservative baseline number published by the Iraq Body Count site now at 14,668 to 16,853, or indeed the Lancet study which suggested, based on fieldwork, more than 100,000. )
A new group of ex-diplomats, military men and academics are demanding that the Prime Minister set up an independent inquiry into the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion. This would be good providing the inquiry actually does its work on the ground in Iraq. (The one thing we don’t need is another foolish Whitehall effort.)
news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1403832004
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4079059.stm
Posted by Simon Holledge at December 8, 2004 10:12 PM
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