Ted Rall Issues 'Retraction' of Iraq Cartoon

[Freddie Stubbs]

By E&P Staff

Published: August 11, 2005 2:50 PM ET

NEW YORK Ted Rall has offered a "retraction" of his Aug. 4 cartoon that cited a 9,000 figure -- rather than the commonly used 1,800-plus -- for the number of American soldiers who have died in the Iraq war.

On Tuesday, Rall wrote in his blog: "I read a story that came off as possible, sourced it using previously reliable informants, and ended up doing a cartoon that I wouldn't have done had I known then what I know now. So this is a retraction of cartoon. Did 9,000-plus soldiers get killed in Iraq? Maybe, maybe not. But as a cartoonist friend of mine points out: The relatives of those hidden 7,000 dead troops sure would be raising hell if the Pentagon were trying to hide them. ... The battery in my BS detector must have been running low last week."

The cartoon with the 9,000 figure (E&P Online, Aug. 8) showed a soldier -- as he helps carry a badly wounded man to a helicopter -- saying: "You don't count as war dead unless you die IN Iraq. If you die in Germany, or even on the plane leaving Baghdad, you're not counted." In the cartoon's final panel, the soldier urges the wounded man to try to stay alive at least until the helicopter takes off.

One of the sources used by Rall had been TBRnews.org.

more: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001013511

[bertha katzenengel]

1. Wow.

[jobycom]

2. See ho it's done, Mr. Bush? You make a mistake, you admit it?

That's what being a grownup is about.

[FlemingsGhost]

3. 9,000 is a lot closer to the truth than 1,800.

Rall will be vindicated.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. That comes from your superb inside knowledge, does it?

As opposed to the people at icasualties.org, who go with the 1800 and something figure?

Rall didn't realise that TBRnews.org is a neo-Nazi site that is totally unreliable. I think he's had that pointed out to him now.

[wakeme2008]

8. no way...

too many lists of the names for that big of mistake.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. Take a page right out of the RW spin book. Put the lie (mistake?) on p1

in big type, put the retraction/correction on p25 in tiny type (if anywhere!).

[K-W]

6. Ted Rall doesnt determine where newssources publish his retraction.

He f'd up and admitted it.

[BlueEyedSon]

7. Ok, so it was an accident. However, i hope more people saw the

MISINFORMATION and stop and think.

[daleo]

9. It wouldn't surprise me if there is an undercount

But not of that magnitude - ten to twenty percent would be more like it.

I saw a reprint of my local paper's front page in 1973 (Edmonton Journal), that had a story on the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Viet Nam. That story mentioned 48,000 U.S. deaths, and the commonly accepted figure is now 58,000.

I noticed the same thing when the Globe and Mail reprinted a story from the last day's of WWII - the count of Canadian military deaths was short of the final tally (somewhere in the 40,000 range rather than the 48,000 that was eventually settled upon).

Now, that doesn't mean the same thing is happening with Iraq, but it does show that it is possible. It would be interesting to go back to the Korean War, etc. and see if this tendency was true then too. The methodology would be simple - find a front page of a newspaper of record on the last day of a conflict (e.g. library microfiche of NYT), and see what the number of fatalities was. Then compare that with official historical figures currently available.

[TahitiNut]

10. Oh. Whew! It's not 9,000. Only 1,800. Gee, I guess that's OK.

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:


This is EXACTLY the kind of diminution of over 1,800 lives and the lives of MANY THOUSANDS of Iraqis that results from this kind of baseless bullshit.

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. Well done. This draws more attention to the US casualties than a 'toon

He's eating his cake and having it too. :-)