Conflicting numbers and a surreal press conference

[acmavm]

Dahr Jamail, Electronic Iraq, 4 January 2004

<snip>

Yesterday, in Controlling what we hear from Iraq, I reported on an attack upon a US Humvee patrol in Al-Dora, Baghdad, which is in the Al-Rashid district.

However, statements taken from three boys and five men who witnessed the US military clean-up and medical evacuations all reported the same story: The US military flew in medical choppers to air lift 2 wounded soldiers from the scene. They all witnessed at least five bodies loaded into US vehicles and driven from the scene.

<snip>

Thus, the usual conflict in the number of US soldiers killed and injured rests between the many Iraqis who witnessed the scene during the US cleanup and medical evacuations, and the figures given by CENTCOM and Combined Joint Task Force 7.

<snip>

Virtually every investigation I've conducted on events of this nature has provided a disparity in the numbers of US dead and wounded between those reported by CPIC and Iraqi witnesses; be they civilians, hospital staff, or figures from the morgue.

This point is further underlined by the incident in Samarra at the end of November when the US military claimed a convoy came under attack by a highly organized group of Fedayeen fighters and responded by killing 54 of them. Upon further investigation by myself and several other journalists at the hospital, morgue, and several interviews in Samarra, the highest Iraqi body count recorded was 8. The US military never adjusted their figures to reflect this, despite the fact that no more than 8 bodies have ever been found as a result of this battle.
-MORE-
**********************************************************************
So sorry that this is more than three or four paragraphs, but I needed this much to give an idea of what the article is about.

Also, I am including a brief description of the author of the article:

Dahr Jamail is a freelance journalist and political activist from Anchorage, Alaska. He has come to Iraq to bear witness and write about how the US occupation is affecting the people of Iraq, since the media in the US has in large part, he believes, failed to do so.

[truth2power]

1. Link

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1306.shtml

edit: more from the article.

Regarding the press conference -

"During the rattling off of statistics of numbers of raids, detainees, and weapons caches found, there is never any mention of Iraqi civilian casualties.

Instead, they discuss a "whole new group" of Iraqis stepping forward to help the coalition since the capture of Saddam Hussein. They divide these two groups into the "Hopefuls" (those who want to help now that he is gone) and the "Fearfuls" (those who were too afraid to help while his shadow was still at large)."

Now it's the "hopefuls" and "fearfuls". What a farce!

[acmavm]

2. Thank you for posting the link. I forget to do that sometimes.

.