Iraqi shoe thrower

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3321

'...The media in any country only report a fraction of all violent deaths. Demographer Patrick Ball has shown through work in Guatemala (State Violence in Guatemala, AAAS, 1999) that this is particularly true when there is an unusually high level of violence. In Iraq, the media are limited to small zones of safe passage. The organization Iraq Body Count, which compiles the tally of media-reported deaths most often cited by the press, themselves acknowledge on their website: "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media."


The same "agenda" concerns did not come up when ORB released a more positive poll (3/07) from Iraq earlier this year. While the poll showed that Iraqi satisfaction with the occupation had deteriorated badly and that most expected violence to decrease after a U.S. withdrawal, it also found that 49 percent of Iraqis said their life was better post-Saddam and only 26 percent said it was worse. This poll was reported in the U.S. by CNN (3/19/07), Fox News (3/19/07), the Washington Post (3/20/07), L.A. Times (3/20/07), USA Today (3/20/07), Chicago Tribune (3/20/07) and Sun-Times (3/19/07), Seattle Times (3/20/07), Fort Lau-derdale Sun-Sentinel (3/20/07) and Newsday (3/20/07).
The media clearly hold bearers of negative news about the occupation to a much different standard than those of news that can be positively spun...'


http://www.countercurrents.org/martin150907.htm
ORB report

'For security reasons, no interviews were conducted in Al Anbar or Karbala provinces, or in the province of Irbil, where Kurdish authorities refused to allow field interviews. Since Anbar and Karbala are among the bloodiest battlefields of the war, and Irbil among the quietest, the exclusion of the three provinces would more likely to lead to an underestimation of the death toll than an exaggeration.'

Iraq Body Count's numbers are totally flawed. Read on...

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4533

IBC is clear that there are inherent problems with its methodology. In response to the Lancet study, IBC pointed out:

"We have always been quite explicit that our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording." (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/archive.phpPR10 November 7, 2004)

So what are the sources behind the database informing this "early historical analysis"? IBC reveals that these are "predominantly Western", with the "most prevalent" being "the major newswires and US and UK newspapers". (http://reports.iraqbodycount.org/a_doss ... 3-2005.pdf).

In its report 'A dossier of civilian casualties 2003-2005', IBC noted that just three press agencies - Associated Press, Agence France Presse, and Reuters - provided one-third of all stories.

The report added:

"We have not made use of Arabic or other non English language sources, except where these have been published in English. The reasons are pragmatic. We consider fluency in the language of the published report to be a key requirement for accurate analysis, and English is the only language in which all team members are fluent. It is possible that our count has excluded some victims as a result." (Ibid)

This is a remarkable explanation for such a serious omission, particularly in light of the immense media attention afforded to the IBC figures...

Not only is IBC's surveillance-based total for Iraqi civilian deaths one of the most widely cited by journalists, it is also the lowest. Les Roberts, lead author of the Lancet report, told us last year:

"There are now at least 8 independent estimates of the number or rate of deaths induced by the invasion of Iraq. The source most favored by the war proponents (Iraqbodycount.org) is the lowest. Our estimate is the third from highest. Four of the estimates place the death toll above 100,000. The studies measure different things. Some are surveys, some are based on surveillance which is always incomplete in times of war. The three lowest estimates are surveillance based." (Roberts, email to Media Lens, August 22, 2005)...

IBC pointed out, "it is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media... our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording". (Iraq Body Count, Quick FAQ and Press Release, 7th November 2004, http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/archive.php)

Earlier this month Media Lens searched the IBC database looking for incidents involving the mass killing of Iraqi civilians by 'coalition' forces between January-June 2005. We began by searching for incidents citing a minimum of 10 deaths and above. This seemed reasonable. After all, the New York Times reported in July 2003:

"Air war commanders were required to obtain the approval of Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed, and all of them were approved." (Michael R. Gordon, 'After the War: Preliminaries; U.S. Air Raids in '02 Prepared for War in Iraq,' New York Times, July 20, 2003)

We found 58 incidents of 10+ deaths. Of these just one was attributed to a US airstrike:

"k785 08 Jan 2005 2:30 AM Aaytha, near Mosul suspected insurgent hideout, wrong house hit laser-guided bomb dropped by F-16 jet 14 [people killed]" (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/b ... 1137413717)

Of the other 57 incidents listed, 25 were attributed to suicide bombers and a further 29 were attributed to insurgent actions targeting Iraqi government troops, government officials, religious groups, and so on. The few remaining cases described corpses shot at close range, bodies blindfolded and shot, and executed bodies that had been dumped.

In short, out of 58 incidents involving a minimum of 10 or more Iraqi civilian deaths just one was attributed to the 'coalition'. We then searched for incidents citing less than a minimum of 10 deaths involving 'coalition' airstrikes, helicopter gunfire and tank fire, we found three references in the six-month period we examined totalling 15 civilians killed:

"k815 16 Jan 2005 - Samarra civilian vehicle at checkpoint tank fire 4 [killed]" (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/b ... 1137415170)

"k997 13 Mar 2005 - Mosul 'insurgents' firing on helicopter, civilians killed in return fire helicopter fire 3 [killed]" (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/b ... 1137415112)

"k1357 19 May 2005 12:00 PM Mosul attack by gunmen on house of National Assembly member Fawwaz al-Jarba, US troops also involved gunfire, helicopter gunfire 8 [killed]" (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/b ... 1137487725)

This struck us as frankly remarkable. In the December 2005 edition of the New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reported a US Air Force press release indicating that, since the beginning of the conflict, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than 500,000 tons of ordnance on Iraq.

In December 2005, Associated Press reported that the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps had "flown thousands of missions in support of US ground troops in Iraq this fall with little attention back home, including attacks by unmanned Predator aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles, military records show". ('Air Power Strikes Iraq Targets Daily,' Associated Press, December 20, 2005)

The aircraft included frontline attack planes. The number of airstrikes increased in the weeks leading up to the December 2005 election, from a monthly average of 25 in the first half of the year to more than 60 in September and 120 or more in October and November. The monthly number of air missions grew from 1,111 in September to 1,492 in November.

And yet, when we checked, the first 18 pages of the IBC database, covering the period between July 2005 and January 2006, contained just six references to helicopter attacks and airstrikes killing civilians.

What do these figures tell us about the sincerity and honesty of the IBC editors? Absolutely nothing - it is not at all our intention to challenge their integrity. But there are some important points that need to be made.

First, the dramatic absence of examples of mass killing by US-UK forces suggests that the low IBC toll of civilian deaths in comparison with other studies is partly explained by the fact that examples of US-UK killing are simply not being reported by the media or recorded by IBC. Visitors to the site - directed there by countless references in the same media that have acted as sources - are being given a very one-sided picture of who is doing the killing.

Given that the Lancet reported extremely high civilian casualties from airstrikes and artillery attacks, where are the civilians killed by the vast numbers of US airstrikes in 2005, a year when the insurgency intensified dramatically from 27,000 attacks (mostly targeting US and Iraqi troops) in 2004 to 34,100 insurgent attacks in 2005? The IBC's own dossier of civilian casualties 2003-2005, reported: "Air strikes caused most (64%) of the explosives deaths". (Op., cit).

Where are the civilians killed by helicopter fire? By unmanned drones? By tank fire?

We asked independent journalist Dahr Jamail - who has witnessed the violence in Iraq first hand, for example in Falluajh - to check the IBC database and give us his opinion. Jamail replied:

"I just finished having a look at what you suggested... I agree with your findings... there is certainly a heavy bias towards counting deaths caused by suicide bombers/etc. as opposed to deaths caused by occupation aircraft, helicopters and tanks/artillery.

I appreciate and respect IBC in that they have (from the beginning) been making a sincere effort to track the number of Iraqi civilian casualties where almost noone else is... but whether it be from lack of translators or over-reliance on western outlets, they are most certainly under-reporting Iraqi civilian deaths caused by coalition aircraft...

Due to their sources and lack of adequate Arab media in them (who do a much better job of reporting Iraqi civilian casualty counts), it is heavily biased towards western outlets which have from the beginning done a dismal (at best) job of reporting on the air war and consequent civ. casualties...

Where are the notices advising that the Pentagon has paid millions of dollars to US public relations firms to plant untraceable stories in the Iraqi press? Where are the references to journalists who claim that newspapers and journalists in Iraq are punished, and even attacked, for publishing stories that reflect badly on the US-UK occupation? Veteran BBC broadcaster Nick Gowing said recently:

"The trouble is that a lot of the military - particularly the American military - do not want us there. And they make it very uncomfortable for us to work. And I think that this is leading to security forces in some instances feeling it is legitimate to target us with deadly force and with impunity." (Cited, Jeremy Scahill, 'Shooting the messenger,' February 17, 2005, http://www.thenation.com)...


We accept that the IBC editors are sincere and well-intentioned. We accept, also, that they have often made clear that their figures are likely to be an underestimate. But we believe they could have done much more to challenge the cynical exploitation of their figures by journalists and politicians. And they could have done much more to warn visitors to their site of the number and type of gaps in their database.

It is ironic indeed, but unsurprising, that IBC is so highly regarded by the mainstream media, while the Lancet report is subject to intense criticism and even rejected out of hand.

It is not rocket science to perceive obvious flaws in the IBC methodology - a glance at the database suggests that Iraqi civilians are somehow immune to the firepower of US jets, tanks, helicopters and artillery. Other studies, and simple common sense, suggest otherwise.'