Sunday, May 4, 2008

All in how you look at it

From the Washington Post:

New Estimate of Violent Deaths Among Iraqis Is Lower

A new survey estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of the country. Roughly 9 out of 10 of those deaths were a consequence of U.S. military operations, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare.

. . .

The three-year toll of violent deaths calculated in the survey is one-quarter the size of that found in a smaller survey by Iraqi and Johns Hopkins University researchers published in the journal Lancet in 2006.


And from the New York Times:

W.H.O. Says Iraq Civilian Death Toll Higher Than Cited

The World Health Organization on Wednesday waded into the controversial subject of Iraqi civilian deaths, publishing a study that estimated that the number of deaths from the start of the war through June 2006 was at least twice as high as the oft-cited Iraq Body Count.


Spin the numbers however you like, it still comes out as a lot of people getting killed.