Reason for Mistrust

They call themselves Iraq Body Count and have taken on the sad but grim task implied by their name. They are trying to count the bodies of civilians killed by acts of war since the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

There are many reasons for concerned human rights activists to do this. Perhaps the most important: U.S. President George W. Bush, responsible for the invasion of Iraq, has tried to justify his action by lying from beginning to end. Why, then, should a critical public accept the figures presented by the Pentagon? And the most recent reason for doubt was delivered on Friday by the U.S. Army itself. Iraqi politicians, as well as the Iraq Body Count organization, consider the Pentagon statistics concerning Iraqi civilians killed to be significantly understated.

There is much to the argument that this suspicion is well founded. The impression that the Army may have difficulty confirming its figures in a court of law has been strengthened by the fact that they leaked the figures to the Internet without comment. Anyone inquiring about them is stonewalled. What else should one think when a Pentagon spokesman responds to a question by saying that he isn’t certain whether the Pentagon body counts include insurgents? President Barack Obama was a declared opponent of the Iraq war, and with his election came the hope that the killing would finally stop. The Pentagon never came to the same conclusion. It’s not even prepared to admit the extent of the horror that has already happened.