from SLATE's news summary today: >The _Washington Post_ leads with Iraq's interior minister saying, apparently, that 12,000 civilians have been killed by insurgents since the war began. The minister said 10,500 of them were Shiites. Though the Post doesn't get curious about it, the Iraqi government has been generally tight-fisted with casualty info, and the provenance of these figures was less than clear. ...
>The Post's decision to headline the Iraqi interior minister's claims on civilian casualties is ... interesting. Again, it doesn't look like the minister gave reporters a look at actual data. Meanwhile, though the WP doesn't mention it, last year Knight Ridder got hold of some Iraqi government stats showing that during a six-month period more Iraqis had been killed by U.S. forces than by insurgents. The Post isn't exactly clear on whether the purported 12,000 civilians cited by the minister were killed by insurgents or just during the course of the insurgency. Thankfully, the Post's reporters weren't the only ones in on the chat; the Associated Press and NY [TIMES] were also there. They say he was referring to total casualties. Not that either outlet sees the claims as particularly credible anyway. Both wisely decide that the casualty claim isn't fit to headline. The LA [TIMES] also met with the minister, but there's no mention of his casualty figure. < -- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl M., paraphrasing Dante A.
