IPS, nothing different... maybe worse

Dear Editor,

In "50,000 Dead, But Who's Counting?" Juliana Lara Resende writes:

After famously telling reporters that they "don't do body counts", Pentagon officials now say that they have in fact been keeping a record of civilian casualties in Iraq for one year. And while that number remains classified, independent estimates suggest that at least 50,000 people have died in the country since the 2003 invasion.

Why do you write “independent” to refer to “statistics compiled by the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies, as reported recently in the Los Angeles Times, that total is 20,000 higher then the George W. Bush administration had previously estimated.” ?

How can the PUPPET Iraqi Government be considered INDEPENDENT by IPS ?

Also in your article you report IBC’s figures but NOTHING IS SAID OF THE LANCET STUDY’S FINDINGS. WHY?

If you care for the Iraqi People and for an item very rare to find in these dark times, the truth, please read:

Iraq between genocide and coincidences

Darkness and Light

An exchange between Les Roberts and John Sloboda on Iraq Body Count and the Lancet

Many other people have extensively written on this matter and you will find many links to studies and articles in my three articles above.

I urge you to consider a formal correction to what you reported in "50,000 Dead, But Who's Counting?"

Thank you for your time.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

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Dear Gabriele,

Thanks so much for your comments on Juliana Lara Resende's recent article on civilian casualties in Iraq. To address your concerns, I would first say that the use of the word "independent" in the lead suggests data independent of what the U.S. government has put forth. I also made sure to use to qualifier "at least". If you have evidence that agencies like the Iraqi Health Ministry and Baghdad morgue are issuing doctored figures, I would be very interested in hearing about it. We have also written about the Lancet findings in the past (see the story below from last year), but that study is almost two years old now, so we focused on the most current data available. While we may never know precisely how many innocent people have died in this senseless war, IPS is committed to telling the stories of the Iraqi people living under the brutal occupation and insurgency -- and in fact, one of our writers, Alaa Hassan, just lost his life because of that commitment.

Anyway, I would welcome your feedback in the future.

Best,

Katherine Stapp
IPS Regional Editor for North America and the Caribbean

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Dear Katherine,

Thank you very much for your email but I am really depressed by your reply.

The fact that the Lancet is 2 year old means absolutely nothing since as far as I know deaths do not come back!

Also, I find quite sad and patronizing (to say the least) that you use the name of an Iraqi who died to report the truth to prove the commitment of IPS. Since I focused on a particular article and since that article is factually wrong and deceptive, I would have expected a serious reply. Even more so since I took care to send you those articles and links in my previous email. The IBC numbers have been proved completely unreliable, as you could have read from those articles and links.

Please, AGAIN find below my previous email. If you find the time to read the articles and the links you find there, you will find out why your email does NOT answer my questions and also you will discover why that IPS article was completely wrong and – at this point – outrageous.

Thank you.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini