President Bush: An Honest Mistake?

It sure seemed strange.

There was President George Bush citing the number of Iraqi civilian dead as about 30,000.

At a December 12 question and answer session at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia Bush used the figure put out by a strongly anti-war British based group, which publishes on the web Iraq Body Count.

Since when does the President publicly adopt as reliable the numbers put out by a sometimes controversial anti-war civilian watchdog?

When official American sources say they cannot estimate or give out civilian body counts, when official policy obscures these deaths in order not to undercut support for war.

Is such Presidential "openness" just an "honest mistake?"

Interesting to speculate on how Bush came to rely on Iraq Body Count figures -- which, after his comments, were qualified by official sources.

The figures President Bush used come from a pre-emptive human rights watchdog put in action before the launching of a pre-emptive war. This is, no doubt, the first time in history a civilian group other than the Red Cross was set up a civilian casualty monitoring system BEFORE a war began.

Iraq Body Count uses in modified form a media monitoring technique developed by Marc Herold, a strongly anti-war professor from the University of New Hampshire. He opposed and monitored the Afghanistan war at a time many American media were reluctant to report civilian casualties there for fear of appearing unpatriotic. (The press of other nations reported civilian casualties). Herold, whose reports on Iraq were challenged by some as exaggerating civilian deaths, was an advisor to Iraq Body Count when it was set up before the American invasion of Iraq.

Iraq Body Count provides a "button icon" which any web designer can place on a web page. Whenever the page is opened any place in the world, it reproduces the icon with the latest automatically updated casualties figures displayed. It's tone is more restrained than Herold's work on Afghanistan.

For more on American and other media coverage of civilian casualties and on Iraq Body Count's automatically updating internet button, see this writer's web essay "Civilian Deaths: Afghan and Iraq Wars " researched during both the Afghan and Iraq wars.

Iraq Body Count's automatically updating "button" is found in that essay. The writer corresponded with both Prof. Herold and Iraq Body Count staff in the course of his research.