thepeoplesvoice.org received a submission from Gabriele Zamparini, who is very dedicated to exposing the true statistical magnitude of the American war crime in Iraq...

Dear Bill Quigley,

Thanks for your article “War Immemorial Day” published on CounterPunch on 26 may 2008. You write:

2003 to present Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom. 4082 U.S. military killed. British medical journal Lancet estimates over 90,000 civilian deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates over 84,000 civilians killed.

I’d like to bring to your attention two grave errors and kindly ask you to correct them.

The first, giant mistake is that the 2006 Lancet study estimated more than 650,000 deaths as a result of the US illegal war of aggression of Iraq. That was two years ago. [Then there was a ORB poll that estimated more than a million deaths.]

The second mistake is that the IBC figures are NOT estimates but a simple count based mostly on Western media reports.

Please, will you issue a correction as soon as possible and ask CounterPunch to publish it. Here below you find more info on this important matter.

Thank you for your time.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini
London
http://thecatsdream.com

Useful resources:

• Iraq: the Human Cost

• Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates

• ORB Update on Iraqi Casualty Data

• Answers to Questions About Iraq Mortality Surveys

• Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy

• What is the real death toll in Iraq?

• Iraqi deaths survey 'was robust'

-###-

May 27, 2008 By Gabriele Zamparini http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2008/05/giant-mistakes-on-counterpunch-re-iraq.htm

We at thepeoplesvoice.org decided to see if Gabriele Zamparini's claims were true, that CounterPunch, CommonDreams, TruthOut, and ZNet had actually posted an article that either repeats Iraq Body Count's immoral statistics, or had failed to report the actual 2006 Lancet estimate of over 650,000 people killed in Iraq.

CounterPunch http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley05262008.html
"2003 to present Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom. 4082 U.S. military killed. Civilian deaths? Researchers from Johns Hopkins, using the most orthodox and conservative sampling methodology, reported in the Lancet, after extensive peer review, their estimate of a post-invasion civilian death toll of about 655,000 by the end of 2006."

It looks like Counter Punch actually edited the information removing entirely the immoral statistics of Iraq Body Count while leaving the Lancet estimate in place, which is what we would have done if we had posted this article.

CommonDreams http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/26/9198/
"2003 to present Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom. 4082 U.S. military killed. British medical journal Lancet estimates over 655,000 civilian deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates over 84,000 civilians killed."

I dream of a time when the truth about the more than a million Iraqi men women and children murdered in this Neocon war for oil is known by the world. It is pretty sloppy when a web site like Common Dreams posts known lies and propaganda.

TruthOut http://www.truthout.org/article/war-immemorial-day
"2003-2004 Colombia. US sent in 800 military to back up Columbian military troops in their civil war."

Is this what they call getting the truth out? The entire passage has been removed from existence as if the 'Ministry of Truth' were hard at work.

ZNet http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewarticle/17743
"2003 to present Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom. 4082 U.S. military killed. British medical journal Lancet estimates over 90,000 civilian deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates over 84,000 civilians killed."

According to this link on wikipedia.org: The first Lancet survey "[1] published on 29 October 2004, estimated 98,000 excess Iraqi deaths (with a range of 8,000 to 194,000." It continues with more detailed information, but it appears that ZNet simply took this information to mean that they could knock off 8,000 victims and say it was "over 90,000" and not mention that it was the oldest Lancet estimate available.

It’s both astonishing and outrageous that the lies continue to be told about the mass murder of the Iraqi people. According to some very conservative estimates which can be found on wikipedia.org: By August of 2007, 1,033,000 men, women, and children had suffered violent deaths as a result of the American conflict. As of 2007 nearly 16% of the Iraqi population 3.9 million people had been driven from their homes and have become refugees. 2 million have fled Iraq into other countries, and an estimated 1.9 million are refugees inside Iraq itself.

Well over a million human beings have been been killed in Iraq. And we keep hearing the innocuous term- ‘they died’ in the war. People didn’t just die. They were shot, burned to death, tortured to death, raped and murdered, poisoned by depleted uranium, killed by banned weapons, and had their villages and homes obliterated by America’s indiscriminate bombing. They were murdered by the Bush administration who are proving to be more blood thirsty and immoral than Hitler’s Third Reich.

Any web site that intentionally lies or intentionally misleads the public about the true number of people that have been murdered in this war crime are complicit in the crime itself.

May God have mercy on your souls.

This screenshot shows the text in the article in the above mentioned web sites at the time of the writing of this article.