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Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey: What's the betting that the Hong Kong papers are using Iraqi statistics? Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with an independent news agency using either side's numbers. It's just that based on the last Gulf War, those Iraq statistics tend to be a little inflated. US casualty figures for our own side tend to be pretty accurate. Our military has good command and control, and excellent communications. So the figure reported up to commanders tends to be pretty accurate - especially when you are talking small numbers. Then we also have an independent media that checks the numbers of coffins returning to the families against the official figures. With local media reporting each casualty it would be hard to hide casualties 2x the official figure. Again, this is easier to verify when you are talking small numbers such as these. Iraq does not have either good military communications, or an independent media. I'd therefore take their numbers with a huge pinch of salt. Secondly, it is inherently easier to count your own casualties than the enemy's because you know who you had, and who you lost. Much of the distrust of US figures comes from the wildly optimistic "body counts" of the Vietnam war when the enemy often was shot at without even being properly seen. But the wildly inaccurate estimates were of enemy casualties, not American. |
I have to agree here. (Goddammit Simey, I am far too much in agreement with you these days. Somethings wrong
) From what I can gather, given the information we have, the Allies tend to admit their casualties late but it seems that they at least check them first. I can not, for the life of me, imagine the Iraqis admitting they shot down one of their own aircraft, as the Allies have done. They seem to have no problems blaming the casualties of stray anti-aircraft rounds on Allied bombing. Not to say that that bombing is not killing or wounding any Iraqi civillians.What is interesting though is that I have read no estimates on Iraqi dead from official western sources in any news channel. I wonder whether this is to avoid the negative impact of the news on the opinions back home, or whether it is simply impossible to tell?