How To Stop Civilian Casualties

Don't report them! Yep it was easy really.

George W. Bush appears on Charlie Rose and asserts as fact that sectarian violence was down in Baghdad-

What a relief, oh wait:-

"Unlike previous reports, the new UNAMI Quarterly Human Rights report does not contain official statistics of violent deaths regularly gathered by the Ministry of Health and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad," according to a statement delivered by Michèle Montas, Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. "This is because the Iraqi Government decided not to make such data available to UNAMI."-

-"Is it just a coincidence that when we've established benchmarks for the Iraqi government to show they are in control of the security situation, they withhold the only evidence that might hold the answer?" -

Genius! If a tree is blown up in a forest and the defenestration figures are withheld, the surge works!-

Human Rights Watch's Whitson said that the move by the Iraqi government to hold up the statistics was similar to American policy on gathering wartime civilian death data. "They're just taking a page from the US on this," she argued. "In the 1991 Gulf War, the US kept records of civilian casualties, but in this war, they've refused to do it. Parties to the conflict have a legal duty to keep this information because it goes directly to evidence on the impact of war. How can you pretend to be protecting civilians if you're not keeping records?

-the McClatchy-Tribune Newspapers reported yesterday that the Bush administration is no longer counting deaths from car bombings in its civilian fatality estimates.
"Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims," wrote the news service's Nancy Youssef. "President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. 'If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory,' he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose."-