Soccer Dad

One sentence about the bogus study; none about chemical weapons

The Wikileaks story about the Iraq war has been getting press lately. Today the Washington Post published an odd editorial, Wikileaks's leaks mostly confirm earlier Iraq reporting. Unsurprisingly, Instapundit emphasizes different aspects of the Wikileaks revelations.

(One odd thing about the editorial, is the Post's own report a couple of days ago, Secret Iraq war files offer grim new details, which suggests that there's a lot of new information.)

In the first paragraph, the editorial states:

In fact the mass leak, like a dump of documents on Afghanistan in the summer, mainly demonstrates that the truth about Iraq already has been told.

And it goes on to describe all the missteps and abuses of American troops that the Post reported on. Then it describes how the administration was keeping a secret count of Iraqi casualties and ...

The report confirms that the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by other Iraqis, not by coalition forces; claims such as those published by the British journal The Lancet that American forces slaughtered hundreds of thousands are the real "attack on truth."

It's well and good for the Post's editors to criticize the Lancet study, but how did the Post report on it back in 2006? Like this: Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000.

You can search the aritcle and look for some skepticism. There is none.

While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the methods. The great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.

"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins physician and epidemiologist.

A Defense Department spokesman did not comment directly on the estimate.

"The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "The coalition takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries."

He added that "it would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity. The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq."

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey.

"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."

Given the latest, Burnham, Waldman and Whitson are shown to have been vouching for a bogus report. Will the Post treat them with skepticism in the future? Or with the same undeserved deference they got in 2006?

So one sentence is used to dispose of a false report, conveniently reported right before an election. But there were no sentences about the chemical weapons found.

The signficance of what was found is explained here (via BizzyBlog)

Several hundred chemical weapons were found, and Saddam had all his WMD scientists and technicians ready. Just end the sanctions and add money, and the weapons would be back in production within a year.

I understand that the Post wishes to emphasize the degree to which its own reporting was confirmed. But there were stories about Iraq that the Post botched. Why didn't it come clean about those in a more convincing fashion?