The New York Times had an article today about the number of supposed dead Al Quaeda and Taliban. The military suggests they killed 800 or so ‘terrorists’. Of course, with government death toll assessments you must follow a few rules:
- If the government wants a higher death toll (ie. WTC casualties, pulped terrorists) perform the following calculation: Take their estimated number and divide by 3 then subtract 150 from that.
- If they want lower numbers multiply their estimate by ten.
From the Times article:
At the start of the week, the Pentagon estimate listed the confirmed number of dead Arab, Chechen and other fighters for Al Qaeda at 517. Another 250 were believed to have been killed, but the deaths were listed as unconfirmed. By today, the total estimate had risen above 800, according to one official.
“Those numbers are all extremely fuzzy,” said one senior military officer.
The body-count estimates are just that. They are based on reports from Apache helicopter pilots who often spot fighters before firing missiles, on gun-camera film taken by combat aircraft, on video images from unmanned Predator drones and on reports by Special Forces troops on the ground, among others.
Even though helicopters and high- technology surveillance systems can blow away some of the fog of war, military officials acknowledge that these sources have limitations. Cameras and pilots cannot peer into caves, for instance, or assess the number of dead in the two villages that were laid waste by bombs.
Nor is an American pilot’s count of opposing fighters in a mountain redoubt before he fires always completely certain. Even if it is, there may be little in the way of remains.
To list a Qaeda fighter as “confirmed dead” does not necessarily mean that the military has a body. Journalists who toured the Shah-i- Kot Valley, where the recent fighting has taken place, saw only three bodies today. [Page A18.]
Still, the estimates exist, despite the assertions of Pentagon officials that they are not in the body-count business.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has made it clear to his senior advisers and military commanders that he is against releasing the numbers, fearing any echoes from Vietnam of “body counts” — often inflated — that haunted his predecessors.
“I don’t do body counts,” Mr. Rumsfeld said last week in a CBS News interview. “This country tried that in Vietnam, and it didn’t work. And you’ve not heard me speculate on that at all, and you won’t.”