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Times Watch for
October 29, 2004
Boosting a Dubious Iraq Body Count to Bash Bush
"Study Puts Iraqi Deaths Of Civilians At 100,000," reads a story by Elisabeth Rosenthal reprinted from the International Herald Tribune, yet another conveniently timed story four days before the election that serves as an attack on Bush over the Iraq War.
Rosenthal reports: "An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Coming just five days before the presidential election the finding is certain to generate intense controversy, since it is far higher than previous mortality estimates for the Iraq conflict. Editors of The Lancet, the London-based medical publication, where an article describing the study is scheduled to appear, decided not to wait for the normal publication date next week, but to place the research online Friday, apparently so it could circulate before the election."
Rosenthal then cites an unlabeled anti-war professor to support the extremely high estimates: "There is bound to be skepticism about the estimate of 100,000 excess deaths, since that translates into an average of 166 deaths a day since the invasion. But some people were not surprised. 'I am emotionally shocked but I have no trouble in believing that this many people have been killed,' said Scott Lipscomb, an associate professor at Northwestern University, who works on the www.iraqbodycount.net project. That project, which collates only deaths reported in the news media, currently put the maximum civilian death toll at just under 17,000. 'We've always maintained that the actual count must be much higher,' Mr. Lipscomb said."
The Associated Press notes what the credulous Times story doesn't mention -- that the project's lead researcher is opposed to the war: "Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him. 'I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election,' Roberts told The Associated Press. 'My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq. I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives,' Roberts said. 'As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this.'"
Even the anti-war Human Rights Watch questioned the figures, as the Washington Post (but not the NYT) noted in a story by Rob Stein: "Previous independent estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq were far lower, never exceeding 16,000. Other experts immediately challenged the new estimate, saying the small number of documented deaths upon which it was based make the conclusions suspect. 'The methods that they used are certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting,' said Marc E. Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, which investigated the number of civilian deaths that occurred during the invasion. 'These numbers seem to be inflated.'"
Still Rosenthal insists the report is unbiased: "The study is scientific, reserving judgment on the politics of the Iraqi conflict."
For the rest of Rosenthal's credulous report on the dubious death stats from Iraq, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Fatalities | Iraq War | Elisabeth Rosenthal
"Louder, Longer" Cheers for Kerry;
"Nervousness" from Bush Camp
David Halbfinger and Elisabeth Bumiller lead with enthusiasm for John Kerry's campaign in Friday's "Candidates in Attack Mode As They Cross Swing States."
In a story datelined Columbus, Ohio, they gush: "With Bruce Springsteen singing Mr. Kerry's praises and his campaign theme song, 'No Surrender,' the Democratic candidate told huge crowds, who may have traveled to see the rocker but cheered longer and louder for the candidate, that he was impatient to relieve Mr. Bush of his 'hard work.'"
But the article's tone became more negative when it came to the Bush side: "The assault on Mr. Kerry reflected the nervousness in the Bush campaign five days from what is widely expected to be an exceptionally close election. Although Bush officials continue to strike a publicly upbeat note and repeat that they always expected a close race -- a campaign official called it a 'dogfight' on Wednesday -- there is no disputing that they did not want to be in the position they are so few days from Nov. 2. Mr. Kerry's aides have treated the reports about the explosives as an unexpected boon in the waning days of the campaign. Some aides said that they watched with surprise as Mr. Bush waited three days to address the subject and that they were reminded of their own mistakes in taking too long to respond to the onslaught over Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."
Note that while Bush made an "assault" on Kerry, Kerry apparently made no "assaults" on Bush.
For the rest of Halbfinger and Bumiller on the campaign back and forth, click here.
• Elisabeth Bumiller | George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Explosives | David Halbfinger | Sen. John Kerry
The
NYT: Your One-Stop Shop for Florida Gripes
Friday's Florida dispatch from Abby Goodnough is the
latest example of the Times acting as a conduit for Democratic complaints about the current voting in Florida. This time the spotlight is on Florida's Secretary of State (and chief elections officer) Glenda Hood, successor to Katherine Harris, who was reviled by Democrats for her role in the 2000 elections.
"For New Florida Vote Chief, Some Precount Butterflies," reads the cute headline, but the story's cut-out line fits more with the story's accusatory tone: "Lawsuits and protests and accusations of partisanship."
Goodnough runs down the familiar litany of Democratic complaints: "Last spring, Ms. Hood, a former high school cheerleader and well-liked mayor of Orlando, dismissed concerns that a list of suspected felons might be flawed, and she tried to keep the list from being distributed. People convicted of felonies cannot vote in Florida, and the list was meant to help strike illegal voters from the rolls. Ms. Hood scrapped the list in July, after a judge ordered her to release it. Her decision came after newspapers found that the list included thousands of blacks, who lean Democratic, but just 61 Hispanics, who tend to vote Republican in Florida. In September, Ms. Hood joined Ralph Nader in appealing a circuit court decision to keep him off the Florida ballot. Her office said that it had no position on Mr. Nader's candidacy and that it was only protesting the standard that the court set for how minor-party candidates got on the ballot. But critics said that entering the legal battle made Ms. Hood look as if she were taking sides, as Mr. Nader's candidacy is generally seen as hurting Senator John Kerry. Other complaints about Ms. Hood include her recent decision to reject newly registered voters who did not check a box on the form indicating they were American citizens, even though they certified on another part of the form that they were, and her issuance of a rule banning manual recounts on electronic voting machines. That rule was later thrown out by the courts."
There's more: "Critics say that after the deeply polarizing recount, Gov. Jeb Bush should have picked a nonpartisan elections expert for the job. Instead he appointed Ms. Hood, a politically ambitious Republican who was among the state's 25 electors for George W. Bush four years ago."
For the rest of Goodnough from Florida, click here.
• Jeb Bush | Campaign 2000 | Campaign 2004 | Florida | Abby Goodnough
Explosives Scoop Vindicated? The
NYT Thinks So
The Times again puts "Ammo-gate" on the front page Friday morning with "Video Shows G.I.'s At Weapon Cache -- Bunkers With Inspectors' Seals Seen in April '03" from William Broad and David Sanger.
They highlight newly unearthed footage from ABC affiliate KSTP-TV of Minneapolis dated April 18, 2003, from staffers embedded with the Army's 101st Airborne that show soldiers opening barrels and boxes of powder at the weapons site al Qaqaa. The one videotape is apparently all the vindication the Times needs to proclaim that the site was emptied after the arrival of U.S. troops: "A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The tape, broadcast on Wednesday night by the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, appeared to confirm a warning given earlier this month to the agency by Iraqi officials, who said that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives, powerful enough to bring down buildings or detonate nuclear weapons, had vanished from the site after the invasion of Iraq. The question of whether the material was removed by Mr. Hussein's forces in the days before the invasion, or looted later because it was unguarded, has become a heated dispute on the campaign trail, with Senator John Kerry accusing President Bush of incompetence, and Mr. Bush saying it is unclear when the material disappeared and rejecting what he calls Mr. Kerry's 'wild charges.'"
For more of the latest on Ammo-gate from Broad and Sanger, click here.
• William Broad | Campaign 2004 | Explosives | Iraq War | David Sanger
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org