Posted on 01/29/2005 1:56:57 PM PST by kattracks
LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The BBC apologised on Saturday for erroneously reporting that U.S.-led and Iraqi forces may be responsible for the deaths of 60 percent of Iraqi civilians killed in conflict over the last six months.The British broadcaster said on Friday in broadcasts and a news statement that its Panorama investigative show would air a report on Sunday citing "confidential" records from Iraq's health ministry to support the contention.
Iraq's health minister said the BBC misinterpreted the statistics it had received and had ignored statements from the ministry clarifying the figures.
"Today, the Iraqi Ministry of Health has issued a statement clarifying matters that were the subject of several conversations with the BBC before the report was published, and denying that this conclusion can be drawn from the figures relating to 'military operations'," the BBC said in a news statement on Saturday.
"The BBC regrets mistakes in its published and broadcast reports yesterday."
A BBC spokesman said the statistics would not feature in the Panorama show on Sunday.
BBC and Iraq minister dispute civilian death stats
LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The BBC said on Saturday U.S.-led and Iraqi forces may be responsible for the deaths of 60 percent of Iraqi civilians killed in conflict over the last six months but Iraq's interim health minister said the statistics had been misinterpreted.
The British broadcaster said its Panorama investigative show would air a report on Sunday citing "confidential" records from Iraq's health ministry, which break down deaths according to insurgent and coalition activity over a six-month period ending Jan. 1.
Iraqi Health Minister Alaadin Alwan said in a statement on Saturday the report was a misinterpretation of figures, wrong to say the figures were "confidential", that health institutions do not record the source of gunfire when they treat patients and ignored a clarification about the figures released on Friday.
The BBC said its report will centre on figures showing 3,274 civilians were killed and 12,657 wounded in conflict-related violence during the period from July 1, 2004 to Jan. 1, 2005.
"Of those deaths 60 percent - 2,041 civilians - were killed by the Coalition and Iraqi security forces. A further 8,542 were wounded by them," the BBC said in a news release on Saturday.
"Insurgent attacks claimed 1,233 lives, and wounded 4,115 people during the same period."
The figures relate to all conflict-related civilian deaths and injuries recorded by public hospitals, the BBC said. The figures exclude, where known, the deaths of insurgents.
Alwan said such figures have always been available to interested government agencies and other parties on request.
"The BBC claims that the statistics indicate that 'Coalition troops and Iraqi security forces may be responsible for up to 60 percent of conflict-related civilian deaths in Iraq'," Alwan said. "Our statistics do not support this claim."
He said the source of fire was not identified nor recorded by health institutions.
"But it is clear to independent observers that the majority of Iraqis who have been killed in military operations were either killed by terrorists or were themselves insurgents," Alwan said in the statement.
He said the BBC report was based on the difference in numbers between the two categories of "terrorist incidents" and "military action" in the ministry's statistics.
He said the BBC chose to ignore a statement put out by the ministry on Friday which said that those recorded as killed in "military action" included Iraqis killed by terrorists, not only those killed by coalition forces or Iraqi security forces.
Alwan also said those recorded as killed in "military action" included "terrorists", security forces and not simply "civilians".
Insurgent attacks in Iraq against some 150,000 U.S. troops, their coalition allies, fledgling security forces and members of the interim government have been rising in the run-up to Iraq's election on Sunday.
Its to late they can't put the genie back in the bottle....
Has Mapes found a job already?
This is a bit old, but might be relevent:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/farenheight_911.htm
Some quick mathematics, using low end estimations, provides some perspective. According to most sources, it is estimated that there were between one and two million total casualties with at LEAST 300,000 killed in the Iran Iraq war of the 80's. (43) Sources indicate a reasonable low end estimate of Iraqi military deaths from the first gulf war is 15,000 and civilian deaths around 2,000 (44). Saddam personally initiated both these wars. It's claimed that as a result of sanctions and post war chaos many more died. According to a March 17 briefing at the State Department by Andrew Natsios, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development:
...took place in waves, over a 25-year period. Methodically, Saddam's forces destroyed villages, transferred women and children to detention camps and took away the men in trucks, some of them barefooted and naked, never to be seen again. Tens of thousands of people were taken far from their homes to distant camps in the deserts where they were killed, buried by bulldozers under tons of sand. (46)
This is not some random violence by out of control troops. This was systematic mass murder. The death tolls rival the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the killing fields of Cambodia under Pol Pot. (46)
How many died in these mass murders? Some say 300,000, some say 400,000. There are estimates of upwards of a million. We are helping the Iraqis as they begin the terrible task of counting. (46)
The lowest estimate available of these internal killings is 290,000 dead(137). When we add 290,000 internal deaths to 300,000 deaths from the Iraq-Iran war and 17,000 deaths from the first gulf war [ignoring the estimates for deaths due to sanctions] we get a grand total of 607,000 deaths over a 25 year period, which gives us 24,280 deaths a year. Remember, these are low end estimation averages and don't include wounded. Now, comparing this with the high end estimates of 13,000 Iraqi soldiers, 1,000 American soldiers and 4,300 civilians estimated killed during the major combat phase of most recent invasion (45), or even taking a higher estimate of 10,000 total civilian deaths up to present day (46), (48), we arrive at a high end number of 24,000 deaths in a period of 15 months or 19,200 a year. Ironically, at least some of the insurgents being counted as dead are foreign terrorists, including Al Qaeda operatives. We are also (most generously) absolving Saddam from all culpability for deaths in this war and blaming them all on the United States.
The most ardent skeptic must see that even if one agrees with these shaky premises and accepts only the lowest and highest end estimates respectively and even throws in a few more thousand Iraqi deaths for good measure, the situation in Iraq is no different than it was under Saddam! But of course it clearly is better. We may have already "saved" about 10,000 people from dying if we use more reasonable average estimates instead of high and low. And it appears, despite a growing resentment of the American military presence, the Iraqi people agree (49), (50), (51).
No they don't. They regret they got caught.
exactly........they should be made to reiterate a public retraction every hour or so......how come liberal media keep getting caught but any conservative media doesn't have these problems.......must be that propaganda and lying in inclusive only to liberal whiners
Cold. Funny, but cold.
....keep up the good work.
Dan Rather would have told them to hold out for a bit longer.
Seems like Bubba used to do that a lot also.
How can this be? The BBC "misleading" the public......again.
You mean like this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4057769.stm
haha......I think all the political parties use that ploy including the Repubs from time to time
So the lie goes around the world and is repeated every hour on the hour by the BBC as well as Al Jazeera etc. Then the "oops, we were wrong" will be a 5 second update buried deep on Saturday night and never to be repeated.
Okey-dokey, then.
Typical day's work for the media. And they wonder why they have slipped into complete irrelevance.
Oh I saw it but I thought you were suggesting they haven't. My mistake
I was thinking the same thing e.g., "ignoring clarifications." BBC=CBS
bookmark bump
I can't believe this is true. I'm sure the BBC would have accepted the clarification immediately. < /sarcasm >
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