>Did you see what figure the author's cited as
the most realistic? 5,000. >Besides, Herold's
"research" was less than useless-- he often just
added >together figures he found well surfing the
net. I believe his estimate of 5,000 >mirrors
that of the Taliban.
Obviously I saw that, why else would I cite the source and say 3-5 thousand, at least? The Taliban stopped giving accounts once their command collapsed under all the bombing, so their estimates might well be low. It was custom for many Taliban and Al Qaeda to keep their family closeby, so surely many of them perished as well.
>The number is much larger than that. I think
more than a 1,000 former Taliban troops died
while they were being transported by the
Northern Alliance.
Finally, we have got this communication thing working Luke. I accept your corrections of yourself.
US media estimates of US (and then international) deaths on the eve of 9-1 ranged from 15,000 to 50,000 (by the time Bush sat hunkered in a bunker in Nebraska).
Then, once the revenge campaign against Afghanistan started, people like Rumsfeld were very clear--they didn't really want to tally Afghan dead. But this might contradict what Pentagon people actually wanted, since they might want to know just how effective their bombing was. So I think their people on the ground did try to get estimates. The government just isn't going to share them.
CJ
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! News - Today's headlines http://news.yahoo.com