----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Jannuzi" <b_rieux at yahoo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, September 13, 2002 4:15 AM Subject: Re: Afghan war dead?
> 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.
I would think their estimates might well be too high. But, on the other hand, maybe the Taliban didn't know how to play the propoganda game. Did you bother to look at any of the critiques of Herold's methadology?
> It was custom for
> many Taliban and Al Qaeda to keep their family
> closeby, so surely many of them perished as well.
Surely? How would you know?
> Finally, we have got this communication thing
> working Luke. I accept your corrections of
> yourself.
I didn't correct myself. I continue to maintain that 5,000 civilian deaths is far from a "conservative" estimate because there are other (to my mind more credible) accounts that place the tally around 1,000. I'd be immensely gratified if you told me exactly how pointing out that your "enemy" dead figure was probably way too low served as a correction to anything I wrote before.
> 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).
Yes, and now we have an apparently accurate count of 3,000 that no one disputes.
> Then, once the revenge campaign against
> Afghanistan started, people like Rumsfeld were
> very clear--they didn't really want to tally
> Afghan dead.
If they had, I seriously doubt you'd trust their estimates. I probably wouldn't, either.
-- Luke