> 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?
At least he had a methodology!
> 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?
>From reading real journalistic reports about
conditions in Afghanistan. I don't know, I
believe this to be the case. People like you are
terrible discussants because you always ask
others to do all the work. Why don't you prove
otherwise?
> 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.
I was being ironic. The highest rational estimate (based on some sort of methodology) puts the death toll of non-combatants as high as 8000. That's a possibility people like you don't even want to think about, right?
> 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.
Well, you don't dispute it, but as I said, some estimates say as high as 8000. Besides, if you remember, I was trying to find out just how many people died in total. It would seem if you were a Taliban bride or Al Qaeda child, you don't count as civilian. If you were a boy drafted into the Taliban, you don't count either. I'll go out on a limb of intuition and say the death toll for the Afghan campaign could be as high as 20,000.
> 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.
Note the iron, Luke: well, it doesn't say much when the Taliban are as trustworthy as your own government, now does it?
CJ
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