Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE: On Thursday, a research group called Iraq Body Count issued findings that showed the rate of civilian deaths rising each year since May 1st, 2003, when the President announced the end of combat operations. According to the group, in the first year violent death occurred at a rate of 20 per day, in year two, 31 per day and in 2006 so far, 36 per day. And that doesn't count the carnage following the attack on the Shiite mosque in Samarra. Since Iraq Body Count relies entirely on media reports for its figures, we wondered how the Washington Post's assertion that the death toll is being suppressed would affect its work. Scott Lipscomb is a researcher and U.S. spokesman for Iraq Body Count. Scott, welcome to the program.
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what happens when there's only one source for a reported incident and it's highly contentious or even rejected by other news outlets, as in The Washington Post case?
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: In the case where we had a single media report that stated a specific number, for instance, the 1300 figure that was reported in The Washington Post, it would need to be corroborated by a second media outlet.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But what if The Washington Post got something of a scoop when it found out that the morgues may actually be undercutting the figures that everybody uses, that they're leaving out the execution-style deaths? We don't know whether that's true yet, but if it is, and if The Washington Post found it out, then you're not likely to get a second source to corroborate it. Do you then still just ignore it?
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: No, that's true. And we don't rely only on morgue reports, of course, so we have multiple sources. And when a report like the figures from the morgue comes out, what we then do is go back and compare individual incidents that we have corroborated, in the Baghdad area in this instance, that would overlap that particular incident. And we would factor those out before we would add any kind of a morgue figure in. And so our figures actually don't rely on these big released figures, exclusively.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If you've got numbers from the morgue, which have customarily been higher but now suddenly may well be lower or as low as the official count, what does all this mean for the prospects of getting a grip on the real human cost of this war?
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: Getting a real grip on the cost of the war is a very difficult issue, period. And when instances occur where there are varying accounts that are both corroborated, we have a minimum figure and a maximum figure. Now, understand that Iraq Body Count, we only report the number of deaths that find their way into the media, and so I would argue that the numbers on our website are always an undercount.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, let's talk about your methodology. According to your website, your tally includes, quote, "civilian' deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to the coalition presence – that is to say, insurgent or terrorist attacks." So how far do you extend this chain of causation that begins with the coalition presence?
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: Essentially, any person who is killed as a result of a bombing, of a terrorist action or execution-style murders, which appears to be the case here with the morgue figure that was released, those would certainly count in our tally.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But if the situation devolves, for instance, into all-out civil war, as many suggest may be happening right now, can we fairly blame that on the U.S. occupation? What if the U.S. military tomorrow were to pull out altogether? All the indications are that the killing might continue just as ferociously as now, if not more so.
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: Ultimately this exact situation could have been predicted -- that, in fact, we would not be greeted with flowers and we would not be welcomed into the country. So this current situation is a direct result of the decision to invade Iraq; 37,589 individuals, innocent civilians, have died. That is a horrifically tragic figure, and one that really the American people need to be aware of.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Would you regard Iraq Body Count as a political organization as much as a research organization?
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: I would refer to us as a humanitarian organization made up of researchers. We don't really have a direct political message, although we are certainly opposed to the current occupation in Iraq.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It does sound like a direct political message.
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: Our goal is to simply systematically and very carefully log the number of civilian casualties that are documented by the media, tabulate a total and put it on the website so that that can be communicated around the world.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Have any foreign governments or any official bodies criticized the work that Iraq Body Count is doing?
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: To my knowledge, there's not been a specific instance in which a government or an organization at that level has come and specifically focused on our work, except to the extent that George Bush recently referred to a figure of 30,000 ,and then Scott McClellan later confirmed that that number was associated with our website.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you worry, with such reports as that in The Washington Post this week, that your job is only going to get harder and may, in fact, become impossible?
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: It's never been easy. It will certainly make it more difficult to get reliable figures if, in fact, organizations that have precise numbers and have exact information are influenced in a way that causes them not to release those numbers accurately.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Scott, thank you very much.
SCOTT LIPSCOMB: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Scott Lipscomb is an assistant researcher for Iraqbodycount.net. We spoke to him from Northwestern University. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: And now a correction. Last week, in a piece about military vets running for Congress as Democrats, Brooke said that Democratic leadership has thrown its weight behind just one of those candidates, Tammy Duckworth. Sarah Feinberg of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee tells us that her group has, in fact, helped the campaigns of several of those candidates, plus she says the Democratic leadership did not ignore the campaign of veteran Paul Hackett last summer, as we said, but provided both field and political support. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, AT&T's age-old battle with a fictional battleaxe – Ernestine.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.