Monday, November 27, 2006
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count[er]
Catching up with the news from the last few days, I found this story with a Los Angeles Times by-line but which I can find only in my local paper, the San Jose Mercury News. It's the story of a man and his laptop, specifically, an antiwar activist named Michael White who decided it was his mission to keep track of "coalition" casualties (and more) and who has single-handedly maintained the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website since very early in the current Iraq war.
Although the article discusses only U.S. deaths (with a brief mention of coalition deaths), and the site is known primarily for that, for the last two years the site has at least tracked in a minimal way Iraqi deaths as well. Given the controversy over similar data from Iraq Body Count, this statement on his site is interesting: "This is not a complete list, nor can we verify these totals. This is simply a compilation of deaths reported by news agencies. Actual totals for Iraqi deaths are much higher than the numbers recorded on this site."
Anyway, an interesting article.
