{"id":4468,"date":"2007-04-26T16:03:24","date_gmt":"2007-04-26T23:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=4468"},"modified":"2007-04-26T16:52:11","modified_gmt":"2007-04-26T23:52:11","slug":"bush-admin-no-longer-counting-car-bomb-deaths-in-civilian-casualty-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=4468","title":{"rendered":"Bush Admin No Longer Counting Car Bomb Deaths in Civilian Casualty Counts"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>RAW STORY reports<\/a> that for the first time, the Iraqi government has withheld data on civilian deaths from a UN Human Rights program which has been tracking such information. The UN is suggesting that it’s been done at the behest of the Bush Administration hoping to sell the idea that the “surge” is working.<\/p>\n

But what caught my eye was this part of RAW’s report, referring to a McClatchy news service article<\/a> out yesterday revealing that the Bush Administration is now excluding deaths from car bombs in their figures to tout a drop of violence in Iraq since the surge.<\/p>\n

Yes, you read that correctly. More mind-blowing, however, was this response from Bush when asked about the issue yesterday on PBS’ Charlie Rose<\/i>:<\/p>\n

“Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims,” wrote the news service’s Nancy Youssef. “President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. ‘If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory,’ he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.”<\/div>\n

I’ve read those quotes now about six times, and still can’t figure out what the hell he is saying. So I’ll just say, I don’t even know what to say.<\/p>\n

In related news…<\/strong> The LA Times<\/em> reported<\/a> on Saturday that nearly 100 Iraqis have been hanged since the government re-instituted their death penalty. In one reported case, a trial for an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen<\/em> accused of kidnapping three journalists lasted “about an hour,” with no witnesses testifying, before the man was sentenced to hang.<\/p>\n

Great news! George W. Bush’s American Values are on the march around the world!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAW STORY reports that for the first time, the Iraqi government has withheld data on civilian deaths from a UN Human Rights program which has been tracking such information. The UN is suggesting that it’s been done at the behest of the Bush Administration hoping to sell the idea that the “surge” is working. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[193,24],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death-penalty","category-iraq-war","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=4468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}