Dartblog

It became limelight figure numero uno for forty-eight hours last week: 30,000. The number of civilian deaths as a result of the Iraq War, as quoted by President Bush in response to a reporter’s question. As a White House press briefing later clarified, the president’s number was merely a generality he cobbled from media reports. Despite this—and that isn’t a difficult pill to swallow, as the president’s desk in the Oval Office is weighted with thousands of figures and reports, few of which are media-friendly numeric morsels like ‘Number of Civilian Deaths in Iraq’—the mainstream media highlighted the president’s number as some sort of groundbreaking admission. They were, in effect, in a tizzy because of their own earlier reportage.

Even the New York Times used the 30,000 number in a large graph today, authoritatively and definitively comparing civilian deaths in Iraq to other historical and recent conflicts.

Put a peg in the corkboard: December 2005 and 30,000 estimated deaths. But there was another number in October of 2004. Quietly, slowly, slyly, that number has creeped away from the news reports on Iraq. Quietly, slowly, slyly, it has left the collective conciousness of the Democratic party. Quietly, slowly, slyly, it has been retired, after being proven a fib and a quintessential ‘October Surprise’.

Quietly, slowly, slyly, the media have tip-toed away from 100,000, the number of civilian deaths estimated by a slipshod Lancet study intended to tip the 2004 election in the Democrats’ favor.

It is as if the number simply never existed. Granted, it remains an article of misplaced faith in certain circles. Like some slow-on-the-uptake subset of Dartmouth’s liberals, who recently strung the number up in the Collis Center. And I’ve been attacked on occasion for referring to it as a debunked figure, though it is. I noted that “the last hanger-on” in the press had jumped the S.S. Lancet, and I was lambasted for that. But everyone, really, has stopped saying 100,000.

Now, we stand more than one year down the road, agreeing on 30,000. Yet the number 100,000 blared loudly mere days before the election, and took its toll. The media would normally dig deep on a piece of political machination such as this. They’d want to know the motivation, the intent, the details. Not here. It was a useful but ephemeral tool meant to elect one party over another, masquerading as fact. Both the party which benefited and the media whose voices sung sourly together of 100,000 have simply fallen silent on the number, without apology. And Lancet itself has felt no heat. What an embarrassing, whimpering end for a tawdry political trick embraced by millions of party loyals and intelligent college students.

UPDATE: Reader Tony Brusletten points out that President Bush cited 30,000 Iraqis dead while Lancet claimed 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead. If anything, that speaks to the enormity of Lancet’s error.