Every day during this war you get the numbers of Iraqi civilians killed during that war, but the numbers are all collected and published by the Iraqi authorities. I’m wondering if those counts can be relied upon to be accurate, or if they are faked. Is there any incentive for Saddam to manipulate the statistics? They could be overstating them, trying to turn the world’s opinion even more against the coalition; or Saddam might be understating civilian casualties, trying to calm his own people and preserve the illusion of normal life and total Iraqi control of the situation, as he’s been doing since the first bombs fell. Both options seem to make sense to me, from Saddam’s point of view. Are chances that the actual numbers of casualties are higher than stated by Baghdad, or lower, or are the Iraqi counts actually accurate?
There is an Iraq Body Count site which analyzes reports from what seems to be a list of reasonably reputable sources.