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Billo_Really · 02-02-08, 12:55 PM

Another opinion from someone who spent several months filming inside an Iraq hospital.

Quote:

MJ: The accuracy of civilian casualty counts is an ongoing point of dispute. Different organizations have numbers as low as 50,000 and as high as 600,000 or more. What do you think is accurate?

OSM: You've seen the film. At Al Yarmouk, they might receive 50, 60 casualties in a day, and that's only one hospital in one part of Baghdad. So I believe that the number is really high, that it exceeds 600,000. Also, a lot of people are killed and buried without any registration in certain areas where there's no government control or no access to official records. Personally, I lost my father last summer. All the friends I know and all the relatives I know have lost somebody, or they know somebody who's been killed or been disappeared. So I think the casualties are really high. Still, it's very difficult to get information, especially with our government trying to withhold it— they just don't want to say the truth, and they're trying to give the wrong picture. I mean, even now when they're saying that casualty numbers are decreasing, this is because people have either fled Baghdad or fled Iraq, or because they are hiding in their houses. And besides, I really don't see any difference if there are 200,000 or 600,000. No one should be killed in this way. I don't know why people seem to only want higher numbers so they can say it's a bad situation. One person is enough.