AP Horsewhip

Breaking News: Associated Press Needs to be Horsewhipped:

So, I assume you all saw today's top story from the AP, titled, "Americans underestimate Iraqi death toll." The lede says:

Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed.

So. After almost four years of telling Americans the precise number of Americans killed in every single news story, every single day, the AP has the gall to run a story claiming that Americans' awareness of that number suggests self-centeredness and inattention.

Does anyone believe that, if there had been the same obsessive focus on the number of Iraqi dead within the media, there would be the same result?

By the way, just how many Iraqi civilian dead are there? The story says:

Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.

Well, in 2004 the Lancet estimated a hundred thousand; and in 2006 they estimated 655,000. President Bush, last I heard, had the number at thirty thousand.

So, which number are you going to remember -- the one that you see in the newspaper every single day, or the one you've heard vague reports of once in a while, with every number widely different?

Next story: many Americans can precisely recall their own telephone number, but woefully misremember their dentist's.