Webmaster John Sloboda scours the electronic press for reports of civilian casualties and requires accounts from at least two reputable news agencies for inclusion. But the range of deaths listed highlights the underlying problem: there is no way for anyone besides the Pentagon to come close to accurately enumerating civilian death tolls. And General Tommy Franks has said the U.S. military doesn’t “do body counts.” Neither do most NGOs. “Numbers are so easily corrupted and politicized,” said Gerald Martone, of the International Rescue Committee. Kim Gordon-Bates of the International Committee of the Red Cross is also skeptical. “It’s extraordinarily difficult and misleading to track body counts, and we often don’t release numbers because we worry about backlash,” he said. But Sloboda says his site, iraqbodycount.net, gets 100,000 hits a day. “This war is being fought with a degree of caution that previous wars have not had regarding civilians,” he said. “We are having an impact.”
