Survey results: Americans underestimate the death toll in Iraq

I was on the high side of estimating Iraqi casualties, but since there are no solid numbers on the number of civilian deaths there, it's possible that I'm not overestimating. On a personal note, my brother-in-law served in Afghanistan and I have a nephew who was training in Kuwait who may now be in Iraq.

I'm really not surprised at the number being underestimated considering the kid gloves that American media treats the subject with.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070224/ap_on_re_us/death_in_iraq_ap_poll

Americans underestimate Iraqi death toll

By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - 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.

When the poll was conducted earlier this month, a little more than 3,100 U.S. troops had been killed. The midpoint estimate among those polled was right on target, at about 3,000.

Far from a vague statistic, the death toll is painfully real for many Americans. Seventeen percent in the poll know someone who has been killed or wounded in Iraq. And among adults under 35, those closest to the ages of those deployed, 27 percent know someone who has been killed or wounded.

For Daniel Herman, a lawyer in New Castle, Pa., a co-worker's nephew is the human face of the dead.

"This is a fairly rural area," he said. "When somebody dies, ... you hear about it. It makes it very concrete to you."

The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans' tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands.

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.

Among those polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower.
( Read more... )

If you own a wireless router....

PLEASE CHANGE THE DEFAULT ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD if you haven't already. There's a new attack going around where, if you go to a corrupt page, it launches a malicious script on your PC that tries to identify your wireless router and change the administrator password. If it succeeds, it then becomes a base layer for phishing attacks by redirecting your attempts to access financial accounts to servers under the attacker's control. In such cases, if the cloned sites are done well (and with the amount of work that this attack requires, they'll probably be done well), you may not know that you're not on your bank's web site.

There are two obvious solutions. First, make sure that your administrator password isn't the default factory setting. Second, don't go to such web sites that these attacks are launched from. Unfortunately it's not easy knowing where such sites might be lurking. I think that part of the reason that I've been virus-free for so long is that I don't go where angels fear to tread and I'm not constantly downloading programs and toolbars. But maybe I'm just lucky.

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OK, I mis-read the article. This is a proof-of-concept, i.e., someone created this attack and proved it viable. This does not mean that it exists in the wild. Still, you should change the default password on your wireless router.

Panel to probe conditions at Walter Reed

HAH! If they want to find who is accountable you don't have to look further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the Congress. They've been cutting funding (and allowing the funding to be cut) for veteran support since the war began!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070224/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_walter_reed

Panel to probe conditions at Walter Reed

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer Sat Feb 24, 6:38 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that those found to have been responsible for allowing substandard living conditions for soldier outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center will be "held accountable."

However, no one in the Army chain of command has so far offered to resign.
( Read more... )