Dont count your citizens even after they are DEAD

Here's a nice AP story on how the Coalition Provisional Authority--the U.S. backed Iraqi interim government--has instructed the Health Ministry to stop trying to get an accurate count of civilian casualties in Iraq.

The U.S. army doesn't keep track; the British army doesn't keep track; now, an Iraqi institution that was trying to keep track has been ordered not to by their new "government." Hmmmm.

This is liberation Mafia-style, and the doctor who was interviewed about the reasons for this change is apparently willing to risk reprisal in order to let it be known that the count is not being done because "the CPA doesn't want this done":

The ministry began its survey at the end of July, when shaky nationwide communication links began to improve. It sent letters to all hospitals and clinics in Iraq, asking them to send back details of civilians killed or wounded in the war.

Many hospitals responded with statistics, Mohsen said, but last month Shabinder summoned her and told her that the minister, Dr. Khodeir Abbas, wanted the count halted. He also told her not to release the partial information she had already collected, she said.

"He told me, 'You should move far away from this subject,'" Mohsen said. "I don't know why."

Because if you keep going, you'll wake up to find your favorite horse's bloody severed head lying between your satin bedsheets, maybe?

I mean, I don't know if we'll get a better example any time soon of what is wrong with this version of "liberation." First of all, we clearly don't give a flying @#$! about 'the Iraqi people,' since our army was never interested in determining how many of 'the Iraqi people' they had killed. Second, the Iraqi interim government is clearly unenthusiastic, unwilling, or unable to go against the wishes of their U.S. backers, since they are interested in suppressing information that would be damaging to them. And third, as reported by Dr. Mohsen, the order was conveyed in a conversation that suggests one of Don Corleone's lieutenants delivering a warning to a business rival than a government bureaucrat passing along a memo. And fourth, of course, it doesn't augur well for the new Iraq doing much in the freedom-of-information or freedom-of-speech line, does it?

But then why should it surprise me. The Bush administration has never been a fan of having things counted, be the bodies or ballots.