Low Body Count, Slow Body Count, No Body Count ......

[Stinky The Clown]

There seems to be much discussion about the body counts coming from the disaster scenes in the Gulf Coast region. Some say they're amazingly low. Some say they're being suppressed by the powers that be. Reports of the floating bodies in New Orleans and the bodies in the trees in Mississippi seem to confirm the potential reality of the predictions of tens of thousands of casualties.

Yet we hear nothing of this in the numbers reported to date.

And to be sure, the media has let this aspect of things go largely unreported

We who stand in opposition to most anything done by the federal government these days have been shouting about an intentional deception regarding the body counts.

But there was one little snippet of news reported that seems to have been missed. I heard it but once .... on MSNBC, as I recall ..... from a field reporter ..... in the early days when they were still reporting the realities of the destruction and pain. Paraphrased, the reporter said:

'The casualties are not counted until the remains have been processed and positively identified.'

Personally, I take that to mean they will not be reporting counts until a good deal of work is done. They need to do many things to identify bodies. We can imagine what that means. A wallet in the pocket of the jeans worn by a body are a pretty good way to identify. But what of the others? The ones with no ID on the remains? Dental records and medical records from the storm area are likely destroyed. Families needed to make visual identification are scattered around the country. DNA testing takes time, assuming a source for the match - typically toothbrushes and hairbrushes of the deceased - can be found.

So, if we accept at face value that casualty counts won't be released until the remains are processed, we may have to wait for a while.

I, for one, can understand this. On the other hand, I recall clearly that after 9/11 we were getting casualty estimates almost from the start. 2,000, 10,000, 5,000 ...... I also recall that the early estimates were generally high as compared to what became the official final count. In fairness, that was the count from a relatively small area and was a count of 'rostered' people - employee lists and such. The situation in the Gulf is far different. At this point, we don't even know the number who survived, or who were evacuated, or who remain in their homes.

I do, however, believe we'll see reasonably honest numbers. This is not a military-only operation. There are civilians involved, first hand, in collecting, transporting, storing and cataloging, post morteming, identifying, and reporting on the dead. Some of these people will be compliant sheep, who do whatever they're told. Others will not. We need only look at the reporters we've all hailed for the honesty these past days to know that this is a hugely affecting experience. I trust that the truth will out.

So I'm prepared to wait a while for the final count - or even for a good estimate.

But not too much longer.

[Inland]

1. There won't be a count until people fail to show up in a month or two

There isn't going to be a found corpse for every dead person, not by a long shot.

The count is going to be finalized when family and friends go a month or two looking for a victim and he isn't in a morgue, a hospital, a relief center, and nothing is clicking on his social security number.

Given that there is no means to identify or track individuals in this country, lists will have to be made hospital by hospital, center by center.

I say the number won't be finalized for months.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. Agreed

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Next time, though, it won't be a problem.

Everybody will have their implanted electronic ID so they can be located by GPS and instantly identified.

And we will be told it's a good idea, because of the example of Katrina.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Interesting, is it not,

how death tolls in more primitive parts of the world tend to rise as the count proceeds? Only America is sufficiently advanced to have perfected the steadily diminishing death toll. I daresay that if we were to continue the count for another 6 months we would discover that nobody had died at all.

[fasttense]

4. On Dateline last night the head of the New Orleans police spoke

about the 500 officers that failed to show up after the hurricane. Though he admitted that some of them were probably dead, he went on to call them cowards. In my gut I think he is going to regret those words because I think the majority that failed to show are lying dead on the streets of New Orleans.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Except the two who were caught on film, and interviewed,

during the looting of a supermarket. They're probably too embarrassed to show their faces.

[MaineDem]

7. A blurb on CNN this morning said mortuary working arounf the clock

Why would they be doing that if there are only 165 dead?

I believe (maybe foolishly) that we WILL know the final count and it'll be the media that brings out the truth. CNN winning that injunction and the subsequest dropping of the ban by the government might be the first steps to the truth getting out.

Call me Pollyanna?

[Stinky The Clown]

8. If you're Polllyanna, so am I .... PollyAnthony, maybe .... but yeah

the truth will come out.