I've been a big fan of Jude Wanniski for a while now, and his Memo on the Margin column is one of my daily reads. Today's edition concerns an estimate from an insider in Iraq of the total number of civilian casualties since the war started in March. It's not surprising that Chimpy doesn't want to talk about this:

After more than five weeks of intensive and thorough investigations carried out by hundreds of our party’s cadre, which included all villages, towns, cities and some of the desert areas etc. affected by the aggression (with exception of the Kurdish area), and also by interviewing hundreds of undertakers, hospitals officials and ordinary people in these places, the figure of civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion came to 37,137. This figure does not include militia, para-military or Saddam’s Fiday’een.

The breakdown of the total number of civilians killed during the invasion of Iraq is as follows (Please note that the names underneath represent that of 14 Governorates, excluding Iraqi Kurdistan):

Baghdad 6103
Mosul 2009
Basrah 6734
Nasiriyah 3581
Diwaniyah 1567
Kut 2494
Hillah 3552
Karbala (including Najaf) 2263
Samawah 659
Amarah 2741
Ramadi 2172
Kerkuk 861
Diyalah 604
Tikrit 1797

Pretty depressing stuff........