Panel: U.S. Underreported Iraq Violence

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

I'm only really interested in the reality of the situation: what information has been suppressed and to what extent. Your argument is about blame--and seems a little magical: if we can't blame the military then perhaps the information isn't really being suppressed. Blaming the guy that took all the toilet paper will not wipe your ass. It'll still have shit on it.

It seems clear enough that information has been suppressed to some extent even though you seemingly want to avoid acknowledging it altogether in your rhetoric.

I know this is a dead issue by now, but hindsight is 20/20 right? Here's the answer I should have given last month.

In my first and second replies to this thread I did acknowledge that information was being systemically suppressed, or rather filtered to make it usable. By asking and answering a related question, why has information been suppressed, it becomes obvious what has been suppressed and to what extent. Since this information was contained within a database that was not open to the public, it's wrong to conclude that the motive was to deceive the public. No, the information was being filtered for the same reason that horses wear blinders. The intent was only to filter data which was peripheral to the task at hand, to the extent that it made the task manageable. That was the reality of the situation as the Baker Commission saw it, and their suggestions for improvement were not accusations of censorship.