UNDER-EXAGGERATION MUCH?

Not Greeting Us as Liberators

It's practically a tradition for government agencies like the National Park Service to grossly underestimate the number of participants at a protest, while organizers of the demonstration over-exaggerate the size of the crowd.

But the discrepancy in numbers regarding yesterday's march in Iraq is especially ridiculous.

According to the U.S. Army, "5,000 to 7,000" people marched in Moqtada al-Sadr's anti-U.S. rally in Najaf to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

The AP, however, says "tens of thousands."

The BBC says "hundreds of thousands."

Obviously, I have no idea who is right.

But I know the crowd in the photo above probably couldn't fit into the Greek Theatre in L.A., which has a capacity of less than 7,000 people.

Plus, given that our military leaders estimated that our efforts in Iraq would take "four days tops," I'm going to guess that our government's math-related intelligence is a little fuzzy.


Hattip: MoJo

--Junichi