NEWS FLASH! We've actually killed some goat rapists!

CowardlyCuriousGeorge FlyingGlobalistBushMonkey spilled the beans and then his spokesthing, Tony Snow, had to bow and scrape to the knuckle-dragging representatives of the AmericaLast media.

From Editor & Publisher:

...Snow was asked about the president providing a "body count" in Iraq, something that has been pretty much avoided, in wake of criticism of inflated numbers in Vietnam. The transcript follows.

Q: The President yesterday said that about 5,900 enemy forces have either been killed or captured in about the last two and a half months. Can you elaborate on that? I mean, he just made one broad statement about that. What other information do you have to back that up, in terms of --

MR. SNOW: Well, those are -- that's the information that's been produced by our people in the field.

Q: Why did he decide to give enemy body counts? That's something that they've generally tried to stay away from.

MR. SNOW: Well, that's a good question. I won't try to -- rather than trying to tell you why the President said what he said -- because I can't give you the exact -- I can't put him on the couch right now -- what I can do is at least offer one possible reason why that's an important data point for Americans, which is there's a lot of concern about U.S. casualties and deaths, as there should be -- 103 deaths in October alone. And there is quite often the impression -- and I've talked about it up here, that our people aren't doing anything, they're just targets. And I think there's a certain amount of unease in the American public because they hear about deaths but they don't hear about what's going on.

I was speaking last night with a service member just recently back; he was at our party. And he's frustrated because a lot of the activities they do never get reported. Well, one of the things that never seems to be counterposed to the death counts is what our servicemen and women are doing. And one of the things they're doing is they're fighting the bad guys. And as General Chirelli said recently, the bad guys haven't won a single battle. For obvious reasons, going back to Vietnam era, people are loathe to do body counts. (Emphasis mine.) But it probably is worth at least giving a general impression of relative battlefield success of what's going on, which is a great many members of al Qaeda in Anbar and also people who are committing acts of violence in Baghdad and elsewhere are dying or being captured as a result of these military activities.

Q: Tony, is this something that the White House would like the America public to judge? We killed this many bad guys, versus how many of us are killed? Is that something you want as a metric from now on?

MR. SNOW: I don't know. But I think -- I think the most -- I think it is important that Americans learn as much as possible about what's going on in Iraq, and that's not merely militarily, to get a sense of where the violence is located, how widespread it is, what's going on in civil society, is there hope in certain provinces, what is the full picture in Iraq. And I'm afraid that that is something that people have not fully received. And so we will be talking about the fuller picture, good news and bad news....