Amber Alert: Missing Headlines at BBC

The headline, "Iraq Child Malnutrition Rates Cut by Two Thirds" has been abducted from the masthead of the British Broadcasting Service, and replaced with the misleading headline, "Children 'Starving' in New Iraq".

Anyone care to guess why the focus is on starving children and not children fed in larger numbers with better food since 2003? One guess - media bias, because there is no other logical explanation for why this story is even being addressed. It is a shame that there are still malnourished kids in Iraq, but there's absolutely no evidence that the BBC story is accurate in any way.

Second among the reported missing facts was a prewar United Nations report, cited by PeaceAction.org and countless other sites, which found that 25 percent of Iraqi children were malnourished during the final years of Saddam Hussein.

Investigators for Countercolumn have confirmed that the 8 percent malnutrition rate reported by the United Nations under the coalition government is less than one third of the 25 percent figure cited by UNICEF prior to the war, and taken as gospel by numerous progressive organizations calling for the lifting of the UN sanctions.

Investigators have ruled out charging BBC reporters and editors as well as United Nations diplomats with any crime, since anybody who's too stupid to figure out that today's 8 percent malnutrition rate is not double 25 percent malnutrition, as the BBC lede reports, cannot be held responsible for their actions as if they were, you know, sentient adults.

The offending article had claimed that malnutrition among Iraqi children had doubled since the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

Someone needs remedial math lessons, and methinks that would be the folks at the BBC.

UPDATE 9:32AM EST:
We're not alone in seeing the discrepancies and math illiteracy at the UN. In fact, this is a political hatchet job intended to attack the US even though the situation in Iraq is far better now than it was under Saddam Hussein. And that's by simply looking at the UN figures pre- and post- invasion.