This isn’t that surprising but it’s still very disappointing. A recent survey popped up asking American citizens how many US soldiers had died in Iraq and how many Iraqi citizens had died. Unsurprisingly, they were close on the former, way off on the latter.

The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans’ tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands.

Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.

Among those polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower.

Wow. That’s QUITE wrong. Now, keep in mind that there are tolls pegging the number significantly north of 100,000 and that an estimate of how many people had died in general above the normal rate since the 2003 invasion was more than half a million. Half of the American people don’t even think up in five digits.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if these results were mapped along with where they get their news. I haven’t listened to right wing squawk radio in a while, but I never saw any reports on death tolls there. Take a chunk of the population who never hears numbers, but constantly hears how well things are going and it’s understandable that they’d guess so low.

I’m also curious what the lowest 25% of the guesses were. I have this sneaking suspicion that some people were guessing some incredibly low numbers.

Another update from the actual front of the War on Terror. We established a while ago that both the Taliban and Al Qaeda haven’t exactly been dismantled, now we’ve got a video where they take claim for an attack on a US base in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda posted a 56-second video Friday of rockets being fired at what it claimed was a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

The tape appeared to be the latest in a series of videos that the terror network has released to convey that its insurgents are faring well in the Afghan war.

The base was not visible in the video, which showed several rockets being launched from a forested hillside in the Balwara area of Afghanistan in November, according to a subtitle.

Now, obviously, the complete lack of proof in this video doesn’t lead one to believe they were firing at an actual military base, but the fact that they have ARMS is enough. They have rockets that fire and can fire them at things. Just because they haven’t quite yet targeted a military base doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t.

Iraq attacks no one and has no weapons, we go after them. Iran attacks no one and supposedly is trying to get weapons, we’re mounting an offense. Al Qaeda kills 3,000 citizens in a horrific attack, and we briefly poke around in their country just long enough to justify getting over into Iraq. Now that they’ve rebuilt… nothing.