Post mosque bombing body count suppressed in Iraq

It makes sense that one of the primary reasons why it's been difficult to quantify precisely how many Iraqis have been killed in sectarian violence since the bombing of the Askariya mosque in Samarra is because there's been an active effort to obscure reporting of it by Shiite officials.

Conveniently and perhaps ironically, this helps both those engaged in the violence and US opinion managers, the latter of whom have been trying very hard to convince Americans that a civil war isn't going to happen anytime soon.