April 9, 2007

Wildly Different Estimates on Najaf Rally

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I blogged earlier about the thousands of Moqtada al-Sadr followers who protested the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad in Najaf today.

Well, it appears there is a major dispute over how many “thousands” were actually there. According to this CNN article, the U.S. military’s estimate is “5,000 to 7,000.” According to this Reuters article that I cited earlier, it is “tens of thousands.” And according to this Agence France-Presse article and this BBC article the number of participants is in the “hundreds of thousands.” If that’s true, did the military really think they were going to fool anybody with that “5,000 to 7,000” nonsense?

Hoo-boy. Who to believe? We’ll keep digging…

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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