Remember Iraq Body Count? It’s a group that received a lot of press when it released a report on Iraqi civilian casualties in July. At the time, I wrote this article about how media reports on the group did not identify it as far-left outfit opposed to the mission in Iraq, and my colleague Alston Ramsay wrote this piece about the group’s questionable sources and methods.

Today, Clay Waters spotted a story in the New York Times that quotes Iraq Body Count as a reliable source of information on civilian deaths in Iraq. As the Times has done in the past, it once again describes the group only as a “United States-based nonprofit group,” with no word about its far-left ties and agenda.

The war in Iraq has obviously taken a horrible toll on civilians — no one is denying that. But Iraq Body Count, with its agenda and its shoddy methods, is a totally unreliable source of data. As with the reports of 10,000 dead from Hurricane Katrina, we should be wary of media reports that cite wild estimations as facts.