From today's report in the Lancet, Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000.
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
snip
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.
I think it's time to stop saying that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam. Some mealy ass senator (too lazy to look up the quote) said that we (Americans) wouldn't care much about civil rights if we were dead.
The corollary to that is that dead Iraqis couldn't care less about peeance and freeance. Since they haven't got either.
And WTF is up with this? Bush: Iraqis Are Willing To ‘Tolerate’ This ‘Level Of Violence’
Today in his press conference, President Bush applauded the courage of Iraqis, stating that he is “amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.”
They "tolerate" violence? Bush is flat out delusional. As ThinkProgress notes, nearly a million people have fled Iraq to escape the violence. The people that are staying have no choice in the matter. They're just trying to stay alive from one day to the next.
As a wag on ThinkProgess notes: "Mad cow is eating his brain like an hor’s d’ouvre."
Just so, just so.
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My first impulse is to wish that Mad Cow would eat faster: second is to pray that Georgie W. can hold himself together for two years, four months more.
If anything happens to him, Cheney would try to turn this country into a fascist state, even if it took a nuclear strike on the US to do it. (I may be more than a little paranoid here.)
I think Condi, her mentor Powell and perhaps some of the Joint Chiefs may be able to influence Georgie against Cheney's malignant ideas. Like sending the Eisenhower to bomb Iran.
So much depends on this election, and hackable voting machines, that it scares the shit out of me.
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