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This morning's Washington Post has a must read article by David Brown, that is derived from an AP report on a study conducted by a team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists. The article is titled
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.
The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
While polls seem to indicate that somewhere around 30% to 35% of Americans will read the horrible results of the study and come away smiling and praising the military genius of the Bush crime family (see:
White House Briefing -- News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration - washingtonpost.com), the other two thirds of the saner folk will walk a little more slowly, bow their heads a bit more lowly, this morning. (And, with recent revelations about Republica's running in
Congressional and State elections, the
"Values Voters" are beginning to wake up. And it's doubtful that
"Staff" will be able to deflect heat from the high level Republican cover-up in the Foley affair(s).
Surprise, surprise!
When you use all the horrendous weapons of conventional war, from pretty colored, toy looking cluster bombs through depleted uranium munitions that throw radioactive dust all over the environment of the country you claim to love so much you'll waste thousands of our own
soldier's lives and the taxes of many future generations . . . all sorts of
SHIT HAPPENS!
And if there's anything Amerika has become expert at in the past 5 years, it's turning shouted good intentions into works resembling the most evil whispers of demons.
On the other hand, if you read the unadorned AP report in today's NY Times, the chilling figures of death are given short shrift as early as the second paragraph:
NY Times:
The timing of the survey's release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it "politics."
The whole damn Attack, Invasion, Occupation thing is nothing but politics, so how could a body count be not?! Just yesterday McCain blamed North Korea's nuke ambitions on Bill Clinton, 6 years into Bush's grabbing of the wheel of the good ship US. Was McCain's attempt to look good to the Repugnant, anti-Clinton base political.
Of course it was.
Yet, if a Democrat points out that the Bush administration is
In Search of a North Korea Policy - washingtonpost.com, that person would be pilloried with
"You're just playing politics!"
As the US has a Congressional election every 2 years, and campaigning for the next one often starts before the votes have been counted in a current one, just
when the Hell is it convenient to hang out the Repugnant's dirty laundry without being accused of playing politics?
With the Repugnants damaging the fabric of America daily, and the corporate media laying back and counting the money left on the dresser (FCC "
deregulation" bucks!), getting any facts on what is going on is a blessing. Be it the day before, the day after or the day elections are deemed unpatriotic.
And that last wasn't meant as exaggeration to make a point. It was fearful, sorrowful prognostication, if anything.
For redacting and shredding the Constitution has become the raison de être of this Administration, and it has had willing accomplices in the Republican AND Democratic parties.
As
Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, only the 3rd Amendment is still in effect. We don't have the King's soldiers in our living rooms nor his horses/tanks in our stables/carports. All other Amendments are no longer in effect, according to Bills passed by our fearful, spineless AND treasonous officials.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort that it values more, it will lose that too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
Invading non-aggressor nations, abrogating treaties and other agreements made under the bond of "America's bond", dissing all of our allies while enraging and empowering our enemies and, last but far from least, treating our troops as if they were literal cannon fodder, to be sent into battle for longer than they were prepared to fight, with insufficient munitions and supplies (including rationing their food and water, while Halliburton ran up huge and uncontested contract overages), then cast aside as an insignificant waste necessary in the pursuit of empire.
That's
ALL POLITICS . . . and shining a light on any of it,
INCLUDING THE PRICE PAID IN BLOOD BY THE VERY PEOPLE WE CLAIM WE CAME TO HELP!
Let's remember a very relevant and timely quote:
Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, before committing suicide at the Nuremberg Trials, appeared to be advising the future neo-cons:
Goering: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in American, nor for that matter in Germany. that is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship."
(interviewer) Gilbert: "There is one difference. in a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
Goering: "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
—Nazi leader Hermann Goering, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trials, 1946 April 18, quoted in Gilbert's book, Nuremberg Diary
Controlling the media, especially by using the old dodge
"We're at war, and even if the printed facts are true they hurt our country now.", or the present one which combines our War-time need for self censorship with the plea that bad news could influence an upcoming election, makes Goering's message all the more chilling. One must realize that the Bushies, lacking much intellectual initiative for innovation, has been clinging to playbooks from the past. They know how the country rallied behind Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor and gave him powers that allowed him to take on a war against 2 major powers.
And how, after WW II, Roosevelt used that good will to push through policies not thought possible. From Social Security through a Marshall Plan that set up working social democracies in Europe and proved to the world that by taking care of the poor and cultivating a secure middle-class you can have a healthy economic engine the likes of which was thought impractical by most Republicans and fiscal insanity by many.
So the Bush regime, fully aware of the philosophy expressed by Goerring, saw the opportunity handed them by 19 young fanatics who really did little more than hijack 4 American domestic airplanes (hardly as mighty an attack as Pearl Harbor). The Bushies stoked and stirred the cauldron of fear until it was boiling over. Once the people were so blinded by irrational fear, which was
"politically" fueled by the ingenious misuse of color coded charts inspiring timely fear, they forgot the original American heroes who took on the mightiest army on Earth (the Brits) in 1776 to garner certain inalienable rights and desired freedoms for future generations, the Bushies began stripping those rights and freedoms with more skill than any of America's past enemies had ever dared believed possible.
Some have taken notice:
"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy."
"This is not normal government policy. now is the time for (American) people to engage in civil disobedience. I think it's time to protest - as much as possible."
American 2001 Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics George A. Akerlof, who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley. The 61-year-old scholar's areas of expertise include macro-economics, monetary policy and poverty.
Of course, had Hitler stated, out loud, that, with the consent of a majority of both his people and the government officials of both his and the opposition's officials, he would destroy our Constitution, that he'd lock up Americans on a whim, with no regard for evidence (Habeas Corpus), that he'd torture those he arbitrarily chose . . . Japan might not have earned the dubious distinction of being the first nation to see only a mushroom cloud where a city once stood.
Yet, here in Amerika, we allowed an elected leadership to turn America into something resembling the pre-Revolution colony of Royal subjects whose abuse in the name of the unjust regent was stirring the seeds of a glorious revolt.
We, the silent citizenry who are turning our backs on the Washington's, Jefferson's and Lincoln's had both an Authorization For Force and a Patriot Act passed near unanimously, turning America into war-mongering freedom hating land.
A further step back was the recent bill on Military Commissions that allows Bush to lock up Laura, if he likes, and she'd have absolutely no rights other than those King George would allow.
(Thanks for your courage in opposition, Russ Feingold. May my nightmare of Hillary using you as her running mate to deflect the criticism of her jingoistic cheerleading for the illegal Iraq occupation, be something that scares me alone, and is never visited on the rest of our nation.)
How then can we be told that any report that shows us exactly what we have become should be dismissed as "political?"
Just because inconvenient truths are popping up all over now does NOT mean those truths were rushed, nor that they were held, just to harm the Republicans or help Democrats. Hell, I'd argue that most Democrats should carry those deaths over their heads as well.
The harm those truths bring should have been front page news since prior to March of 2003, but should certainly be brought to light at whatever time the mainstream media finds itself with surplus testosterone . . . which, be it immediately prior to an election, may seem to be Divine justice for those who aided in the deaths so reported here.
Remember:
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
-- International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, 1946
Should a country not hold those who began an illegal war responsible for that action? Or is it deemed only a fair election if the electorate goes into the booth wholly ignorant of the abominations performed by their elected officials in their names?
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Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 - washingtonpost.com
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.
The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
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.
More Here
- - - SNIP
Today, tears would flow down the olive robe of the Statue of Liberty if she were human.
But she is just an inanimate symbol. We are the ones who have to cope with the pain of a democracy destroyed in a political play for power and permanent one-party rule, which is not a Constitutional form of government. That is called a dictatorship.
And the one thing in common with dictators through history, whether Communist or fascist, is their state-sanctioned ability to torture people at will.
Beyond the overwhelming facts this week that Bush has endangered the national security of the United States of America with his failed and costly fanatic ignorance, we are left with this sad fact.
With the law passed on September 28th by Congress, we have become the Republic of torture. We not only have lost our claim to be a civilizing force among nations and abandoned our Constitution, we have appeased the terrorists by doing so.
Because isn’t it Bush who keeps telling us that the "terrorists hate us for our freedoms"? So, to appease those same enemies of America, the White House and the Republicans have abandoned civilized standards of behavior and taken freedoms away.
We are only beginning to grieve for the great beacon of democracy and justice that we lost yesterday.
