Is the U.S. Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis?

This week and next the Senate is considering amendments to the FY 2008 authorization for the Pentagon, an authorization that includes more money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the proposed amendments would try to force the Bush Administration to end the Iraq war. A few more Senate Republicans have rhetorically broken ranks with the Administration, and the question of the hour is whether they will put their votes where their mouths are and vote for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops or other measures that would force the Administration to move towards ending the war.

This week, the Congressional Research Service put the financial cost of the war in Iraq at $10 billion a month. The New York Times editorialized that “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”

A key question is missing from this debate. How many Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion? The New York Times editorial is silent on this matter.

In a scientific study published last fall in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that 650,000 Iraqis had died because of our government’s invasion of their country. The survey that produced that estimate was completed in July, 2006. That was a year ago.

Unfortunately, despite the calls of the Lancet authors for other studies, there has been no systematic effort to update these results.

Just Foreign Policy has attempted to update the Lancet estimate in the best way we know. We have extrapolated from the Lancet estimate, using the trend provided by the tally of Iraqi deaths reported in Western media compiled by Iraq Body Count. Our current estimate is that 974,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. The web counter and fuller explanation are here.

The Iraqi death toll resulting from the U.S. invasion is a key fact. We cannot make intelligent and moral choices about U.S. foreign policy while ignoring such a key fact. It has implications for our choices in Iraq, for our choices in dealing with Iran, for our choices about the size of the U.S. military (for why do our leaders want to expand the U.S. military, except to have the capacity to invade other countries?)

The exact toll will never be known. But this is no reason not to attempt to know what the best estimate is. We also don’t know many other key facts with certainty. We don’t know how many people live in the U.S. The census department creates an estimate, and this estimate is the basis of policy.

The Johns Hopkins researchers used the methods accepted all over the world to estimate deaths in the wake of war and natural disasters. The United Nations, for example, uses them to plan famine relief. Even the Bush administration relies on them when it accuses Sudan of genocide in Darfur. At present, this represents the best information we have.

As Congress considers legislative efforts to end the war, best estimates of the Iraqi death toll must be part of the debate.

Robert Naiman is Senior Policy Analyst and National Coordinator at Just Foreign Policy.

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41 Comments so far

Jaded Prole July 11th, 2007 12:36 pm

Not only is the US guilty of a million of so deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, they must all be considered premeditated murder. Those who knowingly concieved and supported this premeditated mass murder under false pretenses and those who promoted the lies that led to it must be held accountable for a crime of historic proportions. The rest of us owe decades of reparations to the survivors. We also owe it to ourselves and the world to undergo a thorough self-examination and reconstruction of our own government and media to insure that this cannot happen again.

Amos July 11th, 2007 12:51 pm

If America were to pay reparations to all they have offended, for all they have kidnapped, murdered or enslaved we probably wouldn’t even have the three boats left to sail back to Europe… And the beat goes on…

safiyyah July 11th, 2007 12:53 pm

I’m always dismayed when Americans calculate the War Against Iraq from the invasion date. This is a war that was begun when Iraq moved into Kuwait and the US then attacked Iraq. It continued through 8 years of the Clinton Administration. The real question is?

Is the US responsible for the death of nearly 2 million Iraqis, not 1,000,000? The answer is… YES. Let’s not let 8 years of a Democratic Party Administration off the hook for their part in this genocide.

PJD July 11th, 2007 1:01 pm

aafiyyah,

Thanks for pointing this out. At this point in time, Clinton’s soul is probably still blackened with more Iraqi deaths than Bush’s - but Bush is getting close.

simonhhh July 11th, 2007 1:17 pm

This is worse than Pol Pot (circa 1975) frequently named among the baddest guys in history, along with Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler… He was also referred to by his followers as “Brother Number One”… the countryside of Cambodia was dubbed “the killing fields” because of the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

BushCo is amongst truly esteemed company….

Richard Mellor July 11th, 2007 1:20 pm

safiyyah is correct. remember when Clinton bombed that drug factory in Sudan? No apologies there. And what did the mass murderer Madeleine Allbright say when probed on US TV about the 500,000 or so a month that were dying in Iraq due to the sanctions, she responded that it was worth it.

Both Republican and Democrats are complicit in all of this, actually one party with two wings.

A completely independent working class movement and political alternative has to be a major step in turning back the present capitalist offensive

Nightwatch July 11th, 2007 1:20 pm

The Bush Gang of rightwing neo-cons are guilty of crimes so heinous that I can only think of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot as equals. Even monsters such as Charles Taylor, Papa Doc Duvalier, Velupillai Prabhakaran, Osama bin Laden, and Jacob Koni are in the shade. Adolf, Josef, and Mr. Pot would surely be tried by an international criminal court today and sentenced appropriately — would anyone have the cojones to catch Bush, Cheney, et al. and put them on trial? The American people, perhaps, whose system brought us these murderers twice? Interpol needs to list Dubya, Scattershot Dick, Powell, Blair, Hoon, Wolfowitz, Perle, Frum and other chickenhawks who are directly responsible for this genocide. Enough’s enough.

citizen a July 11th, 2007 1:21 pm

gotta love PRO-LIFE, COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES.

whatfools July 11th, 2007 1:38 pm

As I recall the UN was guessing that 50000 Iraqi kids died every year under the ’sanctions’ of daddy Bush and Slick. Those who were digging the graves for their children were saying a hundred thousand a year. Then there is Kuwait. As I understand it poor old Saddam was trying to pay off Iraq’s war debt by pumping oil. The Saudis were willing to forgive the debt and the Kuwatis were willing to reschedule until daddy Bush and his Secretary of War recalled our ambassadors for a little chit-chat. After that the Saudis and Kuwaitis wanted their loans repaid immediately. Not only was this more money than Iraq had but Kuwait started slant drilling and pumping so much Saudi oil that the price was being driven down so Saddam couldn’t pay. What was a dictator to do? Attack? As I remember…

Now as the civil was and mass slaughter unfolds I can look upon my red necked red state neighbors in their holier than thou big box churches as the real child killers.

Peace on Earth…

observer July 11th, 2007 1:39 pm

“…to catch Bush, Cheney, et al. and put them on trial?” Did they put on trial all those 2 million Iraqis? Did any American Government since 1945, or 1898 or… ever put on trial all those millions bombed, dissapeared, starved, stolen human dignity from, did these millions were put on trial.

Please stop this legalese nonsense! Let them live with memory of Charles I, Louis Capet, Nicolas Romanoff et cetera. Privileges afforded to Hermann Goering at al are too much for them.

whatever4 July 11th, 2007 1:55 pm

And the laughter I hear, when BushCo is compared to Hitler. They laugh. At us. As if we’re the bad guys for pointing out how bad our guys are. How many millions will be enough? Who knows. We poorly educated Americans, we aren’t very good with numbers. Or history or geography. Almost as if…they don’t want us to know how to read either, which sounds familiar too.

They want us to worry about terrorist acts in this nation, on our soil. As if Iraq stops THAT from happening. Rather than making it more likely. They want us to be afraid of other nations, after building the hatred of us, as if ANY nation could invade us, as if ANY nation has the might to confront so many armed civilians. Ha. Rural or inner-city, NO one out-guns us on our home turf. NO one is as large [b]and[/b] well-armed as we are, at home. How quickly we forgot what we are, after 911.

On my soil? I’m not afraid of that and never was. Such a false justification, full of holes and lies. It would have been more ethical to fight them here. If we weren’t a nation of cowards, we’d have realized that. Fight them here. Ah…yes. Fight them here. Yes, I would take that option. THAT would be a war. AND we could win.

No, I’m not worried about terorism, not worried about being attacked. More people get killed in hospitals every year, more women (and men) get raped every day in every city, small town and prison in this nation, more children suffer hunger and neglect, more old people fade away because no one cares, more horror appears on our tvs every day than anyone could EVER terrorize us with.

Fight them there instead of fighting them here? OH please. Bring it here. GIVE us someone to fight. Give me a damn enemy I can feel good about shooting. Give us a target that isn’t dead-center in our nation already killing us. Give us an enemy that isn’t us.

willo July 11th, 2007 1:58 pm

Well I’m glad to see such an article on commom dreams. Everyones always talking about our 3600 brave soldiers who died. [a number I think is bullshit]
Now add to the couple million, the millions more refugees, the destroyed infrastructure and the land permanently poisoned with depleted uranium.
And curiously some of the biggest supporters of this genocide seem to be religious people or church going people who claim to be religious.

Saila July 11th, 2007 2:02 pm

No, the U.S is not single-handedly responsible, and could not do it alone without accomplices such as UK and other distinguished members of the coalition of the killing. Fairness demands that almost half of the credit should be given to the most famous lapdog called Tony Bl-urred!

COMarc July 11th, 2007 2:05 pm

Well, most of what I was going to be said has already been said in the excellent comments above. So I’ll just add the obvious point that putting a Clinton back into office instead of Bush isn’t likely to do much good for the Iraqis. The only difference between a Clinton and a Bush is they use different tools for their mass murders. One used bombs and bullets, the other used starvation and the denying of medicine.

Remember, the 2 million or so dead and now the 4 million or so internal refugees is all happening in a country that had a population of about 20 million or so. We Americans all stressed how many of us had some connection to the 3000 who died on Sept 11th. Can you imagine how many Iraqis have connections to not only one but probably several deaths caused by the US in the last 15 to 20 years?

Auberon July 11th, 2007 2:11 pm

There’s PLENTY of blame to go around, from the creation of an artificial state by Churchill et al, up to now.

How ’bout we spend $10 billion a month to feed Third World countries?

ron murry July 11th, 2007 3:15 pm

How good is the U.S.A. government? Lets face it ,JESUS could not be elected president. SATAN could, that’s how good.

observer July 11th, 2007 3:26 pm

“Give us an enemy that isn’t us.” That is too much to ask. However, water, drop by drop, washes out the whole continents. Such a discussion like this one may help to dissolve, meme after another meme the great illusion of American Idea. An illusion that, however poorly embedded in American founding documents, the American Idea is alive and well; it is not. Its corruption started with the first Federalist Presidents, was suppressed for the time being during and after Civil War and now came back with flying colors. Representative Republic is still mere project, so far drown in the pile of gold; it became a parody of itself. It has ossified. Do we have hope? Yes, we do.

And as soon as it will dawn on substantial proportion of American citizens that they are hated not for what their government does in their name, but they are hated and despised for what they ARE, an arrogant, self-promoting, huckstering bunch possessed by consumerism, new generation will shrug what we deem solid as cloud of dust. We had that sort of experience in 60s, we will have it again. Just wait for the draft, which is unavoidable with the current crop of what is sold as national leaders.

citizen a July 11th, 2007 3:36 pm

i hear bush is readying his “veto pen”.

i say let him veto.
if he vetoes further funding because of the addition of a timetable for withdrawal, we will be left with no choice but to pull the troops out.
i know, i know. he acts as though if there is no funding, the troops will be left wandering the middle east helpless and hopeless.

but that again, is the failure of the bush administration… never focusing on facts.

citizen a July 11th, 2007 3:39 pm

and speaking of the draft…

i support the reinstatement of the draft.

it might make that last 20% of imbeciles stand up and refuse to further indulge this madman, his henchmen and their consistently failed policies.

jedediah zachariah jedediah springfield July 11th, 2007 5:09 pm

1991 and gulf war 1 is a good place to think about our 16 yr war on iraq, but we really should not forget the hundreds of thousands killed in the iran/iraq war in 80’s either, when we publicly (more or less) sided w/iraq, while iran-contra was going on under the table.

iraq has about 27 million people; since the 80’s, 3-4 million of them have been killed b/c of US policies; since 2003, 4 million are refugees, w/50,000 fleeing every month (half of these are children, btw). and yes, let’s not forget the DU all over the place, consigning jeebus only knows how many more to early death.

and let us also know forget we did the same shit in vietnam….

annabelle July 11th, 2007 5:51 pm

And, for those souls who have survived, their lives must be a livng hell, with very little potable water, poor sewage disposal, bits and pieces of electricity, with a trip to the market a nightmare, and that is just the survivors at home. The displaced survivors don’t even have a place to go home to, and they are in the millions. How in the world do we every make ‘right’ this deplorable excercise in ‘bringing democracy’ to a people who were far better off than they are now. I know that if some foreign country decided to build bases all around the Great Lakes to control the fresh water supply and then controlled the local governments and made them agree to let them take control, I, too, would be fighting in the streets.

lastdregs July 11th, 2007 6:34 pm

if this administration has learned anything, it realizes that a draft is a bad idea. it would force them to admit how bad things are going and that public opinion is moving anti-war (i mean anti-poorly managed war). brutal colonial wars are best fought with mercenary forces with little attachment to/involvement with civilian society. civilians generally don’t have the stomach for violating the human rights of and killing other innocent civilians. My feeling is that, as hard as it was for chimp to publicly say that more troops were going to be committed to the fiasco, he regarded it as more of a yuck fou to the newly elected dem. majority that he felt could be easily cowed regardless of their election by a public that voted in protest. the trickle down was that it should be apparent, if it wasn’t already, that chimp caares not a bit about public opinion and that the dems deserve contempt, if anything at all. As a side note, i think that the dems deserve nothing but contempt quite frequently also. in the end, amerikans have been sitting idly by while people in foreign lands have been killed by our military (even before we ran out of indians to kill here) for a long time. maybe we’ll leave, maybe we will stay because the lure of oil is so great. But, history tells us that colonial occupations usually don’t work and we will eventually try this again on some other “defenseless” country in the future.

shakker July 11th, 2007 7:54 pm

Yes, the U.S. is responsible. Ironically Bu$h the inferior having that asinine smirk and virtually no command of English has been a lucky break for the entire world.

Suppose that he had been articulate and charismatic. With the power and destructive capability allowed to be in the hands of Bu$h the inferior and Shotgun Dick by the Congress, Courts and the people he could have easily killed more than either Hitler or Stalin.

Sadly, Bu$h the inferior has not been stopped. It seems likely that Iran and several other potential targets are in the sights of this crazed, messianic, psychotic, addicted, maladjusted jerk and his supremely evil Dick behind the curtain.

Have a nice day!

ejmurphy414 July 11th, 2007 8:29 pm

Of course the US is responsible. The invasion of Iraq was a uniquely American initiative, led by a President and a compliant cabal willing to lie, falsify intelligence, and squelch all argument in order to invade. And that same cabal has kept American troops there, organized a puppet government, and denounced anyone who questioned their policy. They are doing it to this day, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the invasion was unwarranted and the occupation process lethal to Iraqi society. Bush and many score of his loyalists (including Congressional leaders) ought to be charged and tried in the International Criminal Court, but that won’t happen. This is the clearest case, in my 8 decades of life, of murderers being uuntouchable. It is sad, disgusting, monstrous. History will judge us harshly. American honor will never fully recover.

RJKT July 11th, 2007 11:23 pm

Saila: “the U.S is not single-handedly responsible, and could not do it alone without accomplices such as UK and other distinguished members of the coalition of the killing.”

I couldn’t agree more with all that has been said . Saila’s ‘coalition of the killing’ sums it up perfectly .

Despite an oft-voiced fervent wish that they not happen ever again , such state sponsored atrocities and mass murders will keep recurring -for as long as power, unparalleled , remains concentrated in the hands of crazed, power-drunk Dr. Strangeloves . (Who, with the fiendish cunning of the truly insane ,aver they are just doing the will of ‘their people”.)

The only way it might never again happen is if ‘their people’ , thoroughly repulsed by all that has been perpetrated in their name -rise as one and put paid , once and for all, to such obscenities and outrages.Hauling the perpetrators before another Nuremberg style court .And then meting out a richly deserved retribution.

A spine-chilling thought: would it take another World War and yet another Holocaust (unleashed on a different set of victims this time) to trigger such an avalanche of mass revulsion.

History has bequeathed us a ghoulish precedent :Nazi Germany. And the parallels between the two ( the Germany of that time and the West of today )-in far more ways than one - are enough to make the blood run cold.

friend July 12th, 2007 1:21 am

Actually, the total of Iraqis killed by Washington is already OVER one million. This is because there were at least 500,000 to 1,500,000 Iraqis (mostly children) killed by the US blockade (”sanctions”) that lasted until the 2003 criminal invasion. There were also around 100,000 Iraqis killed during the first Gulf War.

Beowulf July 12th, 2007 2:18 am

I appreciate the correct assessments of the extent of the crimes being committed as we speak, but I have to add one point that many, many of you seem to be missing or avoiding…

There is no Dept. of Justice extant in the USA today upholding the precept that all are equal under impartial law.

The UN as it is constituted today is nothing more than a stage show for the ignorant or deluded.

The Haag, were it a legitimate, effective body, would have long since condemned and tried in absentio the known mass murderers among us…the terrorists, if you will.

WHY do you suppose that there is no “official” demand that US as well as UN statutes be upheld, or that the known criminals among us, including the current cabal posing as a government, be apprehended, incarcerated, and brought to experience the full measure of law for the actions of their Hitlerite regime?

As informed Americans, my fellows, you should all be the absolute best at recognizing the difference between sales hype (outright lies) and reality…

The so called Dept. of Justice of the US has been allowed to become nothing more than yet another pack of lying, criminal accomplices to the ongoing crimes against humanity, the precepts, the American peoples, that are being perpetrated in the interests of the criminal corporate regime.

Failure to act against known felons when the knowledge of their ongoing crimes as well as the means to halt such are at hand, will most assuredly result in convictions and rightfully earned terminal personal consequences for the criminals pretending to be “judges”.

You will all by now surely be aware that the Second American Revolution is at hand.

However the salient difference from the first effort is this:

As this local revolution against open tyranny develops, it will, due to the nature of the American experiment and it´s impact on all the world´s peoples, expand rapidly across the planet.

The revolution of Earth if you will, and the walls WILL come tumbling down.

Three Cheers for the Republic of Earth!

W.hole E.arth E.quality P.arty… coming sooner than you think.

FrenchMan July 12th, 2007 4:07 am

“In a scientific study published last fall in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that 650,000 Iraqis had died because of our government’s invasion of their country”

This number (650,000) was an estimate of the OVERKILL brought by the invasion. It’s 650,000 death more than what would have been the death number under Saddam Hussein!

Saddam Hussein was bad! how then to consider this war?

rvwainscott July 12th, 2007 5:23 am

This war will not end until it begins to cause pain and suffering at home. Bush, in this regard, reminds me of Hitler. He, too, did not want the Germans to stop shopping. As a matter of fact, production of consumer goods only fell by about 3% during the war - even with German industry being carpet bombed almost daily. Bush, like Hitler doesn’t want the consumer to feel like there are any wartime shortages - best to keep the people happy.

Hitler never mobilized the female population for military or factory work. The Russians were using women as soldiers and the Americans had women making tanks, aircraft and munitions but Hitler did not want to upset his population of consumers. Note: German munitions productions during WWII never approached the level of production they had during WWI.

Bush has not mobilized this population to action. As a matter of fact, he told us to take vacations and go shopping. Bread and Circus.

Bush hides the cost of the war by borrowing the money to pay for it. In wars past, Americans had to buy bonds and pay for the war out of their pockets. Consequently, the government was obligated to justify their actions to the American people and if they failed to motivate the population then war funding would halt. The Germans had an incredible war machine but very little of it was supported through direct taxes - Hitler wanted it to be as painless as possible.

Bush will continue to enlist criminals, illegal aliens, the elderly (you can enlist up to the age of 42!!!), the mentally challenged, high school dropouts, the poor, etc in order to avoid using the draft. I do not know how much longer he can do this given that we no longer have even a single combat division in reserve. Hitler did not have this luxury given the 350 or so angry Russian Army divisions working their way towards the fatherland.

Fascism, be definition, is the Corporate State and the Corporate State wants happy little shoppers that are too preoccupied to pay too much attention to what is actually happening. These war criminals need to be brought to justice but nothing happened after Vietnam (4 million dead, Agent Orange, Operation Phoenix, etc)and I guess nothing will happen when this is finished. God help us.

Beowulf July 12th, 2007 5:48 am

“God”, as you put it, is most certainly
helping us.

You, as well as I, are being forced to face the known facts of our putrified existences which are caused as we all well know by the deliberate and preplanned actions of the criminal cabal.

On a global stage.

You, as well as I, are being forced by personal experience to come to know the issues at hand in order that you, as well as I, will do all in our power to:

1. Distance ourselves from the hairless apes that yet remain among us.

2. Take decisive steps as global citizens to regain the initiative and take the battle directly to the known enemies among us.

On a global stage.

I ask you again, my fellow Americans and citizens of the planet, WHY, specifically, is this knowledge being brought to bear upon your personal, subjective, conscious as well as conscience?

My friends, rest assured that “God” as well as/or the natural course of events, is assuredly,…. on the side of the righteous, those who, throughout our global history all across this magnificent small planet have risen to the occasion, even to the extent of providing the full measure of self-sacrifice as needs be, in order that humanity may continue to move forward.

As for the previous campaigns of genocidal malice towards all, it is certainly never too late to right wrongs, never too late to establish justice, never too late to deliver the natural consequences of their actions upon the socio-pathologically demented, never too late to embrace our global brothers/sisters as one.

Stay well, and for the moment, use every means at your disposal to cooperate locally, to support one another locally in order that we gain strength both spiritually and physically as we develop the global campaign that will eliminate/suppress the known enemy among us.

W.hole E.arth E.quality P.arty… coming sooner than you think.

peacemaker July 12th, 2007 10:35 am

Safiypah your logic defies any large amount of reason! I’ll bet you had to work hard to get Clinton into the mix! You tend to forget that Iraq invaded Kawait! They are the ones who started that war not us! Which is why that war took place. We left the country at the end of the war because George Sr was smart enough not to try and take Saddam out! Other than enforcing a ‘no fly’ zone over the country that war ended successfully. That was the biggest reasons a lot of us were against George Jr going in there. It seemed like he was trying to continue a war that had come to a successful end again! It was way to late to do anything at that late date. Which didn’t begin to count all of his lies to get it started. So how can you even imagine that Clinton was responsible for another million deaths when he was only carrying out Bush Sr’s committments????? That almost boggles the mind. It sounds to me like you are trying to shift all of the blame for 1 million deaths off George W Bush and put some of it on Clinton! Which is the most absurd notion I have ever heard of! What are you a closet Bushie??????

MaxheMust July 12th, 2007 11:17 am

Why stop with the genocide in Iraq? We should include the millionS killed in Vietnam, along with all those in Latin America.

The extremely greedy captalists who control the top US politicians & our military have made it the world’s biggest bully & the primary obstacle to world peace.

michael.098762001 July 12th, 2007 11:33 am

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28346.html
The Politics of Dead Children
Have sanctions against Iraq murdered millions?

michael.098762001 July 12th, 2007 11:34 am

On Voices in the Wilderness,
http://www.meforum.org/article/548
Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist
>…My Break and Aftermath

I can remember the exact instant when I decided to leave the utopian
fantasy world of Voices. I was on a train from Bellingham, Washington,
where I lived at the time, to Portland, Oregon, to visit a friend. It
was the spring of 2000, and I was reading a new article on sanctions
by Amatzia Baram. Baram proceeded to shatter the myth that 1.5 million
Iraqis had died of sanctions-related disease. He did it by checking
Iraqi claims against recent Iraqi census data. Since 1991, Iraq’s
population, even by Iraqi figures, had grown way too fast for there to
be anything near the number of sanctions-related deaths claimed by
Iraq. Baram’s conclusions contradicted everything I had heard in Iraq
and from Voices:

The [mortality] statistics provided by the government of Iraq
(GOI) are false in some cases and misleading in others. In the first
place the regime is providing inflated figures of mortality as a
result of the embargo. This affects the credibility of all the
information provided by Baghdad and greatly complicates its
cooperation with international humanitarian organizations.[19]

If this were true—that the Iraqi regime was obfuscating as much on
sanctions as it did on weapons—then my trip to Iraq and all the
subsequent work I had poured into anti-sanctions activism had been in
vain. I desperately searched for anything that could support Voices’
take on the sanctions and disprove Baram. But I found nothing, and I
began to seriously rethink my role in the group, as well as some of my
most basic political assumptions.

But my split with Voices was not simply the outcome of reading Baram’s
article. From the outset, I had expected that Voices would cultivate
knowledge on all things Iraqi as we set about our task of ending
sanctions. I expected the better academic works on Iraq—the landmark
studies by Baram, Batatu, and Marion and Peter Sluglett—to be on the
office bookshelf. Instead all I found were uninformed tracts by Noam
Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Edward Said.

canardtahiti July 12th, 2007 11:51 am

Whatever4:

Remember SENATOR DURBIN, who had the IMMENSE COURAGE to call Abu Graib and Guantanamo torture methods NAZI HORRORS? And remember how he was forced to take it back, tearfully, on the Senate floor — the very NEXT DAY??

Remember how Obama and Clinton and so many other “patriots” dis-avowed Durbin’s speech and obliged him to recant?? Sounded like Stalinist intimidation to me. Recantations and self-flagellation for one’s “crimes” against cheneybushsluts.

But had he not “regretted” this comparison to Nazi Germany, Durbin would have ended up like Senator Wellstone. Dead. Look what it has all come to, years later.

loachduke July 12th, 2007 12:02 pm

Whats a million lives in Iraq?

Arabs are without souls in the eyes of a Christian Fundamentalist.

Cheap plastic crap, endless porn, SUV’s, and hamburgers are far more important than Mosques with bullet holes and collapses roofs, right?

‘Give me American Gladiators with real chainsaws’…Bill Hicks

So what about a million lives? The real crime will be billions who die from illness caused by exposure to depleted uranium for the next 500k years in the middle east.

You yanks have yourselves to thank for this mess. If you really didn’t want to kill all these people in the middle east you would have been out in force for your last election and voted to send Dubya back to his daddy.

They should make the average Yank family -Joe Lunchbox, Sally Housecoat and fat kids, spend a day cleaning up the shredded children and families in Iraq.

Not in my back yard… or whatever. Ignorance is bliss.

javanji July 12th, 2007 6:15 pm

United Stats of America and its war crimes, its human abuses are so many and for such long time that USA is in need of a social economic and political renovations by the American people. In the other hand it seams that no one is able to connect with the senators or the government to out line a policy where the domestic social and international matters are discussed and where a clear path would be the result of that discussions, that perhaps would resolve wars attitude of the USA. Here, the most important is the US economical system (capitalism) which is the breathing ground for US war crimes and thereby the US militarism regime and its conducts, off course capitalism is not going to participate for solving the US militarism regime and its interests, the US government (Federal and some states) “interests” is totally dependent on a capitalism regime. Capitalism and its economical system is the main element for and to start such conflicts around the world, it is in their interests to start wars where the war mechanism works, Lockheed Martin, GM, Ford, Mc Donald Douglas, GE and above all the Oil companies are the one behind the atrocities that has become the main job of the Federal Government to implement, after all “what is good in having such a might army if we cannot use it”, these are the words of Madeline Albright the secretary of Stat during Bill Clinton and before Yugoslavia war. Yet if the American social economic and political to be changed it is absolutely necessary to prosecute those that are and have conducted war crimes, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright and many others need to be present on that court, otherwise, the USA is about to change to a dictatorial civilian regime with fascist agendas around the world.

javanji July 12th, 2007 6:38 pm

Yes absolutely, during the Saddam Regime there wasn’t any atrocity committed in such magnitude that is done by the US, before war there were no Iraqi refugee, now there are over 4 million of them, before war there were no sectarian killings, before the invasion and war people of Iraq were complaining but not about the regime but rather about the United Nation and the embargo imposed on them.

Now the people of Iraq (80%) of them looking at the matter with opened eyes, they se the occupation forces as there enemies and the same amount of people saying that: “things were better before and during Saddam Regime”, yet in America, only 29% think that George W. Bush is doing a good job while 72% think his not. Question is:
The base of a democracy is the people and if 70% of the American people wants US militarism to leave Iraq and 80% of the Iraqis why George W. Bush don’t want to listen to the people…??? This kind of softer way in murdering people in Iraq is the path in what is called Neo-Conservatism or if you will Neo-Fascism on the Verizon. Answer to your question, US is more in depth then just 1 million people in Iraq, Viet Nam, Congo, Central America, Asia and middle east combined with its cop de Etta’s is more then a million people that US alone have killed, Congo and its war with US involvement killed more then 5 million and in Iraq, is counting.

Evelyn Smith July 12th, 2007 8:24 pm

It looks like no one gets it. We’ve killed every single person in Iraq. All of them, and all of our ground troops and anyone who has visited there as well. The radiation readings in Baghdad alone are almost 2,000 times normal background readings. Inhaling a few microscopic specks of Depleted Uranium #238, will insure that person will die of radiation posioning. Iraq is blanketed with DU dust and it is not possible to clean it up. The people will not fall over dead, they will die a long and slow and very painful death. Many already have and many are just begining to show the symptoms of radiation posioning. That is not an opinion, it is just so. They are all dead, most just haven’t fallen over yet.

Beowulf July 13th, 2007 1:26 am

…and the concensus is therefore….?

Perhaps… a globally networked citizens movement to regain our social sanity, which will NOT be achieved merely by voicing the truths that were already self-evident to and entirely ignored by sociopath criminals when they…

Or by demonstrating in our millions across the world in front of those who will not listen or adhere to the laws and will of the people…

A different, inclusive, direct political foundation is required. One that is based on the obvious correctness of public policy founded on the self-evident needs of humanity and the planet itself. Instead of being founded on the material and social greed of the few at the expense of the many.

Thanks to the “information age” communications technological revolution, it is not only possible, it is imperative that those tools be utilized to establish global direct democracy.

However, I digress.

That all comes later, once the known criminals and their actions are first suppressed, and thereafter rendered impotent, to our continued development.

toddboyle August 7th, 2007 1:49 pm

Javanji- Kudos for drilling into the causes of war in US political economy. I would recommend you find more accurate descriptor than the word “capitalism” since what we have is a state apparatus thoroughly interconnected with business. Of course, it encompasses ‘capitalism’, ‘property ownership’, the capture of every chokehold for advantage such as controlling land, building, and production equipment. But it encompasses so much more. It is the totalitarian control of corporate employees, for example, and the wielding of an immense police/prison industrial complex and military complex.. etc. etc. No, I don’t call it capitalism, its gone too far towards a state, command economy, a producer sovereignty and for benefit of a classic plutocracy or aristocracy. How different is this from the Soviets?

Jaded Prole July 11th, 2007 12:36 pm

Not only is the US guilty of a million of so deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, they must all be considered premeditated murder. Those who knowingly concieved and supported this premeditated mass murder under false pretenses and those who promoted the lies that led to it must be held accountable for a crime of historic proportions. The rest of us owe decades of reparations to the survivors. We also owe it to ourselves and the world to undergo a thorough self-examination and reconstruction of our own government and media to insure that this cannot happen again.
Amos July 11th, 2007 12:51 pm

If America were to pay reparations to all they have offended, for all they have kidnapped, murdered or enslaved we probably wouldn’t even have the three boats left to sail back to Europe… And the beat goes on…
safiyyah July 11th, 2007 12:53 pm

I’m always dismayed when Americans calculate the War Against Iraq from the invasion date. This is a war that was begun when Iraq moved into Kuwait and the US then attacked Iraq. It continued through 8 years of the Clinton Administration. The real question is?

Is the US responsible for the death of nearly 2 million Iraqis, not 1,000,000? The answer is… YES. Let’s not let 8 years of a Democratic Party Administration off the hook for their part in this genocide.
PJD July 11th, 2007 1:01 pm

aafiyyah,

Thanks for pointing this out. At this point in time, Clinton’s soul is probably still blackened with more Iraqi deaths than Bush’s - but Bush is getting close.
simonhhh July 11th, 2007 1:17 pm

This is worse than Pol Pot (circa 1975) frequently named among the baddest guys in history, along with Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler… He was also referred to by his followers as “Brother Number One”… the countryside of Cambodia was dubbed “the killing fields” because of the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

BushCo is amongst truly esteemed company….
Richard Mellor July 11th, 2007 1:20 pm

safiyyah is correct. remember when Clinton bombed that drug factory in Sudan? No apologies there. And what did the mass murderer Madeleine Allbright say when probed on US TV about the 500,000 or so a month that were dying in Iraq due to the sanctions, she responded that it was worth it.

Both Republican and Democrats are complicit in all of this, actually one party with two wings.

A completely independent working class movement and political alternative has to be a major step in turning back the present capitalist offensive
Nightwatch July 11th, 2007 1:20 pm

The Bush Gang of rightwing neo-cons are guilty of crimes so heinous that I can only think of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot as equals. Even monsters such as Charles Taylor, Papa Doc Duvalier, Velupillai Prabhakaran, Osama bin Laden, and Jacob Koni are in the shade. Adolf, Josef, and Mr. Pot would surely be tried by an international criminal court today and sentenced appropriately — would anyone have the cojones to catch Bush, Cheney, et al. and put them on trial? The American people, perhaps, whose system brought us these murderers twice? Interpol needs to list Dubya, Scattershot Dick, Powell, Blair, Hoon, Wolfowitz, Perle, Frum and other chickenhawks who are directly responsible for this genocide. Enough’s enough.
citizen a July 11th, 2007 1:21 pm

gotta love PRO-LIFE, COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES.
whatfools July 11th, 2007 1:38 pm

As I recall the UN was guessing that 50000 Iraqi kids died every year under the ’sanctions’ of daddy Bush and Slick. Those who were digging the graves for their children were saying a hundred thousand a year. Then there is Kuwait. As I understand it poor old Saddam was trying to pay off Iraq’s war debt by pumping oil. The Saudis were willing to forgive the debt and the Kuwatis were willing to reschedule until daddy Bush and his Secretary of War recalled our ambassadors for a little chit-chat. After that the Saudis and Kuwaitis wanted their loans repaid immediately. Not only was this more money than Iraq had but Kuwait started slant drilling and pumping so much Saudi oil that the price was being driven down so Saddam couldn’t pay. What was a dictator to do? Attack? As I remember…

Now as the civil was and mass slaughter unfolds I can look upon my red necked red state neighbors in their holier than thou big box churches as the real child killers.

Peace on Earth…
observer July 11th, 2007 1:39 pm

“…to catch Bush, Cheney, et al. and put them on trial?” Did they put on trial all those 2 million Iraqis? Did any American Government since 1945, or 1898 or… ever put on trial all those millions bombed, dissapeared, starved, stolen human dignity from, did these millions were put on trial.

Please stop this legalese nonsense! Let them live with memory of Charles I, Louis Capet, Nicolas Romanoff et cetera. Privileges afforded to Hermann Goering at al are too much for them.
whatever4 July 11th, 2007 1:55 pm

And the laughter I hear, when BushCo is compared to Hitler. They laugh. At us. As if we’re the bad guys for pointing out how bad our guys are. How many millions will be enough? Who knows. We poorly educated Americans, we aren’t very good with numbers. Or history or geography. Almost as if…they don’t want us to know how to read either, which sounds familiar too.

They want us to worry about terrorist acts in this nation, on our soil. As if Iraq stops THAT from happening. Rather than making it more likely. They want us to be afraid of other nations, after building the hatred of us, as if ANY nation could invade us, as if ANY nation has the might to confront so many armed civilians. Ha. Rural or inner-city, NO one out-guns us on our home turf. NO one is as large [b]and[/b] well-armed as we are, at home. How quickly we forgot what we are, after 911.

On my soil? I’m not afraid of that and never was. Such a false justification, full of holes and lies. It would have been more ethical to fight them here. If we weren’t a nation of cowards, we’d have realized that. Fight them here. Ah…yes. Fight them here. Yes, I would take that option. THAT would be a war. AND we could win.

No, I’m not worried about terorism, not worried about being attacked. More people get killed in hospitals every year, more women (and men) get raped every day in every city, small town and prison in this nation, more children suffer hunger and neglect, more old people fade away because no one cares, more horror appears on our tvs every day than anyone could EVER terrorize us with.

Fight them there instead of fighting them here? OH please. Bring it here. GIVE us someone to fight. Give me a damn enemy I can feel good about shooting. Give us a target that isn’t dead-center in our nation already killing us. Give us an enemy that isn’t us.
willo July 11th, 2007 1:58 pm

Well I’m glad to see such an article on commom dreams. Everyones always talking about our 3600 brave soldiers who died. [a number I think is bullshit]
Now add to the couple million, the millions more refugees, the destroyed infrastructure and the land permanently poisoned with depleted uranium.
And curiously some of the biggest supporters of this genocide seem to be religious people or church going people who claim to be religious.
Saila July 11th, 2007 2:02 pm

No, the U.S is not single-handedly responsible, and could not do it alone without accomplices such as UK and other distinguished members of the coalition of the killing. Fairness demands that almost half of the credit should be given to the most famous lapdog called Tony Bl-urred!
COMarc July 11th, 2007 2:05 pm

Well, most of what I was going to be said has already been said in the excellent comments above. So I’ll just add the obvious point that putting a Clinton back into office instead of Bush isn’t likely to do much good for the Iraqis. The only difference between a Clinton and a Bush is they use different tools for their mass murders. One used bombs and bullets, the other used starvation and the denying of medicine.

Remember, the 2 million or so dead and now the 4 million or so internal refugees is all happening in a country that had a population of about 20 million or so. We Americans all stressed how many of us had some connection to the 3000 who died on Sept 11th. Can you imagine how many Iraqis have connections to not only one but probably several deaths caused by the US in the last 15 to 20 years?
Auberon July 11th, 2007 2:11 pm

There’s PLENTY of blame to go around, from the creation of an artificial state by Churchill et al, up to now.

How ’bout we spend $10 billion a month to feed Third World countries?
ron murry July 11th, 2007 3:15 pm

How good is the U.S.A. government? Lets face it ,JESUS could not be elected president. SATAN could, that’s how good.
observer July 11th, 2007 3:26 pm

“Give us an enemy that isn’t us.” That is too much to ask. However, water, drop by drop, washes out the whole continents. Such a discussion like this one may help to dissolve, meme after another meme the great illusion of American Idea. An illusion that, however poorly embedded in American founding documents, the American Idea is alive and well; it is not. Its corruption started with the first Federalist Presidents, was suppressed for the time being during and after Civil War and now came back with flying colors. Representative Republic is still mere project, so far drown in the pile of gold; it became a parody of itself. It has ossified. Do we have hope? Yes, we do.

And as soon as it will dawn on substantial proportion of American citizens that they are hated not for what their government does in their name, but they are hated and despised for what they ARE, an arrogant, self-promoting, huckstering bunch possessed by consumerism, new generation will shrug what we deem solid as cloud of dust. We had that sort of experience in 60s, we will have it again. Just wait for the draft, which is unavoidable with the current crop of what is sold as national leaders.
citizen a July 11th, 2007 3:36 pm

i hear bush is readying his “veto pen”.

i say let him veto.
if he vetoes further funding because of the addition of a timetable for withdrawal, we will be left with no choice but to pull the troops out.
i know, i know. he acts as though if there is no funding, the troops will be left wandering the middle east helpless and hopeless.

but that again, is the failure of the bush administration… never focusing on facts.
citizen a July 11th, 2007 3:39 pm

and speaking of the draft…

i support the reinstatement of the draft.

it might make that last 20% of imbeciles stand up and refuse to further indulge this madman, his henchmen and their consistently failed policies.
jedediah zachariah jedediah springfield July 11th, 2007 5:09 pm

1991 and gulf war 1 is a good place to think about our 16 yr war on iraq, but we really should not forget the hundreds of thousands killed in the iran/iraq war in 80’s either, when we publicly (more or less) sided w/iraq, while iran-contra was going on under the table.

iraq has about 27 million people; since the 80’s, 3-4 million of them have been killed b/c of US policies; since 2003, 4 million are refugees, w/50,000 fleeing every month (half of these are children, btw). and yes, let’s not forget the DU all over the place, consigning jeebus only knows how many more to early death.

and let us also know forget we did the same shit in vietnam….
annabelle July 11th, 2007 5:51 pm

And, for those souls who have survived, their lives must be a livng hell, with very little potable water, poor sewage disposal, bits and pieces of electricity, with a trip to the market a nightmare, and that is just the survivors at home. The displaced survivors don’t even have a place to go home to, and they are in the millions. How in the world do we every make ‘right’ this deplorable excercise in ‘bringing democracy’ to a people who were far better off than they are now. I know that if some foreign country decided to build bases all around the Great Lakes to control the fresh water supply and then controlled the local governments and made them agree to let them take control, I, too, would be fighting in the streets.
lastdregs July 11th, 2007 6:34 pm

if this administration has learned anything, it realizes that a draft is a bad idea. it would force them to admit how bad things are going and that public opinion is moving anti-war (i mean anti-poorly managed war). brutal colonial wars are best fought with mercenary forces with little attachment to/involvement with civilian society. civilians generally don’t have the stomach for violating the human rights of and killing other innocent civilians. My feeling is that, as hard as it was for chimp to publicly say that more troops were going to be committed to the fiasco, he regarded it as more of a yuck fou to the newly elected dem. majority that he felt could be easily cowed regardless of their election by a public that voted in protest. the trickle down was that it should be apparent, if it wasn’t already, that chimp caares not a bit about public opinion and that the dems deserve contempt, if anything at all. As a side note, i think that the dems deserve nothing but contempt quite frequently also. in the end, amerikans have been sitting idly by while people in foreign lands have been killed by our military (even before we ran out of indians to kill here) for a long time. maybe we’ll leave, maybe we will stay because the lure of oil is so great. But, history tells us that colonial occupations usually don’t work and we will eventually try this again on some other “defenseless” country in the future.
shakker July 11th, 2007 7:54 pm

Yes, the U.S. is responsible. Ironically Bu$h the inferior having that asinine smirk and virtually no command of English has been a lucky break for the entire world.

Suppose that he had been articulate and charismatic. With the power and destructive capability allowed to be in the hands of Bu$h the inferior and Shotgun Dick by the Congress, Courts and the people he could have easily killed more than either Hitler or Stalin.

Sadly, Bu$h the inferior has not been stopped. It seems likely that Iran and several other potential targets are in the sights of this crazed, messianic, psychotic, addicted, maladjusted jerk and his supremely evil Dick behind the curtain.

Have a nice day!
ejmurphy414 July 11th, 2007 8:29 pm

Of course the US is responsible. The invasion of Iraq was a uniquely American initiative, led by a President and a compliant cabal willing to lie, falsify intelligence, and squelch all argument in order to invade. And that same cabal has kept American troops there, organized a puppet government, and denounced anyone who questioned their policy. They are doing it to this day, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the invasion was unwarranted and the occupation process lethal to Iraqi society. Bush and many score of his loyalists (including Congressional leaders) ought to be charged and tried in the International Criminal Court, but that won’t happen. This is the clearest case, in my 8 decades of life, of murderers being uuntouchable. It is sad, disgusting, monstrous. History will judge us harshly. American honor will never fully recover.
RJKT July 11th, 2007 11:23 pm

Saila: “the U.S is not single-handedly responsible, and could not do it alone without accomplices such as UK and other distinguished members of the coalition of the killing.”

I couldn’t agree more with all that has been said . Saila’s ‘coalition of the killing’ sums it up perfectly .

Despite an oft-voiced fervent wish that they not happen ever again , such state sponsored atrocities and mass murders will keep recurring -for as long as power, unparalleled , remains concentrated in the hands of crazed, power-drunk Dr. Strangeloves . (Who, with the fiendish cunning of the truly insane ,aver they are just doing the will of ‘their people”.)

The only way it might never again happen is if ‘their people’ , thoroughly repulsed by all that has been perpetrated in their name -rise as one and put paid , once and for all, to such obscenities and outrages.Hauling the perpetrators before another Nuremberg style court .And then meting out a richly deserved retribution.

A spine-chilling thought: would it take another World War and yet another Holocaust (unleashed on a different set of victims this time) to trigger such an avalanche of mass revulsion.

History has bequeathed us a ghoulish precedent :Nazi Germany. And the parallels between the two ( the Germany of that time and the West of today )-in far more ways than one - are enough to make the blood run cold.
friend July 12th, 2007 1:21 am

Actually, the total of Iraqis killed by Washington is already OVER one million. This is because there were at least 500,000 to 1,500,000 Iraqis (mostly children) killed by the US blockade (”sanctions”) that lasted until the 2003 criminal invasion. There were also around 100,000 Iraqis killed during the first Gulf War.
Beowulf July 12th, 2007 2:18 am

I appreciate the correct assessments of the extent of the crimes being committed as we speak, but I have to add one point that many, many of you seem to be missing or avoiding…

There is no Dept. of Justice extant in the USA today upholding the precept that all are equal under impartial law.

The UN as it is constituted today is nothing more than a stage show for the ignorant or deluded.

The Haag, were it a legitimate, effective body, would have long since condemned and tried in absentio the known mass murderers among us…the terrorists, if you will.

WHY do you suppose that there is no “official” demand that US as well as UN statutes be upheld, or that the known criminals among us, including the current cabal posing as a government, be apprehended, incarcerated, and brought to experience the full measure of law for the actions of their Hitlerite regime?

As informed Americans, my fellows, you should all be the absolute best at recognizing the difference between sales hype (outright lies) and reality…

The so called Dept. of Justice of the US has been allowed to become nothing more than yet another pack of lying, criminal accomplices to the ongoing crimes against humanity, the precepts, the American peoples, that are being perpetrated in the interests of the criminal corporate regime.

Failure to act against known felons when the knowledge of their ongoing crimes as well as the means to halt such are at hand, will most assuredly result in convictions and rightfully earned terminal personal consequences for the criminals pretending to be “judges”.

You will all by now surely be aware that the Second American Revolution is at hand.

However the salient difference from the first effort is this:

As this local revolution against open tyranny develops, it will, due to the nature of the American experiment and it´s impact on all the world´s peoples, expand rapidly across the planet.

The revolution of Earth if you will, and the walls WILL come tumbling down.

Three Cheers for the Republic of Earth!

W.hole E.arth E.quality P.arty… coming sooner than you think.
FrenchMan July 12th, 2007 4:07 am

“In a scientific study published last fall in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that 650,000 Iraqis had died because of our government’s invasion of their country”

This number (650,000) was an estimate of the OVERKILL brought by the invasion. It’s 650,000 death more than what would have been the death number under Saddam Hussein!

Saddam Hussein was bad! how then to consider this war?
rvwainscott July 12th, 2007 5:23 am

This war will not end until it begins to cause pain and suffering at home. Bush, in this regard, reminds me of Hitler. He, too, did not want the Germans to stop shopping. As a matter of fact, production of consumer goods only fell by about 3% during the war - even with German industry being carpet bombed almost daily. Bush, like Hitler doesn’t want the consumer to feel like there are any wartime shortages - best to keep the people happy.

Hitler never mobilized the female population for military or factory work. The Russians were using women as soldiers and the Americans had women making tanks, aircraft and munitions but Hitler did not want to upset his population of consumers. Note: German munitions productions during WWII never approached the level of production they had during WWI.

Bush has not mobilized this population to action. As a matter of fact, he told us to take vacations and go shopping. Bread and Circus.

Bush hides the cost of the war by borrowing the money to pay for it. In wars past, Americans had to buy bonds and pay for the war out of their pockets. Consequently, the government was obligated to justify their actions to the American people and if they failed to motivate the population then war funding would halt. The Germans had an incredible war machine but very little of it was supported through direct taxes - Hitler wanted it to be as painless as possible.

Bush will continue to enlist criminals, illegal aliens, the elderly (you can enlist up to the age of 42!!!), the mentally challenged, high school dropouts, the poor, etc in order to avoid using the draft. I do not know how much longer he can do this given that we no longer have even a single combat division in reserve. Hitler did not have this luxury given the 350 or so angry Russian Army divisions working their way towards the fatherland.

Fascism, be definition, is the Corporate State and the Corporate State wants happy little shoppers that are too preoccupied to pay too much attention to what is actually happening. These war criminals need to be brought to justice but nothing happened after Vietnam (4 million dead, Agent Orange, Operation Phoenix, etc)and I guess nothing will happen when this is finished. God help us.
Beowulf July 12th, 2007 5:48 am

“God”, as you put it, is most certainly
helping us.

You, as well as I, are being forced to face the known facts of our putrified existences which are caused as we all well know by the deliberate and preplanned actions of the criminal cabal.

On a global stage.

You, as well as I, are being forced by personal experience to come to know the issues at hand in order that you, as well as I, will do all in our power to:

1. Distance ourselves from the hairless apes that yet remain among us.

2. Take decisive steps as global citizens to regain the initiative and take the battle directly to the known enemies among us.

On a global stage.

I ask you again, my fellow Americans and citizens of the planet, WHY, specifically, is this knowledge being brought to bear upon your personal, subjective, conscious as well as conscience?

My friends, rest assured that “God” as well as/or the natural course of events, is assuredly,…. on the side of the righteous, those who, throughout our global history all across this magnificent small planet have risen to the occasion, even to the extent of providing the full measure of self-sacrifice as needs be, in order that humanity may continue to move forward.

As for the previous campaigns of genocidal malice towards all, it is certainly never too late to right wrongs, never too late to establish justice, never too late to deliver the natural consequences of their actions upon the socio-pathologically demented, never too late to embrace our global brothers/sisters as one.

Stay well, and for the moment, use every means at your disposal to cooperate locally, to support one another locally in order that we gain strength both spiritually and physically as we develop the global campaign that will eliminate/suppress the known enemy among us.

W.hole E.arth E.quality P.arty… coming sooner than you think.
peacemaker July 12th, 2007 10:35 am

Safiypah your logic defies any large amount of reason! I’ll bet you had to work hard to get Clinton into the mix! You tend to forget that Iraq invaded Kawait! They are the ones who started that war not us! Which is why that war took place. We left the country at the end of the war because George Sr was smart enough not to try and take Saddam out! Other than enforcing a ‘no fly’ zone over the country that war ended successfully. That was the biggest reasons a lot of us were against George Jr going in there. It seemed like he was trying to continue a war that had come to a successful end again! It was way to late to do anything at that late date. Which didn’t begin to count all of his lies to get it started. So how can you even imagine that Clinton was responsible for another million deaths when he was only carrying out Bush Sr’s committments????? That almost boggles the mind. It sounds to me like you are trying to shift all of the blame for 1 million deaths off George W Bush and put some of it on Clinton! Which is the most absurd notion I have ever heard of! What are you a closet Bushie??????
MaxheMust July 12th, 2007 11:17 am

Why stop with the genocide in Iraq? We should include the millionS killed in Vietnam, along with all those in Latin America.

The extremely greedy captalists who control the top US politicians & our military have made it the world’s biggest bully & the primary obstacle to world peace.
michael.098762001 July 12th, 2007 11:33 am

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28346.html
The Politics of Dead Children
Have sanctions against Iraq murdered millions?
michael.098762001 July 12th, 2007 11:34 am

On Voices in the Wilderness,
http://www.meforum.org/article/548
Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist
>…My Break and Aftermath

I can remember the exact instant when I decided to leave the utopian
fantasy world of Voices. I was on a train from Bellingham, Washington,
where I lived at the time, to Portland, Oregon, to visit a friend. It
was the spring of 2000, and I was reading a new article on sanctions
by Amatzia Baram. Baram proceeded to shatter the myth that 1.5 million
Iraqis had died of sanctions-related disease. He did it by checking
Iraqi claims against recent Iraqi census data. Since 1991, Iraq’s
population, even by Iraqi figures, had grown way too fast for there to
be anything near the number of sanctions-related deaths claimed by
Iraq. Baram’s conclusions contradicted everything I had heard in Iraq
and from Voices:

The [mortality] statistics provided by the government of Iraq
(GOI) are false in some cases and misleading in others. In the first
place the regime is providing inflated figures of mortality as a
result of the embargo. This affects the credibility of all the
information provided by Baghdad and greatly complicates its
cooperation with international humanitarian organizations.[19]

If this were true—that the Iraqi regime was obfuscating as much on
sanctions as it did on weapons—then my trip to Iraq and all the
subsequent work I had poured into anti-sanctions activism had been in
vain. I desperately searched for anything that could support Voices’
take on the sanctions and disprove Baram. But I found nothing, and I
began to seriously rethink my role in the group, as well as some of my
most basic political assumptions.

But my split with Voices was not simply the outcome of reading Baram’s
article. From the outset, I had expected that Voices would cultivate
knowledge on all things Iraqi as we set about our task of ending
sanctions. I expected the better academic works on Iraq—the landmark
studies by Baram, Batatu, and Marion and Peter Sluglett—to be on the
office bookshelf. Instead all I found were uninformed tracts by Noam
Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Edward Said.
canardtahiti July 12th, 2007 11:51 am

Whatever4:

Remember SENATOR DURBIN, who had the IMMENSE COURAGE to call Abu Graib and Guantanamo torture methods NAZI HORRORS? And remember how he was forced to take it back, tearfully, on the Senate floor — the very NEXT DAY??

Remember how Obama and Clinton and so many other “patriots” dis-avowed Durbin’s speech and obliged him to recant?? Sounded like Stalinist intimidation to me. Recantations and self-flagellation for one’s “crimes” against cheneybushsluts.

But had he not “regretted” this comparison to Nazi Germany, Durbin would have ended up like Senator Wellstone. Dead. Look what it has all come to, years later.
loachduke July 12th, 2007 12:02 pm

Whats a million lives in Iraq?

Arabs are without souls in the eyes of a Christian Fundamentalist.

Cheap plastic crap, endless porn, SUV’s, and hamburgers are far more important than Mosques with bullet holes and collapses roofs, right?

‘Give me American Gladiators with real chainsaws’…Bill Hicks

So what about a million lives? The real crime will be billions who die from illness caused by exposure to depleted uranium for the next 500k years in the middle east.

You yanks have yourselves to thank for this mess. If you really didn’t want to kill all these people in the middle east you would have been out in force for your last election and voted to send Dubya back to his daddy.

They should make the average Yank family -Joe Lunchbox, Sally Housecoat and fat kids, spend a day cleaning up the shredded children and families in Iraq.

Not in my back yard… or whatever. Ignorance is bliss.
javanji July 12th, 2007 6:15 pm

United Stats of America and its war crimes, its human abuses are so many and for such long time that USA is in need of a social economic and political renovations by the American people. In the other hand it seams that no one is able to connect with the senators or the government to out line a policy where the domestic social and international matters are discussed and where a clear path would be the result of that discussions, that perhaps would resolve wars attitude of the USA. Here, the most important is the US economical system (capitalism) which is the breathing ground for US war crimes and thereby the US militarism regime and its conducts, off course capitalism is not going to participate for solving the US militarism regime and its interests, the US government (Federal and some states) “interests” is totally dependent on a capitalism regime. Capitalism and its economical system is the main element for and to start such conflicts around the world, it is in their interests to start wars where the war mechanism works, Lockheed Martin, GM, Ford, Mc Donald Douglas, GE and above all the Oil companies are the one behind the atrocities that has become the main job of the Federal Government to implement, after all “what is good in having such a might army if we cannot use it”, these are the words of Madeline Albright the secretary of Stat during Bill Clinton and before Yugoslavia war. Yet if the American social economic and political to be changed it is absolutely necessary to prosecute those that are and have conducted war crimes, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright and many others need to be present on that court, otherwise, the USA is about to change to a dictatorial civilian regime with fascist agendas around the world.
javanji July 12th, 2007 6:38 pm

Yes absolutely, during the Saddam Regime there wasn’t any atrocity committed in such magnitude that is done by the US, before war there were no Iraqi refugee, now there are over 4 million of them, before war there were no sectarian killings, before the invasion and war people of Iraq were complaining but not about the regime but rather about the United Nation and the embargo imposed on them.

Now the people of Iraq (80%) of them looking at the matter with opened eyes, they se the occupation forces as there enemies and the same amount of people saying that: “things were better before and during Saddam Regime”, yet in America, only 29% think that George W. Bush is doing a good job while 72% think his not. Question is:
The base of a democracy is the people and if 70% of the American people wants US militarism to leave Iraq and 80% of the Iraqis why George W. Bush don’t want to listen to the people…??? This kind of softer way in murdering people in Iraq is the path in what is called Neo-Conservatism or if you will Neo-Fascism on the Verizon. Answer to your question, US is more in depth then just 1 million people in Iraq, Viet Nam, Congo, Central America, Asia and middle east combined with its cop de Etta’s is more then a million people that US alone have killed, Congo and its war with US involvement killed more then 5 million and in Iraq, is counting.
Evelyn Smith July 12th, 2007 8:24 pm

It looks like no one gets it. We’ve killed every single person in Iraq. All of them, and all of our ground troops and anyone who has visited there as well. The radiation readings in Baghdad alone are almost 2,000 times normal background readings. Inhaling a few microscopic specks of Depleted Uranium #238, will insure that person will die of radiation posioning. Iraq is blanketed with DU dust and it is not possible to clean it up. The people will not fall over dead, they will die a long and slow and very painful death. Many already have and many are just begining to show the symptoms of radiation posioning. That is not an opinion, it is just so. They are all dead, most just haven’t fallen over yet.
Beowulf July 13th, 2007 1:26 am

…and the concensus is therefore….?

Perhaps… a globally networked citizens movement to regain our social sanity, which will NOT be achieved merely by voicing the truths that were already self-evident to and entirely ignored by sociopath criminals when they…

Or by demonstrating in our millions across the world in front of those who will not listen or adhere to the laws and will of the people…

A different, inclusive, direct political foundation is required. One that is based on the obvious correctness of public policy founded on the self-evident needs of humanity and the planet itself. Instead of being founded on the material and social greed of the few at the expense of the many.

Thanks to the “information age” communications technological revolution, it is not only possible, it is imperative that those tools be utilized to establish global direct democracy.

However, I digress.

That all comes later, once the known criminals and their actions are first suppressed, and thereafter rendered impotent, to our continued development.
toddboyle August 7th, 2007 1:49 pm

Javanji- Kudos for drilling into the causes of war in US political economy. I would recommend you find more accurate descriptor than the word “capitalism” since what we have is a state apparatus thoroughly interconnected with business. Of course, it encompasses ‘capitalism’, ‘property ownership’, the capture of every chokehold for advantage such as controlling land, building, and production equipment. But it encompasses so much more. It is the totalitarian control of corporate employees, for example, and the wielding of an immense police/prison industrial complex and military complex.. etc. etc. No, I don’t call it capitalism, its gone too far towards a state, command economy, a producer sovereignty and for benefit of a classic plutocracy or aristocracy. How different is this from the Soviets?

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