Bush, Rice, Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Obama, Clinton, et.al., should be transported to Iraq and set there (defenseless) to receive the gratitude of a liberated people.

We could be kind and have placards hung about their necks saying, "You can make it scream, but you have to keep it alive."

Some very disturbing numbers, Robert Naiman. There should be a giant neon sign in Times Square with these (ever increasing) numbers on them. But it should also give, as Naiman fails to do, the number of people "liberated" from their homes--that is, made refugees--which recent authoritative counts figure at between 4 and 5 million (roughly 20 percent of the population), many of whom have had to seek safety and asylum abroad, in countries like Syria and Lebanon.

Mr. Naiman, as a rule, I safely ignore what most Americans have to say about most everything. But, yes I get what you're saying. Sadly, we have morally erased the idea that one innocent death is one too many?

This is the country at one time of which there was a poplar axiom: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian". The humanists who detested this axiom created special boarding schools for Indians, obliging them to cut their hair, dress and think like Europeans. We have always been Ugly Americans.

The wildly varying estimates are because the military doesn't want an accurate count (truth is the first casualty in war). This is similar to the inability to get photos from the war, or to view soldiers coffins coming back from the war. Enforcement of collective amnesia. Who knew that the 9/11 terrorists were capable of doing all of that to us?

What I typically say in arguments with people is '500,000 Iraqi's have died since the US invasion, 100,000 of whom were children.' Granted, I don't have the second statistic in hand. But we invaded the country and the fighting has been urban-street fighting, its hard to believe that many children haven't died. It's important to emphasize children, in these arguments, for the same reason TIME magazine splashed a young woman (almost a child herself) on the cover to argue for the Afghan War's continuance. Children are innocent of humankinds brutality and hence don't deserve to pay for such, and everyone instinctually emotes that. Its almost more significant that 100,000 children died in Iraq since the invasion than the larger number of Iraqi's, many of whom were soldiers.

I agree with the point but don't know what all the abbreviations mean.

Then there are the millions of Iraqis who have been displaced, the thousands who have lost jobs or are in prison. And how many more exposed have been exposed to depleted uranium including our own troops?

Great article Robert! ¿God Bless America? ¿Land of the free and brave? I think not. Until the people of the US get off the couch and take to the streets, nothing will change. As long as the people of the US have ¨theirs¨, refering to shelter, transpotation anf food, nothing will change. Shame on US, the government of terrorists...

I just knew they were going to murder a lot of people when they labeled the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq "Operation Iraqi Freedom"

The post, first gulf war, economic sanctions against Iraq, were against the children.The prosecutors told the jury that Dhafir,[ who saved the lives of starving Iraqi children] was a national security threat because he gave aid to the wrong people in Iraq during the sanctions . They were the people who were fighting U.S. troops in Iraq during Dhafir's trial.( The children had grown up and were defending their country from U.S. foreign invaders).This
confirmed all the reports that America did not care about the children. America must have been planing the 2nd invasion of Iraq all along. They were starving the Iraqi children to weaken their ability to fight off U.S. troops during the U.S. pre-emptive strike.How else could they justify convicting a humanitarian to 22 years for breaking the sanctions? They investigated him for years and waited until the U.S. invaded Iraq to arrest him. If he were a national security concern for violating the sanctions then they were incompetent for allowing him to continue for years and they put our country at risk. The prosecutor should have been fired, not promoted to a federal judge.

The oil profiteers, Bush's friends, were free to get their oil contracts, instead of oil being nationalized for the use of the people of Iraq. The Iraqi people are enslaved by poverty and corruption thanks to the U.S. wars and sanctions.

There is no cost-benefit analysis in U.S. foreign policy. The mindless idiot Bush wanted Hussein gone (or ostensibly so), so he started a huge war with vast costs in human life and treasure. If someone had said in advance we can get rid of Hussein and it will only cost several trillions of dollars and a million innocent civilian lives would anyone have said that was a good idea? Obama is just carrying on with more of the same stupid nonsense as Bush. And who knows what the real goals are--probably corporate ones.

When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State] thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying, Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.”

This article and any discussion of Iraqi deaths is incomplete if it excludes the slaughter at the hands of the Clinton Administration. It's important to highlight this point to show that the massacre of Iraqis is as bi-partisan as every other bi-partisan imperial policy.

=======

When he speaks himself on the Iraq War or is interviewed and asked his thoughts on the war, Clinton is almost never challenged on his policy in Iraq, nor is there much discussion of Clinton’s Iraq policy. This is unfortunate, because much of the current policy towards Iraq had its origins in the administration of President Bill Clinton. During his eight years in the White House, President Clinton over saw an Iraq policy that killed over 350,000-500,000 children via sanctions, repeatedly bombed Iraq out of concern over WMD, and made regime change the official policy of the United States.

The most notable aspect of President Clinton’s Iraq policy was his maintenance of a sanctions regime that decimated Iraq’s economy and that was estimated to have killed 500,000 children. While the figures would later be disputed with lesser estimates of 350,000, their destructive impact is undeniable. Responding to concerns over the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would famously state “I think it is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.” Ordinary Iraqis reported significant hardship from the sanctions, while food and medicine were lacking and the economy crumbled. Scholars of United States foreign policy including Edward Said and Edward Herman described Clinton’s Iraq policy as a “war crime.” It must also be remembered that the sanctions came on top of the devastation of the first Gulf War.

Despite the horrific impact of the sanctions regime on a generation of Iraqis, Clinton has been fairly silent on the impacts of the sanctions. While former Secretary of State Madeline Albright eventually said that she regretted her statement about the deaths being “worth it,” Clinton has not shown similar remorse for his policy. In an interview in 2000 on Democracy Now, Clinton disputed the numbers over how many children died in Iraq under sanctions saying “that’s not true.” Clinton argued that Hussein “butchered the children of his own country” and that “if any child is without food or medicine or a roof over his or her head in Iraq, it’s because he is claiming the sanctions are doing it and sticking it to his own children.” Clinton accused Saddam Hussein of squandering the money and withholding it from children to create a death toll that would “build up pressure” to end the embargo so that he could rebuild his weapons programs. He further dismissed claims by two United Nations officials that quit their jobs because the sanctions were genocidal as being “wrong” to make such statements. Clinton’s comments reflected what became the United States official response to critics of the sanctions blaming Saddam Hussein rather than acknowledging the United States’ role.

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http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2007/05/clintons-iraq-l.php

“The change in 10 years is unparalleled, in my experience,” Anupama Rao Singh, Unicef’s senior representative in Iraq, told me. “In 1989, the literacy rate was 95%; and 93% of the population had free access to modern health facilities. Parents were fined for failing to send their children to school. The phenomenon of street children or children begging was unheard of. Iraq had reached a stage where the basic indicators we use to measure the overall well-being of human beings, including children, were some of the best in the world. Now it is among the bottom 20%. In 10 years, child mortality has gone from one of the lowest in the world, to the highest.”

- John Pilger

The last two references in the original Lambert post, from 2008, are no longer current. It would be nice to track down current web addresses for these.

I'm sure Israel would want us to liberate even more... and in other countries like Iran.

De-Countrify Israel Now.

Ubrew12: 500,000 Iraqi's and 100,000 children have died in Iraq since the U.S invasion. Whether the stats are correct or not it doesn't matter because Madame Albright would say no matter what the statistics are of the thousands that were killed in the U.S. invasion and illegal war in Iraq " IT WAS WORTH IT " !

Also see "A Different Nuclear War: Children of the Gulf War" by Takashi Morizumi on the horrible effects from the heavy use of depeleted uranium weapons and residue.
Global Peacemakers, Atlanta, GA leeps@mindspring.com