600,000

Little King Georgie will soon be a worse scourge on Iraq in 4 years than Saddam was in nearly 50 years.

How close does he have to be in order to call it a Holocaust? It's "ok" because it's justified by some.

Staggering. Sad beyond description

Shocking. I hope it's not that many. Is this "liberating" them?

What do they do with that many bodies, though?

No, No, No, The history books will look favorably on this and torture. All these people attacked us on 9/11. Pigs fly over the moon every night!~

Most estimates have been really conservative up untill this point, but unfortunately this number is probably accurate. Its perpetual tragedy.

"Culture of life" in its finest hour.

Maybe the haters should just lay down their weapons and allow a peaceful and victorious democracy to take hold. As I remember it, we weren't forced to kill too many people when we rolled into Baghdad.
All hell broke loose when everyone wanted to run the place.

The bodies of 110 Iraqi men fround strewn about the streets of Baghdad today.

SCARY!!!

Bret, you obviously haven't read any of the standard histories of Operation Iraqi Freedom then if you think getting to Baghdad was a 'cakewalk.' It wasn't. Sure, we beat the Iraqis handily, but there was plenty of death and destruction. And last I checked, there were no Iraqis involved in 9/11, although you may be one of that 35% of Americans who still believes they were.

Try reading Cobra II, Bret, it'll help your historical comprehension.

Over a half million death?
How many died in our Revolution to
bring democracy to the "New" World?
What scares me most is The Law of Karma.
My God. What are we going to do?

Well,
hopefully yang will only punish those responsible, and I never cast a vote for baby bush, myself, so...........

To blame this entirely on Bush is very short sighted.

There are so many other contributing factors. To truly hold him solely responsible, is like looking at a flock of pigeons, picking one, and insisting that that ONE pigeon is the one who messed up your windshield.

Go ahead, disagree with him, I do as well. YES I think he bears a great deal of responsibility here. It would be foolish to say he doesnt.

To say "ok look at the mess Bush made" is, as I said, short sighted at best.

I heard an even higher number on NBC this morning. I don't think people hold Bush personally responsible so much as his policies and attitude, and the administration's attempt to cover up the real story.

It's not a "Bush-Hating" thing. It's a "Look What's Happening - It's Got To Stop" thing.

Hearye, hearye,

King George has just pronounced the number of dead and the methodology to be "not credible."

Therefore, it MUST be true.

GWB brought us into this war without much input from the military. In fact, the military believed that the war on terror was in Afghanistan. Sorry, but the war in Iraq is totally Bush's fault. It is a blunder and a blight on our history that our country brought down that country. We are occupiers.

I did some checking and under the entire time Saddam Hussein was in power the estimates of civilian deaths were from 300,000 to max 1,000,000 in 10 years are more. We have officially in 3 yrs done over half of that which means we are now officially more deadly to the Iraqis than a dictator. Great job GW Bush. No wonder they want us out.
Time to go this rivals Darfur and in my book can count as genocide.

Nicole,
George bush demanded this war in Iraq. He used faulty information to convince the public, and charged into it without acceptance form the U.N.

If you don't want to blame it on George W, you can include his advisors and administrators.


The Afghanistan war is not going well, but there was a clear reason to go there and that war has the full backing of the U.N.

"Maybe the haters should just lay down their weapons and allow a peaceful and victorious democracy to take hold."

Yeah, that'll happen. You've got a REAL firm grasp on reality, I see.


"As I remember it, we weren't forced to kill too many people when we rolled into Baghdad. All hell broke loose when everyone wanted to run the place. "

Did you ever think that this was because it was PLANNED this way? Saddam knew he couldn't stand a chance in a full faced match against our military, but he knew a LOT about Soviet tactics from WWII, and other methods of guerilla warfare utilized throughout the modern era. Why do you think he had all of those weapons caches scattered all over the country?

In fact, Bush was warned directly about what would happen after the invasion, particularly after Saddam was taken down, but he chose to ignore the warnings, because the neocons were convinced that it would be a "cakewalk."





"To blame this entirely on Bush is very short sighted."

Really? Who was the one who chose this illegal, unnecessary war, and who is the one who chose to ignore the warnings of virtually every military expert at his disposal or not, prior to the illegal invasion? Who would YOU blame for what's going on there? Bush assumed 100% responsibility for that entire nation, the moment he sent troops over the border. Everything from that point on was Bush's responsibility.




"To truly hold him solely responsible, is like looking at a flock of pigeons, picking one, and insisting that that ONE pigeon is the one who messed up your windshield."

Actually, it's more like looking at a flock of pigeons, destroying their habitat and taking away their food, killing large numbers of them outright, and then sitting back in "shock and awe" at how many die as a direct result of what you've done.




"To say "ok look at the mess Bush made" is, as I said, short sighted at best. "

This is 100% Bush. This is his legacy. It was HIS war of choice, and he fought it the way that HE chose to. This is absolutely his fault.

Some cakewalk this turned out to be. I don't understand the reasoning behind "staying the course" when things are so convoluted there.

Clark -

I just wanted to see how the "Liberal Argument" played.
Doesn't it sound just as silly when a Conservative says it?
LOL

It's not as though Bush wasn't warned. Every expert on the Mideast, every leader in the area, and every veteran of foreign affairs said it would be a disaster before he "decided" to go in. He preferred to follow his delusions. He wanted to believe Cheney's line of BS about what a breeze it would be and what a hero he'd be. He wanted to believe in the happy ending scenario; victory, prestige, and all the oil they wanted. Well, it didn't happen and you'd think that with all that failure staring him in the face he'd be just a little sceptical of listening to the cabal of desk generals and silk-suited warriors surrounding him.

But Bush is just too delusional. He can't accept his own failure, and will probably go to his grave believing that he was always right. That's the true tragedy, that this nation, robbed of its best blood and resources, has been led into its decline by a fool.

The Iraq/Afghanistan nightmare will not harm the plans of the global capitalists.

They continue to have the backing and support of citizens, who are Christian, who believe certain laws advancing their own beliefs will be enacted, and the ones who believe they will become rich as a result of current administration policies. (cheap illegal immigrant labor is one policy)

The goal of this administration is to have a very low paid workforce and elite exactly like Mexico's.

Not only poor, but with no protected rights of free speech, assembly or privacy (warrant less wiretapping). No protection from no-knock entry, no protection against search and seizure.

Wow, it sounds dismal in here. Did I just wander into the DNC website? LOL

We are mourning Bret W

Cena -

Never believe everything on the extreme Right or the extreme Left.............the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, and usually not as dismal as the naysayers would have you believe.

"Sorry, but the war in Iraq is totally Bush's fault." hmmmm....I dont really feel like checking the vote, but I am quite certain that the vast majority of Congress (Dems & Repubs) voted in favor of the Iraq war....a little piece of information those of you on the extreme left seem to conveniently forget.....

Back on the main subject, 600,000 is an uttelry ridiculous guestimate...I will drop this here as well:

Here is an excerpt from BBC....which I would have to believe you would not consider a conservative outlet....

'Missing' dead

There is also the criticism that, crudely, the numbers of bodies being discovered do not match the figures.

It is assumed that the 601,000 violent "excess" deaths between March 2003 and July 2006 (about 40 months) should produce an average of about 500 violent deaths per day.

This is not going to be so all the time, given the spikes of violence, but it is a rough criterion.

The latest figures from the Iraqi health ministry (reported by the Associated Press news agency on 11 October) stated that 2,667 people were killed in Baghdad during September, 400 more than in August.

This gives an average of about 86 per day in the capital.

Baghdad is not the whole country of course, but AP reported the United Nations as saying that in July and August, 6,599 people were killed across the country, of which 5,106 were in Baghdad.

This suggests that Baghdad has by far the highest number of actual and percentage dead.

So, if the current rate in Baghdad is about 86 and the countrywide figure should be about 500 according to the Lancet report, where are the "missing" dead?

The answer from the report's authors would be that the dead are there, but have not been counted.

That supposes a huge failing by the Iraqi health ministry, a failing the report did not hint at, because it said that death certificates were readily available for most of the reported deaths in the households surveyed.

Steve -

I've never done the math before, but you raise an interesting question. Could this 600,000 figure be wildly inflated? And who dreamed that number up? How did they arrive at this figure? Where are the bodies to prove that number?