Wednesday, October 11, 2006

New Study Shows Iraq War Has Killed Over Half A Million People

Photo: Iraqi Children Being Stomped and Kicked After Violent Deaths

Of course Bush wrote off the report right away. He stated today that he dismissed the findings of the report... that the report was not accurate or credible.

Did this nut even read the report? He has stated himself that he doesn't follow the news or read the newspaper.

But this report is actually in line with a UN report a couple of years ago which essentially looked at the same factors.

--Government critics refute the report. It appears that the report was not a body count of those deaths recorded from Morgues, but instead looked at the increase in the rate of deaths since the invasion. It also looked at deaths directly and indirectly related to the war, such as deaths due to certain war related conditions such as the lack of healthcare, lack of food & good water, etc. The numbers do seem high and it's possible that in some cases the same victims could have been counted more than once. That tends to be the case in such studies.

But most also agree that the "official numbers" are almost always too low.

But just from the body counts alone, there have been at least 50,000 Iraqi civilians killed because of the invasion and the violence that came afterward. Morally, there is no difference between 600,000 or 50,000. Both figures are equally horrific in my opinion.

This is what white elites in the United States just don't understand. In their minds, 50,000 is somehow much more acceptable than the 600,000 figure. They place little to no value on Iraqi lives. This is reflected in the fact that the U.S. Government doesn't think enough of the Iraqis to even keep a good count of how many are dying in the conflict. They don't bother counting them at all....this is official U.S. policy.

In fact, I don't think White elites in this country even care much about the U.S. troops who are dying there. They do a dog and pony show for FOX news and other media, when they want to whip up pro-war sentiment in the country, but their policies don't reflect that they really care about soldiers. While they are soluting soldiers and grinning for the cameras, they work behind the scenes to cut Veterans benefits and services at the very same time. Somehow FOX news and other major (State-Run) media seem to miss that fact. And the American public falls for this everytime....they always swallow the bait (the hook included).

**************************

From the USA Today

More than 600,000 Iraqis dead because of the war, study says

NEW YORK (AP) — A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.
In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.

"Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the website of The Lancet, a medical journal.

Continue Reading Here

No comments: