BrickBlog

We've heard the case for war. Again and again, we've been given reasons for the US invasion of Iraq.

Iraq supported Al Qaeda.

Nope? Well, Iraq had WMDs.

They didn't? In that case, Iraq was a gathering threat.

Not really? Well, at the very least Saddam was a brutal dictator who killed his own people by the thousands. This is unquestioned. We've been told for over a decade and a half that the self-styled Stalin of the Arab World was one of the most bloodthirst, vicious and inhumane dictators in the history of mankind.

But, alas, as dangerous as Saddam may have been to his own people, it is now clear that the United States and its president, George W. Bush, are far greater risks to the lives of Iraqi citizens. A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University reveals that as many as 100,000 Iraqis have been killed as a result of the US invasion. This number is not a gross total, but rather a net increase in Iraqi mortalities over those expected to occur within the same time period given the mortality rate in Iraq before the war. That pre-war mortality rate figure includes deaths due to both the brutality of Saddam's regime and the smothering UN sanctions imposed on the country after the first Gulf War. In sum, our war has caused 100,000 more deaths in the past 15 months than Saddam and rampant starvation could have achieved in the same period.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a5qWDoyceuDI&refer=us

While the 100,000 number seems high, other reports place the minimum level of civilian deaths in the range of 14,000 - 16,000. Notably, this number does not include the young men - sons, husbands and fathers - of the Iraqi military who were slaughtered while serving (mostly involuntarily) their country.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Pegging down the exact number to an exacting degree of precision is unimportant. 15,000? 100,000? It doesn't matter. What matters is this: there are tens of thousands of dead Iraqis who, were it not for this US invasion, would be alive today. And there was no justifiable reason for their deaths.

These reports, while not at all surprising, are sobering. What has been portrayed - sold, if you will - by the Bush regime as, alternatively, an unfortunately necessary act of preemptive defense and a humanitarian campaign is clearly neither. There were no terrorist ties, no WMDs. There are 100,000 unnecessary deaths. If anything, it has been simply a slaughter of innocent men, women and children who happen to live in a nation sitting directly on top of a giant pool of oil.

My fellow Americans, our president is a murderer of the highest order. On September 11, 2001, the murderer Osama bin Laden and his henchmen succeeded in killing 3,000 Americans in New York and Washington, D.C. Since March of 2003, George Bush and his henchmen have succeeded in slaughtering 30 times than many innocent men , women and children. THIRTY TIMES. The number of innocent Iraqis killed due to the unjustified US invasion is equal to the number of Japanese killed by the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki COMBINED. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp10.htm

If any group of men ought to be tried for terrorism and war crimes, it is the vile and despicable gang of villains known collectively as the Bush Administration.