Sunday, May 29, 2005
CLAIM REPEATED 100,000 TIMES
Tony Parkinson, last sane man at The Age, has views on the perspective-impaired:
How many people, for example, still swear blind that 100,000 civilians have been killed in the war in Iraq? For some, it has become an article of faith that this is the cost of an illegal war of aggression waged by a ruthless imperial power.
For this we can mainly thank the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, which published a controversial survey on the impact of war in Iraq ahead of last year’s US presidential election. Based on a sample of 788 households in Iraq, it estimated the “excess deaths” resulting from war to be in a range between 8000 to 194,000. It claimed a 95 per cent confidence that the actual death toll was at least 98,000.
Now, the United Nations Development Program in association with Iraq’s Ministry of Planning has published its own survey, based on a much larger sample of almost 22,000 households. The Iraq Living Conditions Survey estimated war-related deaths to be nearer 24,000, including both civilian and military casualties. Still hideous, but not the apocalyptic vision of industrial-strength slaughter embraced so readily, so ghoulishly, by some critics of the war.
That embrace isn’t over yet, as recent newspapers confirm. Here’s the Maine Morning Sentinel:
Everyone who voted for Bush or supported him in any way shares responsibility for these tragedies, as well as for the deaths of as many as 100,000 Iraqis and others.
That’s from James Marine of Waterville, who concludes: “This Memorial Day, let us all remember the victims of this corrupt and ruthless president’s war. Bush’s supporters should also take the time to seek forgiveness for being his collaborators.” Thank you, James Marine of Waterville. In the Jersey City Reporter, Ricardo Kaulessar writes:
An estimate done by Iraq Body Count of Iraqi civilians killed from March 2003, when the U.S. coalition troops entered in Iraq, to May 11 puts the total between 21,795 and 24,735, although it is believed that over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed during this military excursion.
Have faith, Ricardo. Peter Erdman in the Toledo Blade imagines how much better things might be under President Kerry:
Over 100,000 of Iraq’s people would still be alive.
They might still be alive even now, if Kerry had told George W. Bush about that secret plan of his. Fred Schoorl in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
Every day, when I pick up the newspaper and read about the bloodshed and carnage in Iraq, I wonder if President Bush’s Iraq invasion and the deadly consequences of his illegal war are finally hitting home. By now over 100,000 Iraqis have died ...
And Andrew Tonkovich in the LA Times:
Today, the Iraq war military deaths approach 1,700 with — almost never mentioned — an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed.
Almost never mentioned, eh? And these people accuse Bush of lying.