Hey, Hey, USA, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

About eighteen months ago, this blog considered the justification for the Iraq war that was at that time all the rage -- viz., that even though none of the Bush Administration's pre-war justifications had proven valid, the invasion was still justified, as the overthrow of Saddam's regime meant the saving of many Iraqi lives -- and found it seriously wanting, even on its own terms.

Looking back now, that post seems fairly tame: "somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed directly", "if the United States needs to forcibly put down the disquieted masses", "if a war against the U.S. occupation breaks out".

The Bush regime, in demonstrating that it won't ever set its standards too high, also trotted out the, "We're not as bad as Saddam," jargon as the Abu Ghraib scandal began to unfold.

Now, The Lancet has published the results of a house-to-house survey in Iraq, finding 100,000 more Iraqis "died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would have been expected otherwise".

"...violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces -- with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships."

It's not known how many Iraqis Saddam killed in his quarter-century in office, but some estimates have ranged up to 300,000 -- about 12,000 per year. His most heinous crimes, of course, committed while he was on friendly terms with the Reagan and Bush I Administrations.

So Bush II has managed to rack up one-third of Saddam's quarter-century total in just eighteen months' time.

It's well worth noting, too, that the Lancet survey studied the fifteen months prior to the war, and the eighteen months following the war. But UNICEF estimated, in 1998, that the U.S.-UK sanctions regime was killing 90,000 children per year. So in addition to the 100,000 deaths of mostly women and children; the Bush Administration, by not only initiating the war, but also in failing to address urgent sanitation, medical, and infrastructure needs; is responsible for the deaths of an additional 135,000 children.

But 235,000 is a conservative estimate: public health conditions in Iraq have actually worsened since the war, to the extent that UNICEF now estimates that "acute malnutrition or wasting, measured by a child's weight for height, has nearly doubled from four per cent a year ago, to almost eight per cent."

The Administration is so chastened by this news that it's now preparing to "whack" the city of Fallujah.

Ah, but they're better off dead, right? It's okay, isn't it, to summarily execute suspected "terrorists" and "insurgents"? Yeah, apparently so. However, "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children."

Ah, but it's okay to whack nigger women and little nigger children, right? Yeah, apparently so.

Posted by Eddie Tews at October 29, 2004 03:24 PM