655,000

Robert Dreyfuss
The latest study in the Lancet about Iraqi deaths is staggering: they calculate that 655,000 Iraqis have died since March 2003, about 500 per day since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Critics will quibble about the methodology used in the study (...) I can't resist pointing out that even Saddam Hussein's worst detractors estimate that 300,000 Iraqis died during his reign. I happen to believe that that number is wildly inflated, and certainly it isn't based on any sort of research. It's just a number promoted (before the invasion in 2003) to demonize Saddam. But even if it's true, George Bush has surpassed in three bloody years what took Saddam three decades in power to accumulate...

continua / continued

Bush: Iraqis Are Willing To ‘Tolerate’ This ‘Level Of Violence’

PERVERTED DEVIATE

Are you, Are you willing to "TOLERATE"THIS LEVEL OF VIOLENCE? IRAQ

Think Progress

Today in his press conference, President Bush applauded the courage of Iraqis, stating that he is "amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate." (...) In reality, 890,000 Iraqis have moved to Jordan, Iran and Syria since Hussein’s fall and more than 300,000 have fled to other parts of Iraq to escape the violence. Iraqis aren’t "tolerating" the violence. They’re just trying to survive...

continua / continued

Bush: Iraqis Are Willing To ‘Tolerate’ This ‘Level Of Violence’

Aura of fear and death stalks Iraq

Peter Beaumont, The Guardian

Some Sunni families have stopped going to Baghdad's morgue, which is in an area controlled by Shia militias, who are responsible for the death squads. The families of two recently murdered Sunni soldiers in a largely Shia battalion of the Iraqi army, their colonel said, were followed to the morgue and attacked. Funerals have also been targeted. Death follows death. Hospitals have been used for holding and torturing the disappeared. The sound of killing has become routine. No one pays attention to the morning explosions until the reports come in - the numbers of the dead and where. Baghdadis soon develop an ear for these attacks. They can distinguish between the sound of improvised explosive devices buried in the road, and the sound of mortars and car bombs. These are now commonplace. The conversation stoppers are the ingenious and brazen: the secondary and tertiary bombs left to kill the rescue workers; the abductions in broad daylight by men in police uniforms from shops and factories, while their colleagues try to hide from the lethal sweep...

continua / continued