"You're Either With Us or You're Dead" Can We Call It Genocide Now?

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

When does "collateral damage" so dwarf combatant deaths that war becomes genocide? Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq has cost 655,000 Iraqis their lives. That is the conclusion of a study financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies and conducted by physicians under the direction of Johns Hopkins University epidemiologists. These are deaths over and above the pre-invasion mortality rate. Bush's illegal invasion raised Iraq's mortality rate from 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The study is published by the distinguished British medical journal, The Lancet, and is available on the journal's online site (October 11). The study uses a scientific method known as "cluster sampling." In 87% of the deaths, the researchers requested death certificates, and more than 90% of the surveyed households produced the death certificates. Violence accounted for 601,000 deaths and disease and destruction of civilian infrastructure accounted for 54,000 deaths....

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Innumerate cowards recoil from the facts: 655,000 dead Iraqis

The right wing noise machine is clanking and shuddering. They're outraged about this study, published in the Lancet. The study estimated that 665,000 more Iraqis have died after the US invasion than would have been expected based on pre-invasion death rates. Here are today's talking points. Or should we say talking flails? (...) Cowards, all of them. They own this war, but they won't face up to the fact that their little adventure helped kill over half a million people...

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Old death in the new Iraq

Stayin' Alive

...Finally, as I have said many times, Iraq Body Count should go out of business. They are doing positive harm to the reality based community by giving the perpetrators of this world historical crime cover for saying that the death toll is only 10% of what it really is. That is not helping the Iraqi people....

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Co-Author of Medical Study Estimating 650,000 Iraqi Deaths Defends Research in the Face of White House Dismissal

AMY GOODMAN, Democracy Now!

The White House is dismissing the findings of a medical study that says 650,000 people have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion. The study was conducted by American and Iraqi researchers and published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet. We’re joined by the report’s co-author, epidemiologist Les Roberts...

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