October 12, 2006
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. The violent deaths
are attributed to gunshot wounds, coalition air strikes, and
car bombs.
Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist
Gilbert Burnham says, "We're very confident with the results."
Columbia University epidemiologist Ronald Waldman says the survey
method used is "tried and true" and that "this
is the best estimate of mortality we have."
When asked about the report,
President Bush stated: "I don't consider it a credible report."
Bush, of course, is not reality-based, and he knows that any
unfavorable news is "enemy propaganda." That's what
the neocons who pull his strings tell him, and that is what he
believes.
What percentage of these 655,000
deaths were insurgents or "terrorists"? Probably 1%
and no more than 2%. Bush's "war on terror" is, in
fact, a war on Iraqi civilians.
Bush's invasion has also spawned
sectarian conflict or civil war, although the Bush regime denies
it. Even Bush is smart enough to know that "bringing freedom
and democracy to Iraq" is not compatible with setting off
a civil war in Iraq. Since Bush, the faith-based, believes that
he is bringing "freedom and democracy to Iraq," he
cannot accept the fact that he has started a civil war.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
civilians are not the only innocent victims of Bush's illegal
aggression. The New York Times (October 11) reports that Department
of Veterans Affairs documents show that about one in five US
soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have suffered
at least partial disability.
To date more than 100,000 US
troops who are veterans of these wars have been granted disability
compensation. Although the US cannot put on the ground in Iraq
more than 150,000 troops at one time, 1.5 million troops have
served so far and 567,000 have been discharged of which 100,000
are receiving disability payments.
Paul Sullivan, director of
programs for Veterans for America, says that the current rate
of injuries will produce 400,000 American veterans suffering
30% to 100% disability. Apparently, one of the severe forms of
disability is post-traumatic stress, which does not count as
a physical wound.
What is America's reward for
Bush's illegal wars that have killed 655,000 Iraqis, an uncounted
number of Afghanis, and disabled as many as 400,000 US troops?
According to the US National
Intelligence Estimate and to practically every Middle East expert,
Bush's invasions have radicalized the Muslim Middle East, created
legions of recruits for extremists, undermined America's puppet
rulers, imperiled Israel, and destroyed America's reputation.
We are talking about over one
million casualties that have no other cause than blatant lies
by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the bloodthirsty neoconservative
cabal that occupies Bush's subcabinet, and their corporate media
propagandists, especially The Weekly Standard, Fox News, National
Review, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The
Bush regime deceived America and the world with its lies that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would be
turned against the West by terrorists. By giving speeches that
continually mentioned Iraq in the same context as 9/11, the Bush
regime created the widespread impression, still prevalent among
Americans, that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.
What kind of government would
destroy the lives through death or disability of over one million
people for no valid reason?
The same kind of government
that fires its own lawyers for doing their constitutional duty.
Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned the task of
bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the unconstitutional
military tribunal that President Bush created for Guantanamo
detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended his
client, winning in the US Supreme Court. The Bush administration
retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift's promotion, which killed
his military career and sent the chilling message to all US military
and government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders
in the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the US Constitution
is against Bush and his neocon regime.
The Bush regime is proceeding
exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded.
First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from
the government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader:
"You are with us or against us"--a formulation that
leaves no place for duty to the US Constitution. Patriotism is
redefined from loyalty to country and Constitution to loyalty
to the government's leader.
Americans are too inattentive
and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative
Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability.
The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American
people and the entire world is similar to Hitler's drive for
hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany's
right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the
Nazi elite to rule over the German people.
Neoconservatives use "American exceptionalism" and
"the war on terror." There is no practical difference.
Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive
for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead
Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.
When Bush, the Decider, claims
unconstitutional powers and uses "signing statements"
to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of law is in the
way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the
Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: "A
man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership
of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary
usage or to a particular democratic conception, but solely to
the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this
mission is an enemy of the people."
"You are with us or against
us."
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com