2,800...What's Bush's plan? Iraq is dying to know...

2,800. Only a few weeks ago it was 2,700. (If those numbers are even to be believed...)   And speaking of believable numbers:

"I don't consider it a credible report." - Bush

Bush's considerations aside, the six hundred thousand figure Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calculated is getting some support from others in the scientific community.

The Iraq deaths study was valid and correct

"Conducting such a rigorous study within the constraints of the security situation in Iraq is dangerous and difficult, and deserves commendation. We have not heard any legitimate reason to dismiss its findings. It is noteworthy that the same methodology has been used in recent mortality surveys in Darfur and Democratic Republic of Congo, but there has been no criticism of these surveys. The study by Burnham and his colleagues provides the best estimate of mortality to date in Iraq that we have, or indeed are ever likely to have. We urge open and constructive debate, rather than ill-informed criticism of the methods or results of sound science. All of us should consider the implications of the dire and deteriorating health situation in Iraq."

It is possible to sample only "hot" clusters which skew the result. This is why the margin for error in the report is well over 100,000. One thing is clear: there is a third river in the Land of the Two Rivers and it runs red with blood.   Despite the science, Bush discounts the study.   (course, Bush also believes that creationism "intelligent design" should be taught in schools).  He refuses to listen to experts.  That's gotta be part of the problem. The Lancent report is the best study to date. That the US has no other report on civilian casualties to offer in rebuttal is shameful in itself.

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Video: Iraq The Real Story (8:10)

Sean Smith, the Guardian's award-winning war photographer, spent nearly six weeks with the 101st Division of the US army in Iraq. Watch his haunting observational film that explodes the myth around the claims that the Iraqis are preparing to take control of their own country.

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Senior US diplomat Alberto Fernandez claims we've shown "stupidity and arrogance" in Iraq. If by stupidity and arrogance he means murderous & criminal behavior then I agree.  No matter, the elite are getting richer and thus the aspiring wealthy can hardly bear to glance up from the portfolios and prozac bottles and take some notice of this empires criminal occupations - let alone actually lift one manicured fingernail to resist.

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So what's the plan? Just stay the course?. (armageddon should not be an exit strategy....) Scott Horton sums up the options:

Intrepid Washington reporter Robert Dreyfuss interviews Salah Mukhtar, who is “close” to the Iraq opposition. It’s clearly as bad or worse than you think.

Our choices seem to be:

1. Stay the course of installing the dictatorship of the Iran parties,
2. Switch sides back to Saddam’s Ba’athists,
3. Break the former country into three, “hardening” the soft regional borders (and leaving many stuck on the “wrong” side of them), or
4. Get out now and leave no more guilty than at present.

It has been three and a half years of this Tom Palmer-style, “we can’t leave until we make everything better” strategy, and every thing has only gotten worse. It is for the people of that land to determine their future.

As for the pro-American quislings there, it is only fair that the government provide them all entry to the most pro-war American states.Or better, the houses of the War Party’s highest members.

No more bullshit. This war, which America had no right to wage in the first place, is lost - has been lost.

All U.S. forces out of Iraq now!

Comments welcome over at Stress.

The reality is that no one knows precisely what will happen when US forces leave Iraq. This war will continue to haunt us for some time. Peeked at that national debt figure lately? Small government my ass.....the only course change should be back to our shore, back to port. Perhaps we can reach it before the whole ship sinks.

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No Where to Flee: The Perilous Situation of Palestinians in Iraq

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Horrors of war linger in Lebanon

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Show me the way to the next Whiskey Bar:, no, don't ask why:

But the question Riverbend has forced me to ask myself is: Did I do enough? And the only honest answer is no.

I opposed the invasion -- and the regime that launched it -- but I didn't do everything I could have done. Very few did. We may have put our words and our wallets on the line, but not our bodies. Not when it might have made a difference. In the end, we were all good little Germans.

My question to myself, in other words, is like Thoreau's famous question to Ralph Waldo Emerson when Emerson came to visit him in jail after he was arrested for not paying his poll tax as a protest against slavery:

Emerson: What are you doing in there, Henry?

Thoreau: No, Waldo, the question is: What are you doing out there?

It's easy to think up excuses now -- we were in the minority, the media was against us, the country was against us. We didn't know how bad it would be.

But we knew, or should have known, that what Bush was planning was an illegal act of aggression, based on a warmongering campaign of deception and ginned-up hysteria. And we knew, or should have known,what our moral and legal obligations were:

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

We were all complicit. I was complicit. Because I was afraid --afraid to sacrifice my comfortable middle class lifestyle, afraid to lose my job and my house, afraid of the IRS, afraid to go to jail.

But not nearly as afraid, of course, as the thousands of Iraqis who have been tortured or murdered, or who, like Riverbend, are forced to live in bloody chaos, day after day. Which is why, reading her post today, I couldn't help but feel deeply, bitterly ashamed -- not just of my country, but of myself.

I just hope that in the next life I don't run into Henry David Thoreau.

There are some folks who are also haunted by Thoreau and so stood up to the IRS.

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(photo on left by rpeate)

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"Each of us is unique; not one of us can be replaced. Each of us has a family, loved ones, friends and a life that is a web of caring, interdependence, and joy. When even one of us is killed or horribly injured for no justifiable reason, the damage affects countless people in addition to the primary victim. Sometimes, the survivors are irreparably damaged as well. Even the survivors' wound scan last a lifetime.

This is of the greatest significance. There is nothing more important or meaningful in the world. No moral principle legitimize sour invasion and occupation of Iraq, just as it will not justify an attack on Iran. Therefore, when the first person was killed in Iraq as the result of our actions, the immorality was complete. The crime had been committed, and no amends could ever suffice or would even be possible. That many additional tens or hundreds of thousands of people have subsequently been killed or injured does not add to the original immorality with regard to first principles. It increases its scope,which is an additional and terrible horror -- but the principle is not altered in the smallest degree".

-- Arthur Silber; Of Fundamental Moral Principles, and the Value of a Single Human Life.

(via Lawrence of Cyberia)