Professor Cole Sums Up the Iraqi Disaster

Juan Cole takes time today to review the results so far in human costs to the Iraqis. Just read this and think about it. One clear point is that this is so disastrous that we, as Americans responsible for the debacle, simply cannot face up to the consequences of our actions. We protect ourselves from being accountable. This is an all-to-human, self-justifying response; not right or responsible, just human.

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters....

In these situations, typically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.

That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years....
As for the displaced (i.e. homeless), they amount to a startling 5 million persons. There were 1.8 million internally displaced in January of 2007, and by December it had risen to 2.4 million. There are 2.3 million externally displaced, 2 million of them in Jordan and Syria.

In fact 5 million displaced persons is almost the entire population of nearby countries such as Jordan or Israel! 5 million is about the number of Jews in Israel, for instance. In absolute numbers, that is how many Iraqis are living in some other country or some other province, having lost their homes.

Some 1.4 million Iraqis are stuck in Syria, many becoming increasingly penniless. Another 500,000 to 800,000 have been displaced to Jordan, which has now closed its borders to them. Please read this excellent piece of reporting, which points out that the US has done diddly squat for these millions of people upon whom it has visited a world class catastrophe, neither allotting meaningful amounts of aid nor admitting more than a token number as immigrants. Sweden has admitted 40,000 Iraqis, nearly 4 times what the US even plans to. Please write the Senate and the Congress and demand that something be done for these, our victims.

40% of Iraq's middle class is outside the country.

Freedom.

McCain Imploding?

This was recorded in 2005. Since then, McCain has voted with Bush over 90% of the time and has, as documented before, flipped on many issues to align even more perfectly with the Bushwacks.
He cannot possibly win unless there is a truly an over-the-top, wag-the-dog event. We may be in the beginning of a real collapse for McCain.

Keep an Eye on This One

The Carpetbagger makes a good point here. The press is starting to make a point about how similar McCain and Obama are on issues. Except, these articles from Bloomberg and the LAT downplay many of the issues where there are significant differences and simply err on many of those cited as being similar. The purpose of doing this: see, McCain is just as much for change. Presto, he really is different than Bush! Also, bullpucky.

Another Well-Placed Nail in the MSM Coffin

This is just too good to not post. Read it all. The Scott McClellan book makes two major points, neither one of which is new: the Bushies lied us into the war and the MSM played along, mostly passively and sometimes actively. But the excuse of both camps has been: we could only state what we all knew at the time. The Knight-Ridder, later McClatchy, reporters, however, were pretty much correct in their scepticism all along as documented in the link. The correct information was there from the beginning if you opened your eyes and cleared your ears. Disgusting.