This data is an accounting of civilian deaths in Iraq to date.
See Iraqbodycount.net for statistical methodologies

Reconcile This
I'm having trouble here with the following incongruities:

1) Bush is crawling the country insisting that America is safer with Saddam deposed, still claiming he was a global menace.

2) The rubber-stamp Senate is in lock-step with the Prez in reviling the CIA for getting the intelligence wrong. They're running from the centerpiece of their depiction of item #1 above.

If Congress and the White House thinks the world is better off without Saddam in power, why are they excoriating the CIA for leading them into a war for false reasons?

Nevermind the allegations by White House insiders that Iraq was rammed down Tenet's throat. Nevermind Colin and Condi explicitly stating that Iraq was a non-threat before pressured to state otherwise. The only thing that makes sense is they're unable to admit the mistake of invading Iraq, but still need to deflect criticism to the recently retired CIA chief.

In short: Bush is still insisting he has removed a threat to America, although the main justification for that threat has been discredited, while deflected to the naughty CIA. But that doesn't matter 'cause it was still is a good idea to have removed the threat that has yet to be proven to be threatening. Huh?

News is rushing in hot and fast, and Professor Pissed feels the necessity of re-engaging with the real world.

Two tidbits caught my eye this week -- the first, a news clip describing Colin Powell, with a hard hat on and a hammer tucked in his belt, performing the 1970s Village People disco hit "YMCA" at the end of the international Asian security meeting.

The image of Powell cavorting to a song popularly identified as a gay classic (does Powell not realize this? is his unconscious motivating him to make a subversive statement undermining the hetero-belligerance of the Bush administration's foreign policy?) just made my week. Shouting the revised lyrics "President Bush, he said to me, Colin I need you to run the department of state. We are between Iraq and a hard place", Powell queers right-wing American politics better than any academic could ever do. A rock (Iraq, get it?) and a hard place, eh? Sounds like pornography (the clever, radical, left-wing kind) to me.

The second tid-bit -- the tiny news clip indicating that, oh so unfortunately, in the mid 1990s the US military "accidentally" destroyed military payroll records, including those covering George W.'s term of service (or not). Gosh. Isn't that too bad.

Meanwhile the shit keeps hitting the fan, with the Senate intelligence committee releasing their report citing a "global intelligence failure" on the part of the US before the attack on Iraq. Not surprisingly, the slimy, crafty Bush-ites managed to weasel out of taking the blame -- yeah, it was only the CIA; Bush knew nothing about it. Whoever said the president of the United States is actually responsible for his government? Reagan made that distinction (president vs. knowing anything) perfectly clear.

Thank heavens I was not in the States for the Reagan hagiography. I was dreading that for years. Must have been suffocating.

Signing off from under the grey skies of Northwest England,

- Professor Pissed

The John John Ticket
The suspense is over. The Crap-Sickened Pundit's erstwhile Senator is standing along side the gaunt-faced one, to yin his yang. Is Edwards opportunistic? You betcha. Is he smarmy? Uhhh, hello. he's a politician. Is he inexperienced? According to Bush, who knows intimately what perils inexperience can bring, he is.

While I am dismayed that John as well as John supported Bush's right to turn Iraq over to Halliburton, I confess that my favorite politicians, Bob Graham, Bruce Babbitt and Paul Wellstone, were probably never going to be on a ticket to unseat any Republican president. And I have to admit that when JE gets going, he does a great job of portraying the stratified schisms that Bush Cheney are working so hard to exacerbate, exploit and obscure. And what the heck? He may help Helms-suckled North Carolina to recognize the Bush Cheney ticket is speaking out its ass.

I can't wait for the veep debates!

Falluja We Hardly Knewed Ya'
Taking the expedient route out of hell, the Bush-led military pulled out of Falluja in April, leaving it policed by Iraqi Ba'ath partiers (Yep, same guys we were vilifying as evil a few months before). Problem is, it created a high intensity incubator for resistance forces, who now essentially run this city of a quarter-million. It's not like America doesn't have choices, though. In this case, it's pretty clear: 1) finish what we started by turning Falluja into a Waring blender of human carnage, some of which may just be bad guys, or 2) pretend we "liberated" Falluja, at least until November 3rd and run like hell.

Of course, comb-sucking Wolfie and his ilk would love the former, which would ensure the further resentment of America that would in turn allow justification of the paving of Iraq. But then Karl "ignore the man behind the curtain" Rove would just as soon paint a rosy facade of Morning in Falluja (with no mention of Mourning in Falluja) with gauzy images of little brown children hoisting their Zionism-inspired flag while sipping a Simplesse infused Cherry Coke, all the while reporters are terrified to venture into the shark-infested waters of the real Falluja to tell us any different.

Please, No More Conspiracy Theories
I'm getting fed up with folks hinting that the Bushies have some deep, secret hidden agenda and are craftily machinating global events to bring about their goals. These aren't criminals who synchronize their watches, study the bank vault blueprints and rehearse plans A, through Z in preparation for the grand heist. Bush and pals are Jerry Lundegaard's hired killers from the movie Fargo - idiots botching an ill-conceived plan, hatched for ill-begotten motives, which fails miserably in achieving its objectives while wastefully destroying innocents as they careen into hell on a path strewn with bodies and miscalculation.

While Bush may have the family connections to wield favors from Saudi oil barons, Russian spies and titans of global finance, the intellectual effort to construct a legitimate conspiracy is solely lacking in an administration steeped in tragic buffoonery. And were it not for the thousands of innocent corpses left in the wake of their plans, billions of squandered dollars of future Americans' prosperity and the destruction of generations of global American goodwill, the ineptitude of Bush's cadre of keystone capitalist cronies would be every bit as amusing as chain smoking chimpanzees on unicycles.

But let's not taint the Freemasons, Area 51 and Sasquatch with talk of secret government conspiracies, okay?

Saddam's Trial
In the rush for photo ops of Moustache in an orange jumpsuit, we plead for a fair and speedy trial of the People of America vs. Saddam Hussein. To help get things started, here are some co-conspirator charges to consider:

• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq cluster bombs
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq strains of anthrax
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq strains of botulism
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq strains of bubonic plague
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq components chemicals for producing sarin gas
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq components chemicals for producing ricin gas
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq components chemicals for producing other nerve agents
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq satellite photos of the Iranian troop movements, which the accused used to pin-point his chemical attacks
• Reagan removed Iraq from the State Department’s list of terrorist-supporting nations
• President Reagan initiated the National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114 of 26 November 1983 - "U.S. Policy toward the Iran-Iraq War" to protect oil supplies, Reagan authorized "whatever was necessary and legal" to stop Iran from winning the war
• December 1983 Rumsfeld extended Saddam the resumption of full diplomatic relations with the U.S.A., which he warmly accepted
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush secured generous American and international loans for Iraq
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq with tanks, helicopters, and munitions.
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush provided Iraq with a computerized database and video surveillance cameras
• Reagan, Rumsfeld and Bush directed American commandos to attack Iranian patrol boats and blow up Iranian oil platforms
• Rumsfeld assured Tariq Aziz that Washington's public condemnation of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons did not reflect administration's true allegiances.

Well, at least two of the three co-conspirators are still available for subpoena, and perhaps Nancy Reagan's astrologer can stand in for Ronnie.

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