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

Spain Joins the Coalition of the Unwilling
The recent Spanish rejection of Bush's lap dog Aznar speaks volumes. As Spain readies itself for extrication from Iraq, Poland now openly criticizes the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive ass-kickery. The sham coalition is getting a little cozy, even in the face of copious foreign aid bribes to the lackeys.

And what does the GOP do? Essentially, they rail against the democratic process in Spain, accusing the Spaniards of giving in to terrorists. Yep, you're either with us or against us. Problem is, there are now lots of folks who, by Bush's definition, are against us. And that club looks to be launching a membership drive. Why does this administration find it so hard to accept democracy in Spain, Haiti, Columbia and other hot spots?

Does this retreat from Iraq bode ill for the future of Iraq? Hell yes. Is it a good thing? Not really, but it rests in Bush's lap for pushing an all-or-nothing strategy. He gambled that the free world would rally round his cause and believe his lies. He gambled that he could impose all the power that America has (had?) in order to bring leaders around to his way.

It's all unraveling. Terror is winning and it's all due to Bush's "strategy" of asserting American power.

Professor Pissed checks in from Madrid/ 19 March, 2004
In Spain, only 20% of the people before the bombings in Madrid last week supported (now former) President Aznar’s collusion with the Bush and Blair administrations over the war in Iraq. The protests in Spain last year against the war were the largest in the world. And yet, we are beaten over the had with lies from Bush’s minions -- such as Dennis Hastert, Republican speaker of the House and convenient mouthpiece for Bush’s covert racism, who stated bluntly that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s victory in this week’s election makes the Spanish people appeasers (“they chose to change their government to… appease terrorists”).

Say what???

For a people to refuse to be complicit in an immoral and unjustified war (which, again, they have been since before it started), this is somehow a betrayal of Bush’s idea of a coalition? And here we are being told endlessly (including in Bush’s nauseating speech on March 19) that the U.S. is keeping the world safe for democracy (didn’t the Spanish just exercise their right to vote Aznar out of office? isn’t that democracy at work?).

No one now claims that there were any WMD in Iraq – yet no Americans or Brits seem to be questioning, at least not as openly and insistently as seems called for why Bush and Blair were motivated to destroy Saddam’s Iraq. Because the Spanish people are intelligent enough to question their (and Aznar’s) motivations, and to reject the cynical attempt by Aznar’s regime to blame the Basque separatists (the ETA) in order to galvanize support against the left and postpone the election, we are told by Bush’s lackeys that Spain is a traitor to the alliance formed by the U.S.

As the French discovered, if an “ally” does anything other than what Bush’s administration tells them to do, they are branded by Hastert and such types as effectively part of the “axis of evil” that aids and abets, even perpetrates terrorism around the world (you know, those scary dark people who infiltrate the innocent, lily-white, hardworking, patriotic European and American cultures and wreak havoc on the “democratic” systems and structures that prove the “superiority” of the West). France, as is their wont, took umbrage and refused to play game. Hence we had the spectacle of “freedom fries” shoved down our throats (perhaps we’ll soon hear about “freedom omelets”….)

The Spanish should be doubly praised for refusing to give into the politics of fear that Bush and Blair have mobilized to keep themselves in power. Rather than taking the road of reaction, as was so sadly the case in the U.S. after 9/11 (with Bush purveying the rhetoric of “pure evil” to galvanize Americans behind his unjustifiable attack on Iraq), the Spanish after what is being called “3/11” here – have definitively refused it, voting in the very party that vowed to put an end to such reactive violence.

At least Spain seems to have come a long way since 1492 – the height of the inquisition, a culminating year of the Christian “reconquest” of the Spanish peninsula, in which the unconverted Jews and Arabs were expelled from Spain. I wish we could say the same of the U.S.A. – for which 1492 was also, of course, a signal year. While the Spanish are, at least in theory, attempting to negotiate the Arab presence here and there seems to be little paranoia or fear-mongering (I have to say, it is incredibly easy to get into this country – barely a glance at a passport slows one down in the totally un-militarized airports; and the streets of Madrid, just over a week after the bombings are thronged with mourners and revelers alike), Americans seem bent – weirdly – on pretending to embrace diversity within (we are all Americans, as long as we don’t “betray” the Bush administration’s increasingly fascist aims) while, in fact, attempting to project it as “out there” – those alien deserts filled with evil, scary guerilla terrorists (not to be confused with legitimate “soldiers”) with guns and begging to be bombed into oblivion. If the Native Americans had kicked Columbus’s butt back where it belonged five hundred years ago – into the lap of the inquisition – the world would surely be a different place…. At least Bush’s family might not have immigrated from whatever dank hole they came from.

Dick Clarke - America's Grandstanding
Significant other and I just finished watching the absolutely most scathing-to-date indictment of the Bush administration's war on terror. Richard Clarke, terrorism expert for Ronald Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and then Bush 2, is releasing a book this week. That book, Against all Enemies, chronicles two horrific Bush trends.

First, he depicts the Bush administration as completely complacent, thus complicit, in Al Qeada's then-looming 9/11 threat. After many attempts to alert the Bush administration to the telltale increase in "chatter" from known terror sources, Clarke was repeatedly put off. Demoted from Clinton's terrorism czar to terrorism sub-czar (a reflection of Bush's obsession with Iraq and Cold-War nostalgia at the expense of non-threats such as terror), Clarke was unable to get an audience with the President or any of his cabinet members. Just weeks before the attack, Paul Wolfowitz (Clarke was finally able to meet with some cabinet assistants) dismissed Clarke's Al Qeada pleas, as alarmist. Al Qeada, according to Wolfie, was just not a credible threat. Whoopsie!

Second, he depicts the Bush administration as irrationally focused on Iraq as the culprits of 9/11. Strong and repeated attempts were made to find some smoking gun in Iraq, despite Clarke's and George Tenet's insistence that there was no Iraq 9/11 connection (never mind that there are plenty of strong connections with allies Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others). Clarke paints a painful picture of the Bush administration trying to leverage a tragedy they could have averted into a chance to settle a score with a leader that was essentially incapable of threatening America. Whoopsie again!

In addition to the factual indictments, Clarke utters damning observations that the Bush White House has pursued a policy that makes America less safe against terror and threatens American lives.

We're buying a copy.

Lies and the Lying Liars that Sell Them
Seen the now famous pictures of John Kerry and Jane Fonda? Have you also seen the constituent separate photos that were used to create the Photoshop Phakery? Yep, it's all a wicked hoax that has been roundly refuted. But it doesn't make a difference now, that the right wing neanderthals have spread it all around.

Same for the $900,000,000,000 tax hike that Karl Rove is attributing to Kerry. The problem is, Kerry didn't say that at all. Matter of fact, he's cool with the middle class keeping their Bush tax cut. His proposals, to repeal the tax cuts for the super-sized wealthy, don't amount to anything close to the accused sum, although they do go a long way to restore fiscal sanity to Bush's fantasy budgetry.

Hey, it's only March and the slime patrol is already in full-force. If they can't find anything on Kerry, they'll lie it up and spread it around.

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