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

The Betsy Ross of Iraq
Operation Destroy Any Semblance of Iraqi National Identity isn't progressing too well. This week's episode features a makeover of a tired old arabic flag with a bunch of scribble written on it. Sure, it had stars and stripes, but face it - this old threadpile was just begging for a made-for-primetime tear down rebuild.

Enter America.

There's no country on earth more in tune with the power of imagery. And what better symbolizes the obliteration of national identity than a new flag? It's a no-brainer. We'll throw some Islamic symbol in there to keep the heathens pacified. Let's see, what was Mohammed nailed up on? Hmmm.... A crescent! That's it! We'll use a shade of light blue that is slightly different from the Israeli flag, to ensure there ain't no complaining from these damn ingrates. We'll throw a Kurdish bone in there with a streak of yellow (no comment). We'll keep the color red out of it, 'cause that's kind of a touchy subject these days.

After all this thoughtful effort, whaddya know? These people are never satisfied with anything! They're all up in arms (literally) about the damn flag that we made 'em at OUR expense! And we even hand-picked the governing council from which the design was borne.

Just to assure folks this was the more subtle design, here's a sample of the also-rans:

Cheney's favorite. It helps convey the White House is down with the peeps.	Bush's top choice. It helps underscore Arabic humiliation	Hey, how'd this one get out of committee?

SOTC.com Flashback...
"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

GI Joe President Bush, May 1, 2003 on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln

"No More Torture Chambers"
This was the final piece of flotsam that President Bush clung to as the USS Iraqwar Justify hit the iceberg of reality and began sinking. Gone were promises of WMD, Al Qaeda support, viable threats to America. All Bush had left was the sense that we had ousted an evil tyrant. The rallying image in his evil was that Saddam had torture chambers in which Iraqis were subjected to horrific psychological and ultimately, physical torture.

But a funny thing happened on the way to imposing Christian charity at gunpoint. This past week, we have been subjected to images of Arabic prisoners being tortured and humiliated, kind of like the good old days. Images of threatened genital electrocution, gleeful soldiers assembling naked Arabs into poses of homosexual orgies, female soldiers threatening naked Arab men - all these played out graphically in Arab media, further fueling the flames of anti-Americanism which spills over the brims of Arabic hearts and minds.

Right wingers have been defending the President's reaction of immediate repudiation. Intent on punishing those responsible, Bush quickly tried to smother the inferno of American resentment that burns ever brighter across the globe. The awkward reality is that the Oval Office has had knowledge of prisoner abuse for months now. Sexual assaults have been noted in Army reports from 2003. When Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski noted that reservists in charge of prisoners were being encouraged by military intelligence officers, she was "quietly suspended" from her post and the matter was swept under the rug.

Clearly the President doesn't care about the sexual torture and cultural humiliation of enemy prisoners of war. He only issues a rebuke when the American media catches a whiff of it.

Dick vs. the Duck-Hunting Supreme Court
As every self-defined tree-hugger knows, the Cheney White House has been especially chummy with the titans of the energy industry. Matter of fact, Bush and Dick were members of that elite group of power brokers. When Dick convened the White House Energy Task Force early in his presid... I mean vice-presidency, it was alleged that he essentially handed over environmental policy development to a group of industry executives, intent on exempting their activities from bothersome public health protections.

The tree huggers caught wind of this and demanded to review the minutes of these meetings, only to find strong resistance from Lord Dick, in the Nixonian guise of executive privilege. Things escalated through the courts, with each ruling coming down against his Dickness. Now, the case is at the SC level where fellow mallard murderer Antonin has refused to recuse himself (There's gotta be a hip hop lyric in there somewhere...).

What is ironic about all this is that the general idea that what went on with the task force is no longer causing much debate outside of fringe nutcase circles. The task force received "input" from anti-anti-pollution groups, the task force recommended large scale rollbacks in the prevailing pollution curbs and environmental standards. Mercury, anyone?

The only thing Dick has left to hide are the juicy quotes from the task force session - the made-for-John-Kerry sound bites which portray the obvious: Dick & Bush have sold out environmental protection to the polluters. Given this administration's velcroesque cling to fantasized positions in the face of overwhelming contradicting reality, it should come as no surprise that the suppression of these sound bites is of tantamount concern. Of course if the press and inquiring citizens had any sense of outrage, it wouldn't require that level of delicious quote.

Bush Crams for 9/11 Panel Exam
News reports depict President Bush as studying hard for his lip sync'ed testimony before the 9/11 panel. What is he studying? Isn't he just supposed to go in and recite from his memory as to what happened on his watch? We're confused here. We thought studying was what you did when you needed to master knowledge that you don't already have.

Gosh, if it weren't for Bush being such an exemplar of character, you'd think he was preparing answers that were at variance with his memory.

But push aside conspiratorial thoughts, oh grassy-knoll-illuminati-area-51 theorists. Just because he didn't swear to the voracity of his 90 minutes of untranscribed, unrecorded, Dick at his side, off the record "conversation" doesn't mean he has anything to hide from the panel of evil inquisitors, hell-bent on finding someone willing to accept responsibility for protecting Americans.

Bush described the grueling 90 minute ordeal as "just a good session," observing "They had a lot of questions." The Rhinestone Cowboy then observed of our fight against the terrorists, "we have to be correct 100 percent of the time in defending America and they got to be right once."

Huh?

A Note to My "Death to the Crap Sickened Pundit" Buddies
Lest our cozy readership assume we incestuously travel exclusively in whiney bleeding heart circles, it should be noted that we keep a respectable stable of token Grand Old Partiers as friends, or at least e-mail correspondents. Among these knee jerks is an interesting trend: after significant discussion about the positives of our war on ter' the knee jerks offer a soft spoken admission that, yeah, the whole Iraq adventure was unjustified, poorly wrought and now a budget busting <insert_synonym_for_quagmire> that will imperil our world standing for decades to come. When we get to this point, I inquire as to their Nov 2004 inclinations.

"Well, I have to go with Bush" is the reluctant response.

This astounds me. What will it take? I wonder. What could possibly be more denounceable than misleading America into a war that we can't win that will cost us hundreds of billions of dollars? What, I ask you?

Oh, I know: getting a blowjob and/or allegedly pretending to throw ribbons over a fence.

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