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

Stepping Back on Iraq
With our invective laden diatribe poking a weekly stick in the eye of the nefarious Bush administration, it is a good idea to occasionally step back and get a broad perspective on just what has been going down. Is it really as bad as the pouty ol' left wing press would have you believe? I mean, c'mon, we're making progress, right? Nobody said this would be a cinch...

But as Iraq disasters accumulate, America tends to become numb and almost acquiescent to each week's up-ratcheting in the sickening mess. So, let's start from the top, shall we?

1) Pre-Emptive War
Let's remember that this was a war that was launched preemptively. Iraq didn't threaten us or our allies. Well, we pretended they did, but let's get real. They performed no acts of external belligerence whatsoever. Yet America deemed it "defensive" to attack a country on the basis of what we presumed it might do. Never mind the validity of that presumption (that's point 2), when a nation chooses to wage war speculatively, it is in trouble. When that nation happens to be without peer in military might, the world is in trouble. Preemption essentially gives warmongers free reign to invade, occupy and perform hideous acts based not on any facts, but merely the claim that wrong could be done otherwise.

2) We Got it All Wrong
Our presumptions were all wrong because we wanted a specific reality to come true. Iraq didn't harbor terrorists until we "liberated" the country for their incursion. Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction until we started dropping ours into their towns, villages and cities. And of course, the torture and abuses Saddam heaped upon Iraqis has been eclipsed by our own intelligence gathering techniques. Then, our presumptions of Iraqi culture were totally off base. Open arms? Roses? In Wolfie's wet dreams, maybe. Imposing democracy at the end of a gun barrel? Hasn't worked since the Japanese surrender.

3) Hearts and Minds
The final remaining shred of justification for the war on Iraq was that we are planting seeds of freedom in the desert, from which beautiful flowers would grow and spread. Instead, the arabic world sees what we call freedom as a perverse combination of military bravado and homoerotic torture. We have presented such a hideous farce of democracy, that we've set back the course of global freedom decades and sent uncertain middle-easterners into the arms of extremists.

4) A Dangerous Detour
While Bush stars in his own action flick as the swashbuckling jet fighter pilot, threats to western democracies have become more insidious and scheming. Rather than stopping terrorism, the war on Iraq has swelled the ranks of what was once a fringe movement of anti-Americanism. These new fighters are picking their battles carefully, and working to assist America in portraying itself as a psychotic unrepentant military machine, intent on projecting its deadly ambitions on the world.

What this war is really about is Bush defending America's right to disproportionately consume global resources. Woe be unto any who infringe on that right, including the subject of the next rant...

Blame the Chinese
America is freaking out about $2 gas. Although the founding fathers neglected explicit protections to Americans' rights to petroleum consumption, many in the US see gassing up to be a pre-ordained right worth killing thousands of innocent Iraqis for. There's a lot of handwringing among the SUV gas guzzlers who are actually having to consider altering their super sized lifestyles in order to still afford those new golf clubs.

Turns out that industry experts see the pinch coming on two fronts. First, there haven't been any notable discoveries of sweet SUV-crack in decades. That's the supply crunch. Second, it seems that certain Asian countries whose economies are heating up feel they have as much right to foreign oil as we do. That's a problem. Will America sit back and take it? or will we do something stupid and take an aggressive stance against these burgeoning economic juggernauts? or perhaps (heaven forbid!!) we'll finally wise up and start applying American know how to explore renewable sources of energy and energy efficient technologies.

Unless some geologists find a bunch more oil under the tectonic sofa cushions or the Asian powerhouses decide they don't really want energy after all, America is facing some very difficult times. With Bush in the White House, it is hard to see how his toolkit of tax cuts and smart bombs will help resolve it peacefully. Maybe President Sharpton will have some interesting new ideas.

Bush Does Something Briefly Non-Idiotic
Stop the presses and internet uploads! For once in his presidency, Bush brushed aside the expedient in favor of the rational. Largely Dem lawmakers were pressuring the Rhinestone Cowboy to pump some of the emergency reserves of oil into the market, presumably to lower the price of gas. Really stupid idea. That stuff is there for real emergencies (which he's gonna need for Gulf Wars III, IV & VII), not just to make Tiffany's Hummer trip to the video store more affordable. Cheney said Nosireebob, to which Bush concurred "Yeah, what he said."

Tempting though it may be to try to flood the market to lower the price, Bush resisted, knowing full well that his Saudi buddies can do it better, and with kinder timing election-wise. But whatever reason you want to attribute to Bush's brief moment of nincompooplessness, he did the right thing.

Now back to the lynching...

Muammar, America's Poster Boy Gets Huffy
One of the final shreds of after-the-fact justification for turning Iraq into an experiment for Wolfowitz's global domination theories was Muammar Qaddafi's renunciation of WMD. The theory goes that the then-evil Colonel was so petrified by the rabies-infested Rumsfeld that he shelved all his plans to destroy America and gave away his toys. In return, Qaddafi received a handsome assortment of goodies, including a year's supply of Turtle Wax, Rice-a-Roni and a collection of Chili's Low-Carb Mexcellent Appetizers with an Attitude©. The once-evil-then-angelic Colonel was irrefutable proof that America could bring enemies into the fold just by scaring the shit out of the entire planet.

Ever the opportunist, the once-evil-then-angelic-now-jury's-out Colonel sought to have a calculatedly high-profile hissy fit at the summit of Arab leaders. Excoriating America efforts to remake the middle east, Colonel Q declared "If Saddam lived for another 10 years, would he be able to kill as many Iraqis and destroy as much of Iraq as the Americans have done in one year?' then stormed out.

But I'll grant you this, he is still arguably the least awful outcome of the war against Iraq.

Okay, but First a Little Redemption
How does America solve the PR problem of Islamic horror at the evil wrought at Abu Ghraib? That's easy, we give it a new name. That's what we do best. In keeping with American fascination with makeovers, we have renamed the facility "Camp Redemption." Problem solved.

Who says George Orwell is dead?

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