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

Evil or Stupid? Do We Have to Choose?
Present punditry posed this pernicious picklist a while ago as the possible options for explaining GIGeorge's motivation for the war against Iraq. While I have leaned toward the maliciously evil theory for awhile, the New Yorker magazine present a compelling counter-argument for self-inflicted stupidity. The case set forth by Seymour Hersch, is essentially that the White House put in place a system to both limit and bias intelligence, to ensure top decision makers would have a completely seamlessly skewed rationale for their war.

While the New Yorker case for Stupid over Evil is certainly a delicious possibility, there is a Occam's Razor explanation that seeks not to choose between these options, but marry them into one steeping cesspool of malicious incompetence. Thus, the Bush Regime evilly established intelligence skewing mechanisms that would stupidly push our nation into war.

Barbara Bush on Her Family: "You can criticize me, but don't criticize my children and don't criticize my daughters-in-law and don't criticize my husband, or you're dead."

Professor Pissed replies: Well, not only were George H.W. and George W. Bush NOT forced to take on the controversial role of President of the United States, George W. did not even legally win the election. I'm afraid, Barbara, that he's put himself in the way for some criticism. Tell your husband and son not to run for public office (and not to betray the Constitution in order to "win") if they don't want to be criticized.

BB on The Democrats: "It gets a little old when 10 grown men run around the country not talking about what they're going to do, but knocking my precious, courageous, brilliant son. That's a mother speaking."

PP: Barbara, I'm afraid you're just not listening. Apparently, with the narcissism so common to the elite classes who retain power in the US and beyond, you can only hear what people have to say about you and your clan. You might check out Howard Dean's website, for example, if you want to see all of the detailed proposals he has made that have nothing to do with his righteous and completely on the mark criticisms of your hapless, greedy, and myopic son. Right now, the site highlights renewable energy issues -- imagine that! you may not know what this concept entails given your family's investment in promoting excessive energy use in order to fill your own pockets.

BB on Iraq: "Well, they may not find [banned weapons in Iraq], because, my gosh,
it's a big sandy country. But look what they did find in the sand. They found thousands of bodies. That's enough for me."

PP: Oh, you're lobbing me high ones here, Barbara. Whose bodies have been found in the sand? Who killed them? Last count, the US was responsible for quite a few of them. And your comment that "it's a big sandy country" betokens not only your provincialism but the defensiveness that has become a predictable aspect of the Bush junta's response to any criticism. I mean really. The Bush administration knew about the sand -- as well as the substantial urban areas in Iraq when they made their charges and insisted on perpetrating a war there. Funny how comments about the terrain, now that weapons have not been found, suddenly verges on racism (are we talking "towel heads" here? primitives who live in holes in the sand?)....

BB on Al Gore: "He was very gracious, and he was a good sport. And went out of his way to speak to Jen, and meet Jen and Barbara and Laura and me. And he was just very gracious. And you know it hurts to lose."

PP: Let me just point out again that Gore didn't lose.

BB on George as a Child: "And a lot of people, mostly the press, ask if George W. was a rascal when he was growing up. And the answer is of course not. He was a perfect child."

PP: Really? Then what happened when he went (traveling on his magic carpet of class privilege) to Yale? "Perfect" hardly describes the behavior of this alcoholic, drug-abusing slough-off.

BB on The First Lady: "I think maybe Laura's been the biggest surprise for America. What a woman."

PP: No comment. I think I'll stop right here. (Give me Hilary Clinton, with her brilliance and political experience or Cherie Blair, with her law degree and fearless professionalism, any day.)

Signing of from the UK....

W Tours Asia...                     and Survives!
Yes, Lancelot Link, our 43rd executive took to the far reaches of the planet last week, in search of war lovers who would throw money Iraqward and send hapless minions into the streets of Tikrit as fresh targets. But those damn ingrate Aussies! and Filipinos! and Indonesians! The protests were deafening. The reception very awkward.

But Bush tried his shtick on a fresh audience (see Lowering the Bar, below) and the response ranged from tepid to outraged. Aussies were ejected from parliament, protesters were raging outside each venue.

But he was quick with the "I love free speech" quip. Good one George. It didn't even sound painfully rehearsed!

Lowering the Bar
The most sickening message out GIGeorge's trip to the warm climates, was his supposedly rhetorical question "Isn't Iraq better off now, without Saddam Hussein?" which he has back tracked into, with the incredible shrinking bright triumph of his massive aircraft carrier landing fading into a Dukakis-in-the-tank memory.

Let's be clear about the newly declared threshold for success. The new threshold? Turning Iraq into an arguably marginally better place than when it was, according to Bush et al, ruled by a murderous tyrant who killed all opposition, ran the infrastructure into the ground (with some help of the sanctions) and destroyed the Iranian national will-to-live. Bush is attempting to snatch victory out of the jaws of tragedy-borne-of-idiocy by dumbing down our, I mean his goals.

As long as he can make a claim that Iraq is, in total, incrementally better than the hellhole that preceded our invasion, he feels we were justified in squandering international alliances, spending over $100,000,000 and killing over 20,000 humans.

How grotesquely pathetic is that?

Rummy Will Find That Leaker!!
No, not the one who ratted out Valerie Plame. He's going to find the one who leaked his hand-wringing memo of secret self-doubt. The memo, best enjoyed in its original source, portrays Rummy as second-guessing the tactics of world domination that had worked to a tee in those many late night games of Stratego with Wolfowitz.

Challenging the killbots in the Pentagon to change with the times, doubting the effectiveness of the war on Iraqi anarchy, acknowledging the US's failure in reducing Al Q'aeda, Rummy hand crafted a memo for the Democratic party ads, to be aired in six months.

So Ashcroft will, in fact, find the leaker, who will likely get transferred to a field job as Tikrit tank inspector. As for the Plame leaker? Well, apparently some crimes are best left unsolved... (with apologies to This is Spinal Tap)

Congress Sucks Brains Out of Partial Birth Abortion
What a crock the whole PBA issue is. It is a rare procedure which is used most often to remove encephalitic fetuses and overwhelmingly in cases where the viability of the baby beyond a few tragic days in pediatric intensive care is nil.

But, swaddled in the mantle of self-appointed moralism, Congress has declared late-term abortions (partial birth? Gimme a break!) illegal. In yet another attempt to impose the federal government into individual's private lives, the GOP and its complicit Democratic drones sends a strong message to women struggling with life and death decisions of profound religious, family and emotional import:

Millionaire politicians, being bought and sold by corporate interests, implementing a strategy to accumulate power from which to further their agendas of greed, are better at making health-care decisions than the individuals whose lives hang in the balance by those decisions.

...and there're plenty of quotes by the baby-killer-killers proclaiming the partial birth ban to be inconsequential on its own merit, yet it portends ominous enormity in their quest to control human reproductivity.

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