One million now - how many more need to die?

Sometimes it's hard to figure out why anyone still takes the American mass media seriously. Even though everyone knows the Iraq War was started on the basis of lies, they all eagerly built up the testimony of General Petraeus (the general in charge of US troops there) on the progress of the war as if it meant something. Given that Bush and Co. have never told the truth about the war, why would anyone with half a brain believe any "facts" about it from any official US source? So Petraeus gets up and says exactly what he's expected to say - light at the end of the tunnel and all that crap. Big surprise - I could have written his speech for him.

Meanwhile, there has been only minimal coverage of a new survey by the respected (and far-from-leftie) British polling organisation ORB that shows the death toll in Iraq has now climbed above one million. This validates the previous scientific study in October 2006, stridently rubbished by supporters of the war, which estimated the death toll as of early last year at over 650,000. In Baghdad, the most violent area polled, almost half the households questioned had lost a member to violence since the start of the war.

Then there is the often overlooked issue of refugees, with estimated numbers displaced by the war running between 3 and 5 million, half of them fleeing abroad.

"The ORB study was made public on the same day that President Bush went on national television to deliver a report on conditions in Iraq that was nothing short of delusional. With a million Iraqis dead, a million wounded, and four to five million displaced, Bush hailed the return of 'normal life' to the devastated country."

Meanwhile, as the article from which the above quote is taken points out, the Democrats, elected last year on their promises to end the war, continue to twiddle their thumbs in Congress, making them complicit in the carnage. There is a popular quotation by Claire Wolfe going the rounds that says, "America is at that awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards". I'm not so sure it's too early any more.