In Monday’s press conference, in describing the insurgents, Bush said, “They use violence as a tool to do that. You know, they’re willing to kill innocent people.”
What does he think our war had been doing? And how has the media been reporting what we’ve done?
The media – print and broadcast – has recently been repeating over and over the Bush mantra that the number of Iraqi civilian war-dead is 30,000.
No one seems to have noticed that this number has remained constant for at least a year, nor that last week almost that many civilians were reported dead in Baghdad, alone.
It is time that you start doing your job and reporting the findings of other sources of information on what this war has visited upon the Iraqi people.
A well-researched study released some time ago by The Lancet Medical Journal states that our invasion of Iraq has been responsible for the death of at least 150,000 civilians. The majority of these deaths, which are in addition to those normally expected from natural causes, illness and accidents, have been among women and children.
This report is based on the work of teams from the Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University in the U.S., and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.
The figure of 100,000 is based on somewhat “conservative assumptions,” notes Les Roberts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, who led the study.
That estimate excludes Falluja, a hotspot for violence. If the data from this town is included, the compiled studies point to about 250,000 deaths since the outbreak of the U.S.-led war.
For the source of this information, go to http://informationclearinghouse.info/
Kevin O’Morrison
Edmonds
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