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Feb. 17, 2005 "I would say 30,000 more or less have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," said George W. Bush in response to a question posed by reporters. His estimate was repeated in all the mainstream newspapers, as if his saying something makes it authoritative and definitive, when, in view of his low score on the true-and-false test of the last three years, hardly anything should be treated with as much skepticism as a statement from the White House. I have reproduced George W. Bush’s exact words, in view of a recent exchange in which my collocutor faulted me for not making a distinction between Iraqis "killed by Americans and those dying by others’ hands." Apparently, Bush’s words, unless there are more, do not make such a distinction necessary. On the contrary, they would seem to be a blanket statement covering all the excess deaths since the time of the invasion. I was shocked to read Bush’s statement, since I can remember distinctly that in the late Summer of 2003, many observers were estimating 50,000 or more deaths, the most usual figure being 55,000. Then, in late 2004, the British medical journal Lancet published the results of a survey that put the number at 100,000. And there are those today who set the number as high as 250,000. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11674.htm I know the old refrain that I might expect to hear from several contributors to useless-knowledge.com. Without even bothering to look into the allegations, they would dismiss the estimates out of hand with some hasty simple-minded generalization like, "Those figures must come from Democrats, Europeans, the left wing, liberals, Muslims or Arabs. They hate us; that’s why they’re trying to tear us down all the time. They’re all ragheads or wannabe ragheads." There are some contributors that maintain even that the present administration has not lied at all about Iraq in the past three years. For example, they won’t own up to fact that Bush lied about the WMD; they’ll use the dodge that he was the victim of intelligence failures. They won’t own up to the lie that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger. They won’t own up to the fact that they launched a vendetta against Joseph Wilson. They won’t own up to the lie of a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They won’t take any responsibility for the Abu Ghraib abuses. You would expect a real leader to take the blame for what his subordinates did, even if knew in his heart that he did not and would not authorize their misdeeds. But George Bush is the kind of man who would blame his subordinates for the misdeeds he ordered them to perpetrate, as if he had known nothing about them at all. So if someone says that 55,000 or 100,000 or 250,000 Iraqis died in the war, I consider the allegation at least deserving of being taken seriously, allowing of course that it may be deliberately or accidentally overstated. There’s no way for me really to know with complete certainty. I can only speculate. But when George W. Bush says that 30,000 died, it means absolutely nothing. He is totally untrustworthy, and his pronouncements are all mere self-serving nonsense. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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