The Grand Delusional

I will make this brief. This week was the fifth anniversary of one of the most disastrous endeavors in American history. The invasion of Iraq has cost America thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and devastated any future prospects of a normalized state in Iraq for the foreseeable future (not to mention the untold diplomatic damage such unilateral action has caused). It’s fitting that on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Bush would declare “a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror” was achieved by the five years spent in Iraq. It appears the Chief Executive is either delusional or myopic: the Iraq war neither combatted terrorism (and in fact stoked more of it) and has yet to be a victory in any sense of the word. On the same day, poll numbers showed that Bush has also achieved the lowest approval rating of his Presidency — 31 percent — which is also among the lowest among modern presidency’s (lower then Clinton during impeachment, lower then Carter during the Tehran hostage crisis, and even lower than Nixon after Watergate).

Sources: CNN: Poll: Bush’s popularity hits new low and BBCNews: Bush speech hails Iraq ‘victory’.

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See Also: Conservatives sure were smart about Iraq — in the early ’90s, Jeffrey Goldberg On Iraq, What does “win” mean?, Five Years of the War in Iraq: Where’s the Media Coverage?, Five years ago, Cheney on Two-Thirds of Americans’ Opposition to Iraq Occupation: ‘So?”, Comparing The Sacrifice, and OIF Anniversary Interview.

[tags]george bush, victory in iraq, speech, low poll numbers, america[/tags]

Every 9.74 Days, Iraqi Civilians Experience September 11th

Interesting Statistical Comparisons

Every 9.74 days, there is an equivalent amount of casualties in Iraq & Afghanistan as September 11th.

There are 9.53 Virginia Tech shootings in Iraq & Afghanistan every day.

There is on average 305 daily civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 14 days, as many Iraqi and Afghani civilians are killed as the entire amount of American military personnel killed since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Note: There is some discrepancy between various sources on the amount of civilian casualties since the US-led invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan. A study in October of 2006 listed over 650,000 killed (see Washington Post article below) while other sources vary from over 1 million to just over 80,000 (see British-government funded Iraq Body Count below). I computed 400,000 Iraqi civilian fatalities and 45,000 Afghani civilian fatalities by averaging several sources, though I personally feel these are conservative estimates.

Update: The differing methodologies among these studies led to these wide variations. For example, the lowest figure from IBC is based solely on media reports of violent deaths, while the Lancet study surveyed random families in Iraq and includes non-violent war related deaths, such as those dead to lawlessness and collapsed infrastructure.

Raw Data: 400,000 Iraqi Civilian Deaths, 45,000 Afghani Deaths, 4,208 US Deaths in Iraq (3,972 of which are US armed forces and 236 private contractors), 415 US Deaths in Afghanistan, and 2,974 September 11th Deaths.

Sources: Deadly Hubris: A million Iraqis dead — for what? By Justin Raimondo. http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=163051

How Many Iraqis Have Really Died? By Diane Farsetta. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77992

Forgotten victims by Jonathan Steele, the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/comment/story/0,11447,718647,00.html

September 2007 – More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered. Opinion Research Business, http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78.

Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_the_U.S._invasion_of_Afghanistan

Casualties of the Iraq War, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003

Casualties in Iraq: The Human Cost of Occupation, Antiwar. http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 by David Brown, Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

Iraq Body Count, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/.

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Related on PBH: Civilian Death Statistics in Afghanistan and Iraq

See Also: Iraqi civilian casualties rose 36 percent in February, Rescuing Our Iraqi Friends, Citizenship Applications From Veterans Backlogged, Progress: In the Slums of Fallujah, It’s The Iraq Top Torture Tune Rundown!, The War for the Surge, Afghan Poppy Production – Another Boom Year, Secrets and Lies, An inconvenient AFG truth, Moral Dilemma, Political Expedience, US Soldier Throws Puppy Off Cliff, and Speaking Of Iraqi Justice...

[tags]iraqi civilians, september 11, 9/11, civilian casualties, innocent, graphs, afghanistan, total fatalities, data, afghani, us military, army, invasion, middle east[/tags]

It Takes a Village, Hillary

See Also: A Million Little Donors, Clinton campaign circulates Obama smear photo, Over 1 million Americans donate to Obama’s campaign, Cleveland rocks? Clinton, Obama spar, but did they connect?, Game, Set & Match Obama, and DEM DEBATE, VERSION 20.0.

[tags]barack obama, hillary clinton, big donors, political donations, campaign funds, corporate donors, lawyers, lobbyists, political cartoon, hilarious[/tags]

Americans Know Where Change Lies

Polling data from American Research group and Pollster.com.

See Also: The Latest Clinton Gambit, A Preview of the 2008 Election, Barack Obama 2/27 Event in Columbus Ohio: Large and Organized, McCain vs the missing responsibility of the Fourth Estate, Two Views on Nader’s Candidacy, Obama’s Cult of Personality is Overblown, and DNC to File FEC Complaint Against McCain.

[tags]barack obama, george h.w. bush, disapproval rating, graphs, hillary clinton, national polls, economy, direction of america, pictures, poll numbers, democratic presidential nomination, president bush, correlation[/tags]

Who Would Osama Vote For?

From a Fox News Poll:

Who is Usama Rooting For?

Who does Usama bin Laden want to be the next president? More people think the terrorist leader wants Obama to win (30 percent) than think he wants Clinton (22 percent) or McCain (10 percent). Another 18 percent says it doesn’t matter to bin Laden and 20 percent are unsure

Yes, that’s right, Fox News is basically conducting push polling for the RNC by asking potential voters who they think Osama Bin Laden would vote for. And guess who won! Your man of questionable ‘madrasa’ background and middle names, Barack Hussein Osama!

Remember Kids Barack Obama would talk with the enemies of our military-industrial complex! And you know what that means: he’s complacent against terrorism.

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See Also: If It’s A War This Honky Wants…, Beyond the pale, The Roundup: Nobody Likes the Snow, and Lodge Your Complaint About Bill O’Reilly’s Lynching Comment.

[tags]madrasa, fox news, usama, osama bin laden, barack hussein obama, muslim question, links to islam, media bias, terror, democrats[/tags]