Report Shows US Invasion, Occupation of Iraq Left 1 Million Dead

From TruthOut:

"Initiatives such as the IBC ... only count deaths which are considered civilians directly killed through war-related violence," he said. "So not only are combatants not included in the statistics but also everyone who died from indirect fallouts of the war, such as lack of basic health care, hunger or contaminated drinking water. In most wars, that kind of victim exceeds the number of those directly killed. Without detailed on-site surveys, it is hard to reliably determine either whether a dead person had been a civilian or combatant, or the exact cause of death."

More here.

This is why I oppose virtually all war. I mean, I'm no pacifist. Sometimes you just have to fight, and that's that. But in the modern world, in the era of America's overwhelming military superiority over the rest of the globe, those times are so rare as to be near non-existent. No, killing for oil is not one of those occasions, either, not when alternative energy independence is just over the horizon. By the same token, fighting to keep the world safe for capitalism is sick, twisted, and foul.

Here's what happens when we wage war on a nation. Their civilization is totally upended. Things people take for granted for survival are no longer there. When civilization is gone, people die. Lots of people die. And it is directly the fault of the people who have waged war on them. That is, we killed a million people in Iraq. As the study authors quoted in the linked article observe, that's approaching genocide. And we did it.

I can't think of anything justifying genocide. If we were a nation of responsible citizens, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., would all be serving life sentences. Sadly, we are not a nation of responsible citizens. Consequently, we have the blood of a million on our hands. And none of us seem to care.

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