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Mass Killings

U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq

By Peter Phillips

The United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi 
deaths since the invasion five and half years ago.  In a January 2008 
report, a British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) 
reports that,  “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 
1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which 
started in 2003…. We now estimate that the death toll between March 
2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 
1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated 
with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 
946,000 and 1,120,000”.

This report comes on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by 
Johns Hopkins University published in the Lancet medical journal that 
confirmed the continuing numbers of mass deaths in Iraq.  A study 
done by Dr. Les Roberts from January 1, 2002 to March 18 2003 put the 
civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A second study 
published in the Lancet in October 2006 documented over 650,000 
civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion.  The 2006 
study confirms that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods 
caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are 
directly attributable to US forces.

             The now estimated 1.2 million dead, as of July 2008, 
includes children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, cab 
drivers, clerics, schoolteachers, factory workers, policemen, poets, 
healthcare workers, day care providers, construction workers, 
babysitters, musicians, bakers, restaurant workers and many more. All 
manner of ordinary people in Iraq have died because the United States 
decided to invade their country. These are deaths in excess of the 
normal civilian death rate under the prior government.

The magnitude of these deaths is undeniable. The continuing 
occupation by US forces guarantees a mass death rate in excess of 
10,000 people per month with half that number dying at the hands of 
US forces— a carnage so severe and so concentrated at to equate it 
with the most heinous mass killings in world history. This act has 
not gone unnoticed.

Recently, Dennis Kucinich introduced a single impeachment article 
against George W. Bush for lying to Congress and the American people 
about the reasons for invading Iraq. On July 15 The House forwarded 
the resolution to the Judiciary Committee with a 238 to 180 vote.  
That Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s threat to 
the US is now beyond doubt. Former US federal prosecutor Elizabeth De 
La Vega documents the lies most thoroughly in her book U.S. Vs Bush, 
and numerous other researchers have verified Bush’s untrue statements.

The American people are faced with a serious moral dilemma. Murder 
and war crimes have been conducted in our name. We have allowed the 
war/occupation to continue in Iraq and offered ourselves little 
choice within the top two presidential candidates for immediate 
cessation of the mass killings. McCain would undoubtedly accept the 
deaths of another million Iraqi civilians in order to save face for 
America, and Obama’s 18-month timetable for withdrawal would likely 
result in another 250,000 civilian deaths or more.

We owe our children and ourselves a future without the shame of mass 
murder on our collective conscience. The only resolution of this 
dilemma is the immediate withdrawal of all US troops in Iraq and the 
prosecution and imprisonment of those responsible. Anything less 
creates a permanent original sin on the soul of the nation for that 
we will forever suffer.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University 
and director of Project Censored a media research group.  He is the 
co-editor with Dennnis Loo of the book Impeach the President: The 
Case Against Bush and Cheney.
 

posted by: Whitebeard at 08:18 | link | comments |
iraq, us, war, censored news