Bush: U.S. permanently 'liberated' 30K Iraqis
For those wingnuts who think that I have been exaggerating when I've been reporting that at least 25,000 to 27,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the Bush regime's illegal, immoral, unprovoked and imperialist invasion of Iraq in March 2003, this is from the horse's ass' mouth today:
The United States has killed about 30,000 Iraqis since March 2003.
Reports The Associated Press today (my comments are in [brackets] and words in bold are words that I am emphasizing):
President Bush offered encouragement to war-weary Iraqis [today] but acknowledged they have paid a heavy price -- 30,000 dead -- as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath.
As Iraqis began voting in parliamentary elections, Bush said that no country has formed a democracy without "challenges, setbacks and false starts." [Um, no country was ever successfully bombed into "freedom" and "democracy," that I'm aware of...]
...Bush unexpectedly invited questions from the audience and immediately was asked about the number of Iraqi casualties in the war.
"I would say 30,000 more or less have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," [Bush] said. "We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."
White House counselor Dan Bartlett said later that Bush's estimate of the number of Iraqis killed was not an official figure but that the president was simply repeating public estimates reported in the media....
Another questioner challenged the administration's linkage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the Iraq war. Bush said that Saddam Hussein was a threat and he was widely believed to have weapons of mass destruction -- a belief that later proved false.
"I made a tough decision," Bush said. [It wasn't "a tough decision." Bush and his henchpeople -- or at least his henchpeople -- wanted to invade Iraq even before 9/11 -- even before Bush stole office in late 2000.] "And knowing what I know today I'd make the decision again. Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country."
[How, exactly, does the United States prevent future acts of terrorism against Americans and/or American interests by Islamist extremists by killing 30,000 innocent Muslims in Iraq, Muslims who had already been beaten down by dictator Saddam Hussein and years of sanctions imposed from without? Someone please explain this to me, because I'm rather dull.]
...Most Iraqis disapprove of the presence of U.S. forces in their country, yet they are optimistic about Iraq's future and their own personal lives, according to a new poll.
More than two-thirds of those surveyed oppose the presence of troops from the United States and its coalition partners and less than half, 44 percent, say their country is better off now than it was before the war, according to an ABC News poll conducted with Time magazine and other media partners.
"Success will help the image of the United States," Bush said. "Look, I recognize we got an image issue, particularly when you've got Arabic television stations -- that are constantly just pounding America, saying 'America is fighting Islam,' 'Americans can't stand Muslims,' 'This is a war against a religion.'"
[Um, those things are true, at least in part, and after reading that remark of Bush's about "Arabic" TV stations, I'm sure that he wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera. And isn't how Bush incorrectly says "got" instead of "have" and "Arabic" instead of "Arab" just cute? I don't know about you, but I don't want my president to be articulate. I want my president to talk like he lives in a trailer park, because that shows that he gots heart and that he's just one of us common folk who bash immigrants when many of them speak English and know American history better than we do.]
"We've got to, obviously, do a better job of reminding people that ours is not a nation that rejects religion. Ours is a nation that accepts people of all faiths, and that the great strength of America is the capacity for people to worship freely. [Oh, fucking puhhhlease. Like there is not a pro-Christian and pro-Jewish bias in the United States of America.]
"It's difficult," [Bush] said. "I mean, their propaganda machine is pretty darn intense, so we're constantly sending out messages. We're constantly trying to reassure people." [Again, "they" put out propaganda, but "we" do not.]
The Pentagon has acknowledged paying Iraqi journalists and newspapers to print favorable articles. [Which Bush was trying to excuse by saying, "I mean, their propaganda machine is pretty darn intense, so we're constantly sending out messages. We're constantly trying to reassure people."] Bush also has appointed Karen Hughes, a longtime confidante, as U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Her mission is to reverse anti-American sentiment around the world. [Like that cold, reprehensible, lying, eyes-like-a-deer-caught-in-headlights bitch is going to make the sand monkeys wuv us. God save us.]
Bush said he came to Philadelphia to speak about democracy in Iraq because this city was the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution [which he should have someone read -- and explain -- to him sometime]. Pennsylvania also is the home state of a leading Iraq war critic, Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who planned to speak on Bush's heels and repeat his call to bring the troops home from a fight he says has become too violent and out of control....
"The past 2 1/2 years have been a period of difficult struggle in Iraq, yet they have also been a time of great hope and achievement for the Iraqi people," Bush said. "Just over 2 1/2 years ago, Iraq was in the grip of a cruel dictator who had invaded his neighbors, sponsored terrorists, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction, murdered his own people and, for more than a decade, defied the demands of the United Nations and the civilized world."...
That's fucking funny.
Because the Bush regime illegally and unprovokedly invaded Iraq, just as Saddam Hussein illegally and unprovokedly invaded Kuwait (despite Bush's [intentional, I'm sure] use of the term "neighbors," tiny Kuwait is the only neighbor that Saddam Hussein ever invaded, by the way); the United States has a long history of committing terrorism and of sponsoring terrorist regimes and terrorist groups abroad (but it's never "terrorism" when we do it or when we sponsor it); the United States not only possesses and uses weapons of mass destruction, but remains the only nation in the history of the planet to have nuked another nation (but we only use WMDs responsibly!); the United States has a long history of killing its own people (just ask the blacks who first were worked to death as slaves and then were lynched; the mostly poor and non-white who have been executed, mostly for murder, while mostly white white-collar murderers are never even tried for their crimes; the poor and largely, if not mostly, non-white who have died because they didn't have the basic necessities with which to live; the more than 2,140 of our troops, most from poor and middle-class families, who were sent to their deaths in Iraq over the Bush regime's bold-faced lies about Iraq for the war profits of Dick Cheney's Halliburton. And that's just a fucking partial list. Don't even get me started on what white American settlers did to the Native Americans); and, of course, perhaps most immediately hypocritically of all, the Bush regime in 2003 gave the United Nations and world opinion the middle finger and invaded Iraq against the wishes of both.
I sure wish someone would liberate us Americans of our dictator. (George W. Bush was no more legitimately elected than was Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, as I have noted before, have an awfully lot in common.)
That Saddam Hussein "defied the demands of the United Nations and the civilized world" is supposed to be an outrage; that George W. Bush did so is supposed to be no big deal. Because hey, we're the United States of America! America, fuck yeah!
Similarly, the almost 3,000 Americans killed on Sept. 11, 2001 (by 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were from Saudi Arabia and not one of whom was from Iraq) is a fucking outrage to the typical American, but to the typical American the 30,000 innocent Iraqis killed in his or her name since March 2003 is no big deal.
These same Americans will then scratch their heads and say that they just can't understand why "they" (in this case, many if not most of the members of the Muslim world) hate us. We are, after all, so manifestly morally perfect.
Anyway, I've been using Iraq Body Count's conservative figures when I report on the number of Iraqi civilians killed since March 2003. As I type this sentence, Iraq Body Count reports the number of "civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq" as 27,383 at the minimum and 30,892 at the maximum.
I've always quoted Iraq Body Count's minimum count -- in fact, until just recently I've been rounding down to 25,000 -- so that the wingnuts, many of whom are of the Holocaust-denier set, can't accuse me of inflating my figures.
Now, "President" Bush himself comes out with the figure of 30,000, which is closer to Iraq Body Count's maximum count.
What are the wingnuts going to say about this? I mean, Bush is as infallible as the pope, isn't he? If the wingnuts say that Bush is wrong about the 30,000, what else might he be wrong about?
Maybe the wingnuts won't say much, if anything, about it at all.
After all, these "good 'Christians'" first would have to give a shit about the thousands of dead Iraqis -- the innocent Iraqi civilians whom the U.S. military permanently "liberated" -- before they would talk about them.
12:35:32 PM 
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