The Butcher's Bill

From The Wall Street Journal: Iraqi Death Toll
Exceeds 600,000, Study Estimates.
A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many times higher than any previous estimate.

And George still can't figure out why the Iraqis aren't more grateful.

For comparison:
Human Rights Watch has estimated Saddam Hussein's regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over 20 years.

Direct American action is probably responsible for less than 1/3 of the casualties. The others are indirect results, caused by disbanding the Army and the Police, failing to control stockpiles of weapons, and failure to control the border.
The Lancet study, funded largely by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, said while the percentage of deaths attributed to the U.S.-led coalition has decreased over the past year, coalition forces were involved in 31% of all violent deaths since March 2003. Most of the deaths in Iraq, particularly in the past two years, have been caused by insurgent, terrorist and sectarian violence.

These numbers push Bush well beyond the architects of the Rawandan, Ugandan, and Bosnian genocides, even if still just a bit behind Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin. The genocide in Iraq, which is quite likely still a long ways from completion, was the fruit of a long series of bad and even monstrous decisions by Bush and his minions. He deserves a place in the roll call of great war criminals - too bad he is unlikely to ever be tried.

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