And the prize for most genocidal in Iraq goes to...

Talal and I have been having this on again off again discussion about who will have actually killed more Iraqis -- Clinton or Bush.

Despite the argument of the bumper sticker "nobody died when Clinton lied," the plain truth of the matter is that is simply false. Every time Monica Lewinsky was in the news, Clinton was bombing the shit out of Iraq as well as plenty of other times according to John Pilger, best known for exposing Pol Pot's "Killing Fields." Over a million Iraqis died during the fourteen years of UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. Indeed, Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, went on 60 Minutes to say that she thought the death of 600,000 children due to sanctions was "worth it." Clearly Clinton's policy towards Iraq resulted in a massive number of deaths, to the point where former UN bureaucrat Denis Haliday argued it was genocidal. So, you'd think Slick Willy and Madam Bitch (Talal's and my pet name for Ms. Albright) would be shoe-ins to win the prize for "Most Genocidal in Iraq."

But wait! Now a new study from Johns Hopkins indicates that 655,000 more Iraqis have died in the three years since Bush invaded Iraq than would have otherwise, meaning that Bush has now cut by well over half the amount of time it takes to kill a half a million people in Iraq. And lest the neocons -- as a result of their innate modesty, of course -- try to discredit this report like they did the earlier one, the Washington Post points out that "this and the earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods. The technique, called 'cluster sampling,' is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters" including the four million dead in the Congo.

Americans were quite surprised to learn recently that 60 percent of Iraqis say that attacks on Anglo-American forces are justified. And, well, let's consider for a moment what Americans would be doing if, say, France decided to invade our country because our president is a corrupt tyrant who is engaging in massive human rights abuses. As sympathetic as I might be to that, most Americans would naturally try to defend our country with any means at their disposal (which, unfortunately, includes nuclear weapons that we seem to think is okay for us to have but nobody else...but I digress...). Yet just as empires before us have labeled those defending their country as insurgents or terrorists or rebels or whatever, we too continue our sociopathic behavior on a mass destruction level because apparently, not only is it "worth it," but Iraqis have "a level of violence that they tolerate."

You know. Like, say, canker sores and smelly shoes.

So, I guess you could say that high violence threshold the Iraqis have is helping Bush, Dick and Rummy take the lead in the race to see who can kill more Iraqis in the shortest amount of time. Granted, they still have another half a million to go at least, but with their "stay the course" attitude, I'm sure they'll give Clinton and Madam Bitch a run for their money.