Just a Numbers Game

Growing up in Harlem, the big game indulged in by almost everyone, was playing the 'numbers'. A nickel, a dime, a quarter or more, could return upwards of a thousand dollars if you 'hit' all three, and if you could get your money before the 'banker' suddenly left town for parts unknown. But this is peanuts when compared to the new game of counting or not counting civilian casualties in Iraq. The Lancet, the peer-reviewed, highly respected British Journal, has just released it's latest estimate of casualties in Iraq, as being over 600,000 since we invaded in 2003 - this doesn't even include the thousands of Americans killed and injured in this same time period. The head Bushite was quick to deny this new number, because he favored his own lying, understated estimate of 30,000. So what's another lie or denial from him - it's par for the course and is consistent with the debacles that characterize his administration. He even denies the existence of global warming, which is as real as he is clueless, so his denial of a scholarly estimate, is in keeping with his anti-scholar, anti-intellectual good old boy persona. The real point, is his lack of regard for the lives of civilians lost as a result of his policies, commonly referred to as 'collateral damage'. And whatever the true number, it's a monumental slaughter that qualifies as a war crime by any humane standard, and will have to be reckoned with in this life or the next.