Can We Call It Genocide Now?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

When does "collateral damage" so dwarf combatant deaths that war
becomes genocide?

Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq has cost 655,000 Iraqis their lives.
That is the conclusion of a study financed by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies and
conducted by physicians under the direction of Johns Hopkins University
epidemiologists. These are deaths over and above the pre-invasion
mortality rate. Bush's illegal invasion raised Iraq's mortality rate
from 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 13.3 deaths per 1,000
people per year. The study is published by the distinguished British
medical journal, The Lancet, and is available on the journal's online
site (October 11).

The study uses a scientific method known as "cluster sampling." In 87%
of the deaths, the researchers requested death certificates, and more
than 90% of the surveyed households produced the death certificates.
Violence accounted for 601,000 deaths and disease and destruction of
civilian infrastructure accounted for 54,000 deaths. The violent deaths
are attributed to gunshot wounds, coalition air strikes, and car bombs.

Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Gilbert Burnham says, "We're
very confident with the results." Columbia University epidemiologist
Ronald Waldman says the survey method used is "tried and true" and that
"this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

When asked about the report, President Bush stated: "I don't consider
it a credible report." Bush, of course, is not reality-based, and he
knows that any unfavorable news is "enemy propaganda." That's what the
neocons who pull his strings tell him, and that is what he believes.

What percentage of these 655,000 deaths were insurgents or
"terrorists"? Probably 1% and no more than 2%. Bush's "war on terror"
is, in fact, a war on Iraqi civilians.

Bush's invasion has also spawned sectarian conflict or civil war,
although the Bush regime denies it. Even Bush is smart enough to know
that "bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" is not compatible with
setting off a civil war in Iraq. Since Bush, the faith-based, believes
that he is bringing "freedom and democracy to Iraq," he cannot accept
the fact that he has started a civil war.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are not the only innocent
victims of Bush's illegal aggression. The New York Times (October 11)
reports that Department of Veterans Affairs documents show that about
one in five US soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have
suffered at least partial disability.

To date more than 100,000 US troops who are veterans of these wars have
been granted disability compensation. Although the US cannot put on the
ground in Iraq more than 150,000 troops at one time, 1.5 million troops
have served so far and 567,000 have been discharged of which 100,000
are receiving disability payments.

Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, says that
the current rate of injuries will produce 400,000 American veterans
suffering 30% to 100% disability. Apparently, one of the severe forms
of disability is post-traumatic stress, which does not count as a
physical wound.

What is America's reward for Bush's illegal wars that have killed
655,000 Iraqis, an uncounted number of Afghanis, and disabled as many
as 400,000 US troops?

According to the US National Intelligence Estimate and to practically
every Middle East expert, Bush's invasions have radicalized the Muslim
Middle East, created legions of recruits for extremists, undermined
America's puppet rulers, imperiled Israel, and destroyed America's
reputation.

We are talking about over one million casualties that have no other
cause than blatant lies by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the
bloodthirsty neoconservative cabal that occupies Bush's subcabinet, and
their corporate media propagandists, especially The Weekly Standard,
Fox News, National Review, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial
page. The Bush regime deceived America and the world with its lies that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would be turned
against the West by terrorists. By giving speeches that continually
mentioned Iraq in the same context as 9/11, the Bush regime created the
widespread impression, still prevalent among Americans, that Iraq was
responsible for 9/11.

What kind of government would destroy the lives through death or
disability of over one million people for no valid reason?

The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing their
constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned
the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the
unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created for
Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended
his client, winning in the US Supreme Court. The Bush administration
retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift's promotion, which killed his
military career and sent the chilling message to all US military and
government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders in
the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the US Constitution is against
Bush and his neocon regime.

The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded.
First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the
government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: "You are
with us or against us"--a formulation that leaves no place for duty to
the US Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to country
and Constitution to loyalty to the government's leader.

Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave
danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American
liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve
hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to
Hitler's drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify
Germany's right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of
the Nazi elite to rule over the German people.
Neoconservatives use "American exceptionalism" and "the war on terror."
There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the
peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the
neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled
American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.

When Bush, the Decider, claims unconstitutional powers and uses
"signing statements" to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of law
is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler,
the Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: "A man who
feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his
people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a
particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon
him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the
people."

"You are with us or against us."