“Pretty well discredited”, my ass.

John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, according to BBC News, estimates that 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion. That’s more than half-a-million Iraqis that would still be alive – men, women and children – if this president hadn’t decided to go for a little adventure in the Middle East.

The Johns Hopkins researchers used statistical estimates to come up with that figure, which considerably exceeds the Bush administration’s estimate of 30,000. Because finding out the actual number of deaths is difficult both due to the security situation and the fact that journalists and other third-party sources are not able to access much outside of the Green Zone in Baghdad, counting bodies doesn’t really do much. And in case some of this is news to you, let me repeat part of that again – journalists and other third-party sources are not able to access much outside of the Green Zone in Baghdad. So just as the U.S. government has prevented us from seeing dead servicemen returning home, draped in flags, they’re making it very difficult for any accurate reporting of what is going on in Iraq to occur. And they figure they can just say “eh, 30,000″, and no one will be the wiser.

First off, can I just say that 30,000 people is a lot of &*!#ing dead people? 30,000 people is not OK. But that’s assuming the administration is either not lying or is actually aware of what’s going on. You can take your pick of which you choose to disbelieve – personally, I think they’ve lied so much to themselves that they actually believe whatever comes out of their spin machine (leaving those of us in the “reality-based world” to toss our cookies in disbelief) , allowing at least some of them to remain unaware of what is going on – but it doesn’t really matter. Our Glorious Leader Mr. Bush’s response on the JHU estimate was typical – their approach as been “pretty well discredited” and the estimate itself is “just not credible.” Me, I’ll take 655,000 for the win, Alex. Or for the horrible, horrible loss. Or for something approaching the truth, at any rate.

Tell me, Mr. Bush – you got through Yale with C’s and your daddy’s backing. Since when do you – or most of your administration – have the knowledge to discredit peer-reviewed material published in a respected academic journal? Oh, right – you guys are the guys who still think global warming is up for debate (despite peer-reviewed science to the contrary), and your vice-president still thinks we found WMD in Iraq. And those in your administration who are smart enough to know better – ahem, Dr. Rice – are true believers, pimping the party line for the party’s good and the rights of the upper class.

Let me tell you something about how the rest of the world sees us, Mr. Bush – a couple of years ago, two Arab classmates of mine in Germany were absolutely shocked to find out that I, an American, openly disapprove of your administration. One of them took me aside and very quietly told me with significant disdain that in his community, they see you as the reincarnation of another murderous despot from about 7 decades back. I wouldn’t make that particular comparison; it’s a charged accusation to make, and it does a disservice to the memory of the 11 million brutally and deliberately murdered in the Holocaust. Your swath of human destruction has been ruthlessly careless – ruthlessly and intentionally ignorant and stupid – rather than ruthlessly and deliberately calculated. But with more than half-a-million Iraqis dead, more dying every day, our complete mishandling of any issue in the Middle East, our game of nuclear chicken with Iran (and a strike group of ships whose deployment was moved up so that they’ll arrive off Iran’s western coast around October 21st – October surprise, anyone?), and a constant stream of lies coming out of the White House about all of it, I don’t think it’s hard to see why those in the Middle East would see it that way.

Half-a-million people, Mr. Bush. Given the choice between you – who has stifled press freedoms, trampled the Constitution, castrated the Legislative Branch, skewed the Judicial Branch, brought us into completely unnecessary war, ignored urgent warnings from the intelligence community, destroyed our educational system, and lied, lied, lied – or a group of respected and respectable researchers, I think it’s you who has been pretty well discredited.

I’m not a statistician, and I’m well aware of the ways statistics are used and abused in science. I’m afraid, though, that the Bush administration is going to have to do better than “pretty well discredited” this time. And as long as they keep third-parties and journalists from being able to accurately report on the situation, statistical estimates are about the best we can do. And the real point is this – none of these people had to die in the first place.