Bushie The Avenger
So last night after I made the last post I was kept up thinking about the war in Iraq, the death toll, the sanctity of life, and the right to have an abortion.
Our President talks a great deal about how abortion and stem cell research are very bad things that should be outlawed in the country, and avoids talking about his faith-based rationalizations by citing 'The Sanctity of Life.' He even declared January 19 "National Sanctity of Human Life Day."
He might be able to sway my opinion if he worked hard to get a better, more comprehensive welfare system in America. Universal healh care in America would go a long way in convincing me that his feelings about human life were genuine. Certainly, making college free for all students above a certain GPA would help, too.
But, clearly, Bush's feelings about abortion and stem cell research have very little to do with the sanctity of human life. Because human life extends beyond the birth canal, but George doesn't care about those other years that come after a child is born. He believes that every life is precious and sacred, except the mother's if it is endangered by the fetus, right up until the moment it emerges from the vagina or c-section. Then you better pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Like he did.
But the continuing war in Iraq is a much more powerful example of how human life really doesn't matter all that much to our president, and that the continuing focus on September 11th from politicians of all stripes is a gross distraction from the real source of terror in the world.
According to Wikipedia, the death toll from the 9/11 attack is 2,993 (including 19 terrorists).
A controversial study published in the Lancet puts the Iraqi 'excess death' toll at 655,000. (The 'excess death' toll is the amount of deaths presumably caused by the Iraq war, or, statistically speaking, the difference between what the death toll was pre-war and what it is now.)
There has been a lot of controversy about the numbers, but many are very confident about the data, including the researchers themselves who asked for death certificates 87% of the time and, when they did, 90% of the time death certificates were produced. You can listen to the people who performed the interviews with Iraqis on This American Life.
If that number is a little hard for you to swallow, there is a website called Iraq Body Count that keeps track of the death toll and they "do not update the data base until (they) have located and cross-checked two or more independent approved news sources for the same incident." Their numbers put the Iraqi civilian death toll between 66,195 and 72,489. Since this is our safety number, we'll go with the lower.
Additionally, there have been 3,826 coalition deaths in Iraq. We'll add these to each of the Iraq totals to come up with our numbers.
Finally, the Lancet number is current as of July, 2006. The Iraq Body Count (website) number is current as of May 23, 2007.
So, let's see the breakdown.
| Number of Deaths | Days Per September 11 | Times Worse Than September 11 | |
| September 11th | 2,993 | - | 1 |
| Iraq War (Lancet) | 658,826 | 5.578 | 220.122 |
| Iraq War (IBC Website) | 70,021 | 65.185 | 23.395 |
Even using the most conservative estimates, the Iraq war has caused almost 24 times as many deaths as the September 11th attack. Since the war started, it's like having an attack as bad as September 11th occur about once every other month.
If September 11th is the worst thing that has ever happened to us, how can we possibly justify a war that repeats that tragedy - every 65 days?
And how can George Bush stand up at a prayer breakfast - just a few months ago, in April 2007 - and talk about how precious human life is?
You're mistaken, dear brother. Human life is very precious to our president. The trouble is that all those pesky Iraqis aren't human. They're not born-again Christian, or white. They probably don't even believe in the "American dream" and blissful capitalism. You forgot to factor that in to your calculations.
(Unborn babies, on the other hand, always have the potential to be Christian and white and patriotic before they come out. It's like Schrodinger's cats.)
He is so full of shit on stem cell research. If he really gave a shit he would try to make all fertility clinics illegal, since that is where the embryo's are both created and destroyed. Stem cell researchers use the fertilized embryo's that would be otherwise destroyed by the fertility clinics. THEY GET OFFED ANYWAY, BUSH!