Iraq

Johann Hari, in an otherwise illuminating interview with Salman Rushdie, repeats the canard: “Just after we meet, it is estimated by the Lancet that 650,000 Iraqis have been killed due to Quiet Americans (and Brits).” The number of deaths from violence, according to the Lancet, is 600,000, not 650,000. And once again, the study does not show that all the

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It is as I said: Bill Maher, on this week’s “Real Time,” brought up the Lancet report showing that “we’ve killed 600,000 Iraqis.” This is outright misinformation, catching on as conventional wisdom. The issue is not simply the veracity of the number, but the allocation of responsibility for the slaughter. The report shows that the majority of killings can be

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A new study conducted by Johns Hopkins and published in the British medical journal The Lancet posits that Iraqi civilian deaths since the 2003 invasion may top the 600,000 mark. A pdf of the study is here. Doubt has been cast on the study’s accuracy — of course by the Bush administration but also by qualified people in the fields

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A disturbing piece in today’s NY Times about the plight of Iraqi journalists. Not only are they being systematically slaughtered by Sunni terrorists (sorry, “freedom fighters”). They’re also being persecuted under the draconian laws of the Shia-dominated government. This is the democracy we’ve created. This is the liberation of Iraq. The press restrictions extend to Iraqi Kurdistan, often thought of

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In this admirably comprehensive dispatch, Sarkis Pogossian makes a passing reference to the Iraqi Kurdish authorities as “apparent clients of U.S. imperialism.” He writes: “The Kurdish militia armies controlled by these two strongmen [Barzani and Talabani], the peshmerga, openly collaborated with US Special Forces units in the campaign against Saddam’s regime in 2003.” I opposed the U.S. invasion, but you

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