Iraq hype

The Bush cabal continues to announce progress in Iraq. Most of the rest of the world knows better.

* Bush's poll numbers went up when al-Zarqawi was killed, but that brutal madman commanded only about 500 jihadis. The total number of insurgents in Iraq is about 50,000. Most are home-grown, but many Sunni jihadis come from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan (and who knows how many other places?) Gen. George Casey has just asserted that Iran equips and trains Iraqi Shia militia groups.
* Over 1.000,000 Iraqis are refugees in their own country.
* Right now, over 40,000 US and Iraqi military are deployed in Baghdad, but bombs continue to go off all over the place.
* As of today, 2,516 US troops have died in Iraq since Mar. 19, 2003. 1,934 of these have died since Bush's "Mission Accomplished" show on May 1, 2003. The "official" number of US wounded is 18,490, but estimates of the wounded go up to 48,100.
* Iraq Body Count (which only counts deaths reported by the media) says that as of June 1, between 36,149 and 40,548 Iraqi civilians have been killed in this war/occupation. (They also report that 2,145 Iraqi police officers have been killed.) But the highly respected Lancet medical journal concluded in October of 2004 that over 100,000 Iraqis had already been killed.

The cabal's lies about WMDs and an Iraq connection with 9/11 went up in smoke a long time ago. A majority of Americans, finally opening their eyes, agree that starting this immoral and illegal war was a bloody mistake. Withdrawal is long overdue. It cannot wait any longer