25,000 civilians dead

on the bbc today, a report was released that since the US led invasion of iraq 25,000 civilians have met a violent end! that's civilians only and this is a very conservative report. (reached by corellating caualty reports from at least two major english-speaking news sources). overall the iraqi death toll is estimated at well over 100,000.

those iraqis must sure be glad we came to 'rescue' them and bring them all this 'liberty' and 'freedom'. let's see: more than two years after the invasion, the coutry is in rubble, just about all civil rights are suspended, curfews everywhere, infrastructure functionality, such as power and water is at a tiny fraction of what it was in saddam's days, but the oil of course is flowing and haliburton, bechtel, etc are making billions. so add the 25,000 civilians that would otherwise be alive now and i can understand why they're not exactly standing on the street-corners waving american flags.

sure saddam was a tyrannical asshole, enriching himself off the people, but so are bush, cheney, rove and rumsfeld and i don't see thailand or some other country coming over to bring us freedom and regime-change.

the only thing to do is to get our troups out NOW, immediately remove all american and british engineering firms, oil companies, construction companies and all the others that are raping the country and start paying massive reparations to let the arab communities re-build the country.

what about the argument that if we leave they'll have civil war? well what the fuck do you call what they have now? the country is fucked and you can't "un-fuck" it. that's the sad truth. there is no alternative scenario in which all of iraq ends up looking like the connecticut country-side. by staying we can only fuck it up more.

i hope people don't get the idea that i am anti-american. on the contrary, i really love this country. empire-building and enriching the few through mass-murdering are not values that the american people hold. unfortunately they are the values that our current government and corporatocracy hold.