The Terrible Cost of Bush Administration Lies About Iraq

"Bush Lied, People Died," the protesters' say. Have you ever wondered precisely how many people die every time George Bush lies?

The Center for Public Integrity assembled a prodigious compilation of 935 out-and-out falsehoods uttered by George Bush and seven senior Administration officials in the two years following September 11, 2001.

Based on the detailing of these lies, Lynn Kendall has done the math: Each Bush lie about Iraq has killed four American soldiers and wounded 31. Each Administration attempt to deceive us killed 86 Iraqi citizens at a bare minimum [1] Every eight lies kill a journalist. Every untruth that passed their lips cost US taxpayers more than half a billion dollars.

I mourned when Slobodan Milosevic died — because it meant that he couldn't be George Bush's cellmate when Bush is finally brought to justice, as I so fervently hoped.

[1] Kendall uses the Iraq Body Count, a summation of deaths reported in media reports, hospital and morgue data, and government figures, which is guaranteed to be undercounting violent death in Iraq. A recent survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine counts 150,000 violent deaths, almost twice the IBC number; a study published earlier in The Lancet estimated 650,000 excess deaths from all causes, including war-related disease and malnutrition, almost 8 times the IBC number.