…. over in another comment thread we saw the following comment made

What we can also be sure of SL is that there would be an even greater number of dead Iraqis (and political prisoners) if Hussein were still there - with or without sanctions.

In response to my comment of

What we can be sure of IrC is that there would be no insurgents in Falluja to fight (and by extension the hundreds of civilian men, women, and children, would still be alive in Falluja today, as would more than 10 thousand equally innocent civilians in other places) if Bush’s poorly planned little jaunt into Iraq hadn’t taken place.

A recently released report seems to backup my thoughts, although the numbers are far higher

Nearly 100,000 more Iraqis have died during the American-led occupation than would have been expected otherwise, a study posted on The Lancet medical journal’s website Thursday estimates.

Most of the extra deaths in the first 18 months of the occupation were due to violence, the researchers said – in particular, air strikes that claimed civilian casualties.

“Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children,” they wrote.

Note the wording there, “Nearly 100,000 more Iraqis have died. The numbers are a lot higher than I would have guessed, although I do have to say that I have heard numbers that high, and higher, from friends, and people I know who are from, or who have family, in Iraq.

This report will give Kerry more ammo for the Bush is covering up the facts and presenting a false front statements as well as take a significant amount of wind out of the Cheney “it’s been a remarkable success story to date” statements - unless of course you are one of those who considers that the removal of Saddam Hussein justifies the deaths of almost 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children in the process of the liberation.

As Bush said the other day

“This campaign boils down to a matter of trust…..”

Indeed it does Mr. Bush, and you have yet to be honest regarding Iraq.

(The content of this post was cut ‘n pasted from the text file containing what was recovered from our previous system after our previous host mangled the database - comments, if any, were not recovered)