Another Sunday, another open trackbacks and comments post, and another Tony & George myth debunked.

A monstrous war crime

With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its lies

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government’s own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Immediately after publication, the prime minister’s official spokesman said that the Lancet’s study “was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate”. The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were “extrapolated” and a “leap”. President Bush said: “I don’t consider it a credible report”.

Scientists at the UK’s Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study’s methods were “tried and tested”. Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an “underestimation of mortality”.

That’s right, even as they were decrying the report as wildly inaccurate they knew that the numbers were not the extremist propaganda they, and their government spokespeople, were making it out to be.

Some will call it political weaseling, and others will say Blair & Bush didn’t technically lie, and that will be technically correct - but nothing will change the fact that they knew that what they were trying to accomplish was a lie, and in my books that’s as good as a lie any day of the week.