Comment Of Sen. Patrick Leahy
On The Study Of Iraqi Deaths,
By The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Of Public Health,
As Published In The Medical Journal, The Lancet
Wednesday, October 11, 2006

“These numbers are shocking and illuminate a tragic reality in Iraq that has been consistently and callously ignored or downplayed by the Bush Administration to conceal facts about the war from the American people and from the world.

“While some of these deaths are undoubtedly insurgents who have engaged in violence against our troops, the overwhelming majority are Iraqi civilians who have never been our enemy.

“Without a clear picture of the situation on the ground, policymakers are flying blind in making decisions about Iraq, and so is the public.  The lack of oversight of the war by a compliant and complicit Republican Congress has helped the White House hide the truth from the American people.  In the meantime studies like this have tried to fill the information vacuum.  Despite the President’s efforts today to discount these findings, these researchers have earned credibility over the years for their demographic studies.  But whether this estimate is high, low or the same as the actual numbers of deaths of Iraqi civilians, the fact is that chaos, misery and insecurity in Iraq are compounding the effects of the poor planning and bad decisions that the Bush Administration continues to make in Iraq.  ‘Stay the course’ long ago became untenable as a strategy for success there. 

“At what point will the White House and Republican leaders in Congress recognize that their incompetent, myopic policy in Iraq has unleashed a human catastrophe with more misery each passing day?  The Administration is trying to discredit and deflect attention from this report.  It would be far better if they would recognize the need to change course in Iraq and begin bringing our troops home from this deadly quagmire.”

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[Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has long led in Congress on issues concerning civilian victims of war.  Leahy is the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations And Related Programs.]